Slidecast! Why Second Life?

Sigh, I'm tired! This was a lot of work but was fun. Live presentation + Powerpoint + Slideshare.net + audio file + some noodling around with the "slidecast" interface =

Why Second Life Scott Merrick For VU CSO

View more presentations from Scott Merrick. (tags: virtual worlds cso)

Virginia Society for Technology in Education Grand Opening Monday!

Where's Scottmerrick? :)

Hey, ya'll, I've had a sneak peek at this build and you gotta see it, replete with a historically accurate replication of the original Jamestown Colony and MORE!

Here's the announcement:
Grand Opening of VSTE Island Celebration
Monday!

Join us on Monday night, February 23, for the grand opening of VSTE Island and the Jamestown Settlement.

7:30 PM EDT (4:30 PM SLT) New Voyages Concert
8:00 PM EDT (5:00 PM SLT) Treasure Hunt
9:00 PM EDT (6:00 PM SLT) Pirate Social & Dance

Come celebrate with us in SL as we celebrate in RL at the annual VSTE Conference being held in Virginia Beach, VA. SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/125/140/24

NECC 2009 Program Goes LIVE!

The new NECC 2009 program is UP! And we're on that baby! Click to read the exciting details of the two 3 hour workshops I'll be making-up-as-we-go with talented innovative educators. Register quick, since they filled up pretty fast last year.

Note, the n00b session (Tue. 8:30-11:30) is for folks with none to a little bit of Second Life experience/expertise, and the Toolbox session (Wed. 8:30-11:30) is for those who need no help with basic skills. Some of these folks may even have taught in Second Life, but our three hours together will hopefully provide them with new tools and tricks to optimize the experience for their students, colleagues, and themselves. Come see us and work with us! See you in DC!

Glad the program is out, since it also looks like I'm helping friend Lisa Linn (Clare Lane in SL) coordinate the three-day playground blowout! Sheesh!

BP Virtual Graduation Ceremony in Second Life

British Petroleum has executives placed all over the world. Angola, Russia, Indonesia, all over North America, etc., and it would be very expensive, obviously, to gather them together for anything so at once important and trivial as an awards ceremony celebrating a year-long distance learning project management course.

Solution? Second Life, and Manchester Business School's virtual campus within it. Read a description of the event at the Manchester Evening News article by Kevin Feddy.

Feddy quotes Corporaton Pop director Dom Raban (CP facilitated the event for BP), as commenting, "By holding it virtually, we have made it possible for them to be rewarded for their achievements with minimal disruption, saving time and money as well as reducing environmental impact."

Very cool. And smart.

VWBPE Needs YOU!

2009 Second Life Conference

From March 27th to March 29th, 2009 - the education community of Second Life will be hosting a 3 day conference on best practices in education. This conference will promote the best and brightest from the Second Life education community in various fields of practice including everything from demonstrations to hands on theory.

Calls for papers will be accepted starting January 25th. Abstracts/Proposals to be submitted no later than February 28th. Abstracts accepted for publication in the Journal of Virtual Studies must submit thier full papers no later than March 21st. Check the VWBPE website for much more information!

What you can do for VWBPE 2009!

1. Sign up to volunteer! The organizers are particularly looking for folks to record sessions via machinima. Do you have those skills? Here's your chance to help preserve the work for those not fortunate enough to participate "the day of."
2. Send in a presentation proposal -- deadline 28 Feb see: www.vwbpe.org
3. Ask a friend to propose a presentation -- you know who they are!
4. Put the dates in your calendar and let your boss know you will be at a conference -- and it won't cost her a thing!
5. Request an exhibitor booth for your college/ university / or organization
6. Are you a for-profit organization? Request a vendor space!
7. Consider how you can assist colleagues in attending the conference in real life-- for example, book a few rooms or find a campus location where you work with internet access and a big video screen. Arrange to have some avatar colleagues attend the sessions in-world and project their computer screen to the room's video screen. Real life folks can ask questions via the in-world avatar.
8. Request an VWBPE Information Kiosk for your land -- put it up.
9. Join the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2009 group in Facebook (once it's there!), and invite your FB friends!
10. Follow VWBPE on Twitter.

ISTE Eduverse Talks, First Archived Show!

Yay! I've been spouting off about the need to record these for it seems like ever, and Knowclue Kidd (Marianne Malmstrom irl) has made some valiant efforts and put a few very watchable episodes online; but everyone knewclue that it was going to take a full bore production company to make the archives slick enough to hold interest for their one hour length.

Now it's happening!

The first ISTE eduverse talks program is now online and available at SLCN.tv, the completely-in-the-metaverse cable news network. This thriving media outlet historically has carried such things as Music Academy onLive, Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe (a fabulous jazz chanteuse), and SLHA Hockey (I have to catch one of those!).

A new agreement between our favorite tech society, the International Society for Technology in Education, and SLCN has resulted in a marvelous thing--the archiving of future offerings from ISTE's long running Speaker Series, hosted by our own Kevin Jarrett (KJ Hax inworld) now morphed into, ba-da-da-da-da-daaaahhhhhh:

Head on over to SLCN tv and check it out KJ chatting up Lisa Perez (SL: Elaine Tulip), Chicago Public Schools; Joyce Valenza (SL: Joyce Story), Librarian, Springfield Township (PA) High School; and Rhonda Trueman (SL: Abbey Zenith), Head of Reference and Business Librarian for Johnson & Wales University, Charlotte, NC.!

and keep an eye on the ISTE eduverse blog for announcements of future episodes. Next week? Beyond the Dewey Decimal System: Librarians Leveraging Social Media to Build Professional Learning Communities

Nature's Debate: "Are We Still Evolving?"

I'm working on putting together a ~1 hour event for staff and faculty at the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach and the Vanderbilt School for Science and Math for next Friday, February 20, and in the course of that I explored some fun science sites today. Stay tuned, because I'll soon share out "Scott's Excellent Science Sites in Second Life." While doing so, I was 'splorin', I got a message about an upcoming event, hosted by the publishers of Nature magazine a very prestigious group. That piqued my interest so much that I pursued the teleport to the event. I'm glad I did. It was most interesting!

Participants, as detailed on Nature's website announcement of the debate, were Henry Gee, palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist & Senior Editor, Nature; Susan Blackmore, psychologist, writer and Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth; and Andrew Pomiankowski, Professor of Genetics, University College London. The event in London was hosted by Oliver Morton, Chief News and Features Editor, Nature. That's a pretty heady lineup. And the conversation was no less heady. I was moved by the sense of humor, the candor, and the passion of the speakers on the topic, as I hope that you will be by the little snippet I snagged with Fraps and herein will share, just as soon as I have it uploaded:


I'll also share a few more screengrabs I scarfed from Second Life. Click on the pics for larger and more detailed versions, assuming Blogger cooperates as much as everyone involved in this event did!!!

Virtual Worlds Almanac Featured in eSchool News Report

I can't connect to it for the full article, due to my workplace firewall feeling fiesty today, but eSchoolNews, a very respected source of information for educators, today released an article detailing another publication, the Federation of American Scientists' "Virtual Worlds Almanac" wiki. True to the trends of the age, it's a wiki! But just think of it: a one-stop-shop that is subscribable (with wiki update alert settings) and hosted by a very very reputable institution.

I'll be spending some time here, pardners; you can bet on't. Here's the sidebar text for a teaser:

Intro to the Wiki
Add a Virtual World
Virtual World Finder
List of Virtual Worlds
Virtual World Engines
Virtual World News
FAS Virtual Worlds Whitepaper
Semantic Table

I particularly like the site's "copyleft" license, a version of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). The notion of a growing authoritative central location for details on Virtual Worlds is so appealing to me that I'm virtually ecstatic! Sorry. I note with glee that "the Quest Atlantis staff" has already entered a nice article about that platform, one I'm venturing into with my 70+ fourth graders as we speak!

and by the way, last night's "soft opening" of the new bi-weekly SLCN virtual television show "ISTE Eduverse Talks" (are we going to abreviate that "ET?") was stellar. I featured engaging dialog with Sarah Robbins, AJ Kelton and Brock Dubbels--three pioneers in VE Education. You can read all about that at Kevin Jarrett's blogpost on the topic! Stay tuned for further announcements of upcoming topics!

"Industry Standard" Interview with the 2 Top Lindens

Ian Lamont has shared an incisive account of interviews he conducted with Philip Rosedale and Mark Kingdon, creator/founder and CEO, respectively, of Linden Lab. In it he cites their focus on user interface and the current concern that "currently, only 15% of the people who tried out Second Life continued to use the virtual world." Kingdon notes, "I'd like to triple that number."

There's discussion about competing virtual environments, Linden Lab's perception of the current state of Second Life's growth potential, and more. I'd suggest you pop on over and get it from the source! Once at the IS site, scroll on down for my comment and the reporter's response!

Cheers!