Merlot Conference

I am attending the Merlot Conference in San Jose this week. I have been involved with Merlot for the past year, it is related to my job in coordinating the online programs and services for the six public universities in South Dakota/
Merlot provides an avenue for faculty to peer review learning objects. According to the Merlot.org website:
Merlot is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT's vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.
MERLOT's strategic goal is to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by increasing the quantity and quality of peer reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed courses.
A learning object is a resource, usually digital and web-based, that can be used and re-used to support learning.
Wikipedia offers the following definition of learning objects:
Learning objects offer a new conceptualization of the learning process: rather than the traditional "several hour chunk", they provide smaller, self-contained, re-usable units of learning.[1]
They will typically have a number of different components that range from descriptive data to information about rights and educational level. At their core, however, will be instructional content, practice, and assessment. A key issue is the use of metadata.
Learning object design raises issues of portability, and of the object's relation to a broader learning management system.
As a member of the Merlot leadership committee and someone who has an interest in virtual worlds, specifically Second Life I saw a connection between the services that are offered by Merlot, the learning environment offered by Second Life and learning objects/ In essence the learning experiences offered by Second Life are learning objects or a series of linked learning objects.

Because of the conference, my experiences with a virtual conference in Second Life I thought it would be a great experience to offer a virtual conference for Merlot, or some type of virtual world experience. As I started to put out some requests for information I learned that others, specifically Jonathon Richter at the University of Oregon was actively involved in developing resources and a link between Second Life and Merlot. With Jonathon’s help, and the assistance of individuals from Dakota State University, and Front Range Community College we toured and reviewed sites for the conference.

Four Second Life sites have been selected for tours for the Merlot conference, these include Virtual Ability Island, Montclair State University’s Theorist Project, Sci-lands, and Merlot CLIVE.
Merlot Clive is, according to the website;
The Center for Learning In Virtual Environments (CLIVE) is a collaboration between The Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE) at The University of Oregon, Sun Microsystems, and MERLOT to create two complimentary spaces - here on the World Wide Web and also within 3D space - for comparing, contrasting, and informing educators about the potentials and challenges for learning and teaching in Multi-User Virtual Environments. CLIVE is partnered with The Media Grid's Immersive Education project - an initiative to develop a universally accessible open source interface and repository for educational learning materials developed in 3D Virtual Worlds.

Virtual ability also has a website and from their website they:
Virtual Ability, Inc. helps people with these kind of challenges (disabilities) get into, and become successful in virtual worlds like Second Life.
The Theorist Project is:
The Theorist Project is a learning area and working classroom currently focused on Counseling Theorists. Current exhibits include Adler, Gestault, and Rogers (content provided by students) and Freud's Office and Iceberg.

SciLands is a science related sim that is comprised of 32 islands with a science focus:

• Island reservations in a pure Science region, with shared resources and other Science-based organizations, initially centered around the Space Industries and the acclaimed International Spaceflight Museum.

The Merlot Conference is rich in information, not only on Second Life but also information on initiative in education and projects that are faculty are applying to b e effective in their teaching. Information on the conference can be found here http://conference.merlot.org/2009/ and more information can also be found here ttp://merlotconf.wordpress.com/.