AVATAR “Added Value of teAching in a virTuAl woRld”

Friday, 25 March 2011 - 4pm GMT
Hawaii 6am, Los Angeles 9am, New York 12pm, London 4pm, Paris 5pm, Dubai 8pm, New Delhi 9:30pm, Beijing 12am midnight (Fri/Sat), Tokyo 1am (Sat), Sydney 3am (Sat)
For World Time click here http://tinyurl.com/25March4pmGMT

VENUE: EduNation I Sandbox in Second Life

http://slurl.com/secondlife/EduNation/103/151/23

Live screenshare of Second Life in Adobe ConnectPro

http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/secondlife

This presentation disseminates the preliminary results of the EU funded project: AVATAR "Added Value of teAching in a virTuAl woRld" (http://www.avatarproject.eu). The overall goal of the project is to enhance the level of ICT use in education by providing teachers with relatively new methodological and pedagogical tools within the field of virtual world teaching and learning. In this presentation the project phases will be outlined and there is a particular focus on the following challenges and how to handle them:

- How do you motivate and engage secondary school teachers in virtual worlds teaching?
- How do you design a teacher training course that truly empowers teachers giving them the knowledge and skills required to design and carry out teaching and learning activities in virtual worlds?
- How do you support teachers and help them benefit from the potentials and overcome the pitfalls of delivering a virtual worlds course to their pupils?

Inger-Marie Falgren Christensen holds a position as E-learn Project Coordinator at the University of Southern Denmark. Her current responsibilities are teacher training in the field of e-learning and e-learning platforms, planning and carrying out projects that explore the learning potential of virtual learning environments, idea development with and pedagogical support of teachers in relation to the application of e-learning.

In 2008, Ms Christensen completed an online master programme on ICT and Learning offered by a network of Danish universities. In her thesis, Ms Christensen's field of study was the competence development of teachers within the field of e-learning.