The 2nd Virtual Conference on Counseling is scheduled for September 15-18, 2009 in Second Life at the Counselor Education in Second Life (CESL) center. Conference registration is FREE and open to the professional counselor education community, practicing counselors, and supportive members. The 2VCC has more than 40 live online presentations covering a wide variety of counseling topics. Presentations will occur at two locations in Second Life; the CESL center and our venue partner eXtension (Cooperative Extension Second Life Educators).
Continuing education hours are available and provided FREE to registered attendees through Kent State University’s Counseling and Human Development Center.
General Information:
http://SL.CounselorEducation.org
Conference Schedule:
http://sl.counseloreducation.org/2VCCSchedule/2VCCSchedule.html
Registration:
http://sl.counseloreducation.org/Registration/registration.php
Practice sessions schedule for those new to Second Life:
http://sl.counseloreducation.org/Practice/practice.html
Live Webstream partner:
http://www.onlinevents.co.uk
Help Videos
http://sl.counseloreducation.org/HelpVideos/videos.html
Conference blog
http://CESL.wordpress.com
Some more, for those interested
This is a great opportunity for you to attend a FREE conference using Second Life to engage the presenters in realtime interaction. I hope that you will take the conference days to spend as much time as you can in support of other colleagues by attending their presentations. If you are planning on inviting others to the conference (please do!) give them enough notice to complete Second life registration process and become familiar enough with Second life to get around. Counseling classes may want to consider attending some conference sessions while on campus as a class (viewing the session through the eyes of one Avatar).
Webstream
Another way to view the conference is to use our webstream partner, Onlinevents.co.uk http://www.onlinevents.co.uk Onlinevents will be streaming content from the conference simultaneously as permitted by the presenter. You can simply direct your web browser to the Onlinevents website, register for free and see streamed content on your personal computer or project it for for your class.
Getting an Avatar and getting ready for the conference
If you have not joined Second Life yet you can do so at http://secondlife.com/ ; click on the “get started” button to begin the registration process. The registration process will walk you through creating your Avatar (your in-world self) along with registering your in world name and some default settings. You will also be asked to download the Second Life software. It is important that you have the Second Life software on the computer that you plan to deliver your presentation from (there are Windows, Mac, and Linux versions). You may also download the Second Life software to other computers. You can log into Second Life with your Avatar name and password from any computer that has the software.
If you want to see a video of the SL registration process and creation of an avatar, you can find them http://SL.counseloreducation.org under the video section
It would be a good idea to spend some time in Second Life before the conference. While Second Life is not particularly difficult to navigate it does take a bit of getting use to. This url will take you to a Second Life quick start guide which covers much of the basics of getting around in Second Life
http://static-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/downloads/Second_Life_Quickstart.pdf .
Practice sessions available
We have created a few practice sessions for people new to Second Life. The schedule can be found at http://sl.counseloreducation.org/Practice/practice.html
Any questions you can email me at mjencius@kent.edu
Marty Jencius (SL: Kimbo Scribe)
Kent State University
Associate Professor – Counseling and Human Development Services
