Penn Hosts Conference on Virtual Worlds for Education

March 9, 2009 - Penn GSE is hosting a March 12-13 workshop, "Taxonomy of Virtual Worlds for Education," designed to bring together teachers, students, researchers and technology providers to brainstorm the ideal virtual world software system for science, technology, engineering and math learning.

The conference goal is to ensure that this ever-changing medium is informed by educators, who have found that each virtual-world system has its own pros and cons, especially when it's considered for use in K-12 educational settings.

"Ultimately, the outcomes of this will help inform the next generation of virtual-world designs for education," said Yasmin Kafai, professor in Penn's Graduate School of Education and expert in children learning through virtual worlds. "This involves the future of learning technology and figuring out how to describe and classify the different qualities of learning that can happen in virtual worlds."

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Editor's Note: The last session on Friday, March 13 at 3:15 p.m. will be open to the press. Please RSVP for that session at 215-898-4820 or jdisanto@upenn.edu.

Media contact: Jill DiSanto-Haines at 215-898-4820 or jdisanto@upenn.edu