Claudia and Pathfinder Linden Opening Session at SLCC / SLEDcc 2008

Claudia and Pathfinder Linden gave a fairly casual and friendly opening welcome session this morning to start off the Second Life Community Convention and the Second Life Education Community Conference, at the Marriott in Tampa, Florida.  Some quick notes:

• Claudia announced that Linden Lab is working with ISTE on a new pilot program for educators that you can sign up to participate in at this URL: http://SecondLifeGrid.net/programs/education
• Pathfinder mentioned that anyone can request a speaker from Linden Lab to visit a university or organization to talk about using Second Life in the classroom or corporate environment.  The URL to request a speaker is http://lindenlab.com/pressroom/speaker.
• Pathfinder noted that he view SL from a biological point of view, as an ecosystem.  He challenged educators to think about connecting with people outside of your sphere of expertise, in corporate, non-profit, arts and health care fields. As an example, he described a collaboration between Boston University, Emerson University, the city of Boston and other local groups to use SL to help real world residents in Boston to improve their community: the Hub2 project.
• Claudia explained that she writes an “education report” that gets distributed internally at Linden Lab.  She shares a lot of the projects that she hears about.  She asked that people share with her their projects, as well as their problems and issues with using Second Life for education.
• On Sunday at 11:30am, there will be a feedback session on “What would Educators Like to See in the Next 1-3 Year Time Frame?” where we can speak directly with Linden Lab reps.

Not as lively and energetic as I would have liked for the opening session of the first ever SLEDcc conference.  But still great being in the room with a couple of hundred educators using this space.