UK educators

From the UK virtualworlds@jiscmail.ac.uk mailing list:

Sheila Yoshikawa (Sheila Webber in RL) will lead an exploration of Sheffield University's island, Infolit iSchool, from the Departmental offices to the Hobbit House and beyond. Sheila will discuss the different types of space and their uses, the value of using prefabs, and issues concerned with embedding information in SL locations without leading to notecard hell. 

Infolit iSchool has been used by Information Studies for a year (for teaching and educator/librarian discussions), and now Sheffield's Education Department has also started activities.

Monday Nov 10, 12 noon SL time (8pm UK time)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit iSchool/104/220/22/

University of Surrey on Eduserv Island

I'm pleased to say that staff at the University of Surrey have taken one of the offices in the Office Space on Eduserv Island on a temporary basis while they find their feet and sort out an island of their own.

Welcome aboard...

Second Life and UK data protection

I asked a while back whether the fact that Linden Lab is now charging VAT in the UK means that it is also required to comply with other UK legislation, such as the Data Protection Act (DPA).

A story from the BBC today indicates that Facebook is now being investigated by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), looking at privacy issues around the way the service continues to hold personal information about people after they have unsubscribed.

Although Facebook and many other social networks are based outside of the UK, Mr Evans [Senior Data Protection Practice Manager at the ICO] believes that UK law could still apply.

"They are established in the UK for UK legislation to cover their activities."

For the record, I don't have concerns that Linden Lab are abusing personal information. Just interested as to how far a US company is obliged to comply with legislation in the UK.

Get it while it's hot!

Shale makes a good point about the UK "snapshot" of HE and FE activity in Second Life that I announced to the SLED list yesterday...

I recommend you read it now, because by next week it will be out of date.

Quite... get a move on!