My Keynote for the 2008 Second Life Education Community Convention (SLEDcc)

I had the honor of giving a keynote address at the SLEDcc this September. The link to the complete transcript is here . But here are a few key quotes that will give you a sense of my focus:

I think we are approaching a critical point in the adoption of virtual worlds for education, and enterprise use in general. Most people who come into Second Life for professional reasons start by acting on their own. So all of this enthusiasm, experimentation and community-building is very much a grass-roots effort, usually with top administrators looking on, often with a puzzled look, sometimes with some kind words, but rarely with the support that educational projects need to succeed. And by support, I mean money. Money for hardware and software, for hiring staff and virtual assistants, for buying and building virtual products and services.

Over the next two years, I see large numbers of educators going to their deans, to their principals and superintendants; to their vice presidents of human resources or customer outreach. And they are going to be asking their enterprises for the money they need to get their students inworld, or as long-time Second Life residents say, to get them to rez. Right now, there aren’t many students in virtual worlds. So, to play on the title of Rudolf Flesch’s 1955 book ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read,’ I am calling this talk ‘Why Johnny Can’t Rez.’

Flesch argued that that Johnny has tremendous potential, but that he can’t read if teachers aren’t finding the right methods of reaching him. Well, I’m sure Philip Rosedale in his talk yesterday morning convinced you that virtual worlds have tremendous potential, just like young Johnny. And Barry Joseph in his keynote yesterday made it pretty clear that the responsibility falls on us to push virtual worlds past the tipping point, to widespread adoption. Well, the purpose of my talk is to sketch out how we can reach, not Johnny, but the people who hold the purse-strings, so that those of us with virtual world projects can get them funded, and help Johnny rez.

Enjoy!