Large international conferences always create a buzz, feeling of excitement and lots of talk about “where do we go from here?”  Often it dissipates over the following weeks, not with ISTE’s SIGVE.

The ISTE  SIGVE  2012 Playground at the annual Conference in San Diego provided an opportunity for educators to attend real-time presentations in 3 formats, some at the same time.  The ‘Playground’ was a physical location in the San Diego Convention Center which hosted a day of presentations, relative to virtual worlds.  The presentations were live streamed as well as streamed into a virtual world environment, allowing for physical presence, virtual presence and virtual world presence.  Each provided a format for questions and the individuals at the physical event coordinated all 3 formats to make certain that all attendees received the information and got their questions answered.

Two weeks later, educators associated with SIGVE continue with a busy, ongoing schedule.  Teachers involved with virtual worlds are tweeting, blogging, collaborating on Wikis and Nings, playing games and planning events.  Not all these events are directly under the official auspices of SIGVE , but all are associated in some form…perhaps they should be called “Friends of SIGVE”.  Official SIGVE events are the monthly Speaker Series, and SIGVE Office Hours.  Interested individuals can attend these as well as Sunday night Virtual Pioneers, Thursday night social events at ISTE Island, a book talk on Monday nights, a Games MOOC, various events at VSTE and SLEEC as well as multiple events and activities at many other educational sims.

Clearly the teachers that are exploring and using virtual environments for teaching and learning, do it all year-long.  Those who did not have opportunity to attend any of the playground sessions can benefit from top-notch ongoing activities and those who did can level up.