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May was a great month for significant educational events in Second Life. Second Life educators held the first Second Life Best Practices in Education: Teaching, Learning and Research 2007 International Conference on May 25. As reported on the conference wiki, "over 1,000 educators from around the world registered to attend the free conference, and over 50 volunteers and 100+ educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and businesses from both the real world and the Second Life world signed up to take part. Data analysis of traffic patterns following the conference show that 1300 unique avatars participated in the in-world event."

The Second Life cable network offered real time streaming on the web with live commentary from announcers like Starr Sonic. Many of the presentations are archived on the SLCN website. (Search for presentations tagged BPE.)

The four conference co-chairs - Zana Kohime, Fleep Tuque, Veritas Variscan and Desideria Stockton - and volunteers did an remarkable job organizing the 24-hour conference across time zones. Several overflow zones handled the influx of enthusiastic participants. Signage in the main gathering space offered easy teleports to the overflow spaces when the conference hall reached maximum attendance.

Ada Alfa and Longg Weeks gave an IBM keynote offering insights from their work with educators around the world in their 3D Internet division about games, play and learning. Both Ada and Longg emphasized the quality of relationships formed in their use of Second Life. Ada discussed developing very firm friendships and better working relationships with colleagues than she has using conventional means like email and conference calls. Longg just had his 10 year anniversary at IBM. In this last year, while immersed in virtual social worlds, he has made friendships in-world with people from all over the world. Those friendships developed into real life friendship. Longg would meet with his in-world friends in real life for dinner and conversation, one of his tests for depth of relationship. "This is very significant. Friendships made can become very deep ones." Ada spoke about their extensive use of video/machinima to demonstrate/educate the inquisitive about these mysterious virtual worlds. She has found machinima useful for clients who can't yet use SL because of firewall issues at the workplace. They use video to teach not only about the space of Second Life itself, but also to share techniques of learning in Second Life.

Teen Grid educator Maggie Marat presented her work with middle school students in the Suffern Middle School in Suffern, New York as a part of a chat panel that was simultaneously narrated live by Starr Sonic on the slcn.tv website. Maggie spoke about how the teachers working with students on Ramapo Islands on Teen Second Life. "All report a depth to the learning that was not there before," she commented. GlobalKids Bixby gave a very dynamic presentation using the same innovative processes used by the non-profit afterschool leadership program Global Kids on their public teen grid estate by the same name. Using a voting tool designed by Kim Anubis and the Magicians, participants were given the opportunity to vote on which topics Globalkids Bixby would present next.

A week later, Barry Gkid (Globalkids Bixby's Teen Second Life persona) and UK educator and Sloodle co-creator (with Jeremy Kabumpo from San Jose State University), Buddy Sprocket broke more new ground with the first Main Grid/Teen Second Life event via Sloodle. The event? Author James Paul Gee's first visit to Teen Second Life. James arrived via a space ship made by teen Resident 1000 Carlos with a background story that boasted James was an alien in search of a body to wear in his explorations. In preparation for the event, six teens created an amazing array of avatars for James and his explorations in Second Life including Starcraft's Hydralisk and Sylver Bu's fire-breathing dragon. You can see them all here on Global Kids' flickr page and you can find more details on the Global Kids blog