Information School News

Later today, Sheila Webber will be contributing to a compass point session,  Nonprofit Commons past reflections, future directions, at the 12th Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference , taking place 4-6 April 2019 in the 3D virtual world, Second Life. She was invited onto the panel as Leader of the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable , a weekly educators discussion forum that has been running for 10 years. The other panellists are Dr. Cynthia Calongne (Professor with Colorado Technical University); Joyce Bettencourt (co-founder of AvaCon, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the growth and development of 3D immersive spaces, and Creative Director of The Vesuvius Group); Renne Emiko Brock, Multimedia Communications Program Coordinator at Peninsula College, teacher and artist;  and Buffy Beale, retired educational technology expert, and representing Bridges for Women, a Canadian nonprofit. The session takes place 6pm to 7pm UK time, at https://maps.second...

An American Humanities' academic has just written a piece praising our island, Infolit iSchool , in Second Life: you can find it here: http://educatinglotus.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/the-university-of-sheffield-uk-infolit-ischool/ . She says "I applaud Sheila Webber (Sheila Yoshikawa in SL), Information Studies faculty member and Director of the Centre for Information Literacy Research, for creating a wonderfully vibrant student learning space, one that uses Inquiry Based Learning." On the right you see another complimentary message, just sent by Sarah Chauncey, Director of Information Resources and Learning Technologies for Rockland BOCES and doctoral student at Syracuse University.

Sheila Webber , Director of the Department's Centre for Information Literacy Research, has been leading the University of Sheffield's explorations in Second Life by teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate students in this virtual world as well as engaging in several research activities in SL. A short account of her recent ventures in our Infolit iSchool can be found in the latest Higher Education Academy Information and Computer Science Subject Centre Newsletter . Open Issue 11 - Oct 2008 and turn to page 6 for the article; 'Second Life case study: Infolit iSchool'.

Recently Sheila Webber has given a number of presentations associated with information literacy and with Web 2.0. "Fostering Lifelong Learning through Information Literacy education: Exploring conceptions in different disciplines and framing pedagogies for lifelong learning" (see the powerpoint here ) and "Information Literacy and Second Life" on 16 June at the Lifelong Learning conference, Yeppoon, Australia "Using inquiry-based approaches with first year undergraduates" on July 1st at the First Year Experience in Higher Education conference in Hobart, Australia. Workshops on "Social networking: exploring the possibilities" at the ARLIS conference in Liverpool, 24 July: see the resource she created here http://www.netvibes.com/sheilawebber She also organised and led the Second Life track of the Learning Through Enquiry Alliance conference 2008: see the conference wiki for photos, commentary and transcripts