Energizing! That’s how I feel about a great live online event. There is something motivating and energy-producing about being in the company of others as everyone’s neurons fire at the same time. That’s a lot of energy! Thanks for watching the RTM, and for your encouragement! Good to see you here!

- Jonathan

How wonderful to see you here in the Real Time Minute. Thank you for your kind feedback and enthusiasm. As I mentioned to Carolyn and the many of you who have been sending me emails — knowing that you are watching, listening and responding makes doing the Minutes so much more fun!

It’s funny that you mentioned doing some magic tricks live online, Georgina, as I have a few episodes lined on that very topic. (For those who don’t know, when I was younger, I entertained as a magician at birthday parties and schools and other events.) I bet most people don’t realize just how many techniques that magicians (and performers of all kinds, for that matter) use that would actually help anyone work some magic in the virtual classroom. Stay tuned — over the next few months, I’ll be sharing some of these “tricks” with all of you.

Georgina, I hope you will use this forum and the LearningTimes.org community to keep me and all of us in the loop on some of the “playing” you are doing with the people with whom you are working in Oz. If there are any live online events we can participate in, let us know! We’d love to play, too!

Regarding 3D environments, one link you might like to explore for inspiration is SecondLife.com, which is an intricate three-dimensional world. I’m not aware of any whiteboards built right into it (just yet!) but you could link out to an external one and bring it in that way. There are certainly tools for sharing files, media clips, and communicating with others. The main area of SecondLife is a free-for-all, and probably not a place for young learners (or even some of us older learners). There are more private or “regulated” places that might be more conducive: such as the NMC Online Campus (of which I am a “resident”; and LearningTimes is a partner with the New Media Consortium) and the Teen Second Life area for 13-17 year olds only, which you can learn about here.

SecondLife demands a good internet connection and a very good computer with a high-end graphics card, so it’s not yet accessible to everyone.

You might also like to take a look at the River City Project out of Harvard’s school of education. The project dubs itself “a National Science Foundation-supported simulation environment for learning scientific inquiry and 21st century skills”.

There is a bit of coverage of applications for real-time, 3-D worlds in my book (Learning in Real Time). And I’ll be doing some Real Time Minute episodes on real-time interaction in 3-D worlds in the near future.

If any of you have experiences or educational approaches to using 3-D worlds that you’d like to share with me and Georgina and others, would you kindly leave a reply here or make a post inside www.LearningTimes.org? We’d love to hear what you are up to.

“See” you soon, Georgina! Keep in touch — and keep sharing your amazing work with us!

– Jonathan

Georgina Nou

Thanks for the kind feedback! It’ll be great to know you are out there watching and enjoying as I do future RTMs. Don’t hesitate to make suggestions for show topics as you listen in, or to pose any questions that I can attempt to answer in future shows.

“See” you online again soon! Thanks!

– Jonathan

I’m really enjoying the Minutes. Keep it up! I’m learning so much & faculty can use a great resource like this.

Carolyn Campbell
Instructional Designer
NSCC Online Learning