Open Letter to ISTE, ISTE VEN (and anyone else who is interested)

I have a little announcement I want to share. 

Let me just say it: I “resign” from any and all leadership positions in ISTE and in ISTE Virtual Environments Network. When my membership to ISTE expires in May, I do not intend to renew it. I wish the best of everything to everyone--members, leadership, staff, and administration. Lots of friends. Lots. Lots of dear memories. And all the best to ISTE VEN. Take off, y’all, take off and soar. You have some passionate and capable leaders still, focused on the future of XR (all new things 3D and alternate reality).

Over the past two plus decades, I’ve enjoyed participating in and enriching my life with my membership to the International Society for Technology and Education. The thing that I enjoyed the absolute most about those conferences was the coming together, in a different city every summer, of thousands, and increasingly more thousands of educators, technologists, vendors, and media professionals--all in the service of exploring how to serve, grow, and nurture our children’s learning through technology. 

I met so many dedicated educators at those conferences, and I have carried them with me throughout the years (as they carried me) while we pursued sometimes very parallel paths. I met some very close friends at the legendary ISTE Island in Second Life. All the friends I met at ISTE converged annually at the in-person conferences. There was always a powerful feeling of reunion that struck like lightning when I would meet a colleague at the conference who I had grown to know in SL. I’ve always said there should be a word for that feeling but I never got around to coining it.

A group of us formed the Virtual Environments Network, created in order to explore and celebrate the possibilities of using virtual worlds for learning and teaching in a mainstream way. But with all our hard work, it has consistently felt, year to year, as though realization of those extremely promising models for meeting, learning, and teaching was always hanging just below the upswing of the bell curve of adoption. Things got in the way: Second Life’s dismantling of its own educational support community, the dissolution of the Teen Grid, educators and school administrators’ aggravating addiction to “the way we’ve always done it.” ISTE's funding support dwindled in stages. It finally disappeared.

An announcement went out to the 500 members of the SL Group, ISTE Virtual Environments Network this morning. ISTE VEN in Second Life will shut down at the end of April, 2021. As far as Second Life is concerned, I will still attend some educational events, but I will lead them no more. 

Hugs, smiles, and waves, ISTE.To quote a classic Tom Waits song, Marie, “I loved you the first time I saw you. And I always will always love you…”

Peace Out. 

All the best, always,

Scott/Scottmerrick Oh

EDU TEDTalk a Day!

Happy Friday, everyone, or as we now call it, "Day." In the past we might have given everyone we came upon at work that greeting, but things, as we now say, have changed. So, well, Happy Day.

For those who may be experience some disequilibrium over how to spend time during the hours previously labeled "the work day," I would like to offer a modest contribution: Every day, at the same time of the day, let's go online into a virtual space where we can be "together at a distance" and view, together, a randomly selected TEDTalk about what teaching and learning has looked like in the past, looks like now and how it might look in the future. We will start, the first week, in Second Life.

I woke up Monday, the first day of Tennessee's Safer at Home order from our state government, and what should have been the first day back to school from Spring Break, with the idea. I've been working on it ever since.

Some backstory:

Back in the first decade of the 2000s, I was teaching in the Lower School (elementary) computer lab at University School of Nashville. I also worked on Mondays at the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach, though at first that group was called the Vanderbilt Office of Science Outreach. It was the brainchild of the brilliant Dr. Virginia Shepherd and USN was kind enough to release me from my teaching schedule each Monday to work with the CSO in the role of Teacher-in-Residence.

I was meeting my new colleagues at Vanderbilt, my first day of work in that new job, when one of us got a call that America had been attacked on 9/11. During the 8 years I worked in that role at Vanderbilt, I focused on helping schools utilize the thirty or so videoconferencing codecs we had already placed in public schools, working closely with Vanderbilt Virtual School's Jan Zanetis. This was before the days of desktop videoconferencing and that help was needed. During the course of time I created a podcast that brought interviews with working scientists, computer tips, and independent music to the world--early "edutainment"-- which I called "Snacks For the Brain!" Its 84 episodes are archived at the Vanderbilt library's online repository. Have a listen to one produced near the end of those, featuring Dr. William Schafner with some timely info on viruses:

Those were some times.

Another project toward the end of those days was one I called "CSO TalkTalks." I set up a CSO space in 2nd Life and used my Second Life blog "Oh, Virtual Learning," to promote and set up each ~monthly event to vote on one of four proposed TEDTalks then watch it in that space together. It proved to be very fun and a way educator/learners could spend some quality time discussing the talks' content in text chat while the videos were going on. It had a kind of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" vibe because "talking" during the video was highly encouraged--in fact, it was key to the experience.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000

Note: it's actually Saturday, though I've been writing this early morning and the fact that I started doing so simply underscores the depth of my own schedule disequilibrium, hahahaha.

But I digress, LOL. Beginning next week, on Monday, March 31, at 10am US Central Daylight Savings Time, we will begin ISTE Virtual Environment Networks "Mystery Education Theater." We will do so daily, Monday through Friday. All the info is here. It will go a bit like the venerable CSO TalkTalks with some variations, but in addition to getting all of us together in a virtual platform (a different one every week until we run out of them and cycle back through), it will help us focus, daily, on how prominent minds have mused upon the broad topic of Education and what we think about what they have shared.

In the planning for this free Professional Development, we at ISTE VEN have developed a randomizing tool I often use in the classroom. One of the fabulous free-to-teachers online tools available at classtools.net, you can find it for your own use, should you be unable to join us at the daily appointed time, to pick your own video(s) to watch at a time that you schedule daily to do so. There. That's my free offering to you for your daily schedule.

Pick a different TEDTalk about Education every day!

You're welcome. Join us if you can.

Now. New Work. Let's Stay in Touch!

Just popping in here to note that I turned in my keys to the Cohn Learning Center and the Virtual School today. It felt good. It's a long story and to be kind I don't want to tell it. Suffice it to say that though I poured my heart and soul into my work at MNPS Virtual School for six years of my life, I am done and gone. Best of luck to the school.

For all the kind and supportive words from all of my colleagues and friends on social media and other fronts, I have the most profound gratitude. You all got me through this tough spot in my professional career. I thank you, I thank you, I thank you. And to my family, with which I have been blessed despite my own failings, I love you completely and I hold you in my heart always.

Now, to the future. I am completely excited to be returning Monday to the K-4 computer lab, but this time not to an independent school, where I did similar work for 11 years, but to my new home--Warner Enhanced Option Elementary School.

When told the official ask had been requested, I created a blog for families similar to the one I maintained for a decade at University School of Nashville, and I'll likely be more often blogging there than here in upcoming weeks. I hope to to build a curriculum and a future for my  24 classes a week, K-4. I'm on it already. When my students leave for middle school, they will be armed with confidence that they have the skills to deal with the rapidly escalating flood if information. They will know how to stay safe online. They will be able to tell when information is manipulating them, instead of being there to be manipulated by them. We will scaffold all this around the new ISTE Technology Standards for Students, just released last month and exceedingly comprehensive and spot-on. Let's play. Let's be good and have fun. Let's learn, share, and enjoy our time together.

Here's a pano of my dear boy Colin in my newly spiffed up computer lab. Watch for more soon!

Have a great week.

Now I have to make some mouse pads. God bless Google. :)

Reflections on ISTE 2016 in Denver, Colorado

It's been my annual habit since 2005 to reflect upon the goings-on at the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education. This year I am continuing the tradition. The following will be a rambling, first person, eyewitness account of events in Denver that'll mix the personal with the professional, opinion with fact, and observation with reflection. I'm making this stuff up, as are we all.

During this year's conference, I...

1. experienced my final day as Associate Virtualization Engineer at MNPS Virtual School, a story in itself,
2. led the most successful Virtual Environments Playground ever, and saw the partnership with the Games & Simulations Network function like clockwork to share learning, playing, and teaching in innovative ways,
3. made several real connections that will help bolster my severely reduced income and lead me to help promote technology in education in meaningful ways,
4. explored Denver, mostly its world-class food, with my peeps;

First:

This year's "moneyshot" from the annual meeting of ISTE VEN

Above, witness a special group of thought-leader educators who have more fun than most. The Playground on Tuesday, 2-5pm, was arguably the very best ever. See my June 21 post for that schedule. In addition to the ongoing "main stage" presentations, the tables saw consistent conversations and demonstrations that were unfailingly informational, upbeat, and helpful. Mary Howard, center above, bugged me a couple times, "What are you actually doing? You're just wandering around looking important." I guess it looked like that, but wrangling the mainstage to make sure we stayed on schedule, taking pics (with Rosie Vojtek's iPhone mostly), and Periscoping as much of the events as I could kept me busy. The layout of the Playground had two main stages, one at either end of the space, with flatpanels for presentation. This year we chose not to compete with on another with concurrent events, alternating presenters for each PLN. I was able during the keynote talk by Cynthia Colongne to bring her talk up in on the flatpanel down at the distant far end, Periscoping it up at the main stage, connecting my iPad down at the far display with a Periscope viewer on the iPad. Mash-up heaven, y'all.

Okay, here we go, more or less linearly:
Day 1, Thursday: I arrived in Denver's airport around two hours late on Thursday, June 23. It was wicked hot below us from Nashville to Denver, and we had repeatedly hit microbursts of heat along the way, resulting in the poor young mother next to me totally freaking out each time. The worst was yet to come, as our Southwest pilot made not one, not two, but three landing attempts, hitting ugly turbulence and pulling out each time. We never really got close enough to really call them landing attempts. Maybe "descent attempts" would be closer to the right nomenclature. At any rate, after the 3rd failed attempt he announced that we didn't' have enough fuel to circle in the hopes that we would wait out the turbulence, and that we were on the way to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Landing safely there we sat on the sunny tarmac of this tiny airport with the door open as we refueled, four other planes ahead of us in that queue. Once we had achieved a full load of jet fuel, we taxied, took off, and landed safely in Denver with little turbulence at all.

I took the train to Baggage Claim, got luggage without incident, and caught another train into downtown Denver, where my bro-in-law, Jim, picked me up outside of Union Station. Soon we were at my first Denver gnosh, fish tacos at The Pioneer, near his home. Soon after that we drove the 6 blocks or so home, to Grey Gables:

Grey Gables, est. 1887

Grey Gables, circa 1889

This was Elizabeth Iliff's (founder of Iliff School of Theology, later DU) home and is right off Observatory Park in lovely South Denver. More on that later. We stayed up a while and retired.






Day2, Friday: I woke up early, taking Ginger, the beautiful Golden Retriever,

off on a walk through the neighborhood before heading off into the first 1 mile walk of many to come. I took off west toward the University of Denver and past it, to to the DU light rail station. Walking through that campus was a joy every time. It's beautiful, and also empty of students this week, so I pretty much had it all to myself every time I walked or biked through it. Later I played around with Periscope, 'scoping several "Walking Ginger in Denver" episodes. Kinda fun. I was using those walks to practice for the 'scoping I would do at the ISTE conference. Check out all my Periscopes.

I bought my ticket from the vendor machine at the University of Denver light rail stop, hopped aboard, and went to the CCC, the Colorado Convention Center.

Spire and stands at the DU soccer field

I had arrived.

I couldn't get into the CCC yet, so I strolled around downtown for a while, landing in Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company for the first lunch, delicious clam chowder and a Caesar salad. Yum.

Coming out of lunch, I ran into my dear friend Kecia Ray, who was hosting ISTE for an unprecedented fourth year in a row. She was with Dallas Dance, a fellow board member, and after hugs and chat we parted, but not before Kecia had offered access to her penthouse room for breaks and where I could be able to stash gear I didn't want to be hauling around all day during the conference. She's the best. I took advantage of this offer several times, and it helped both my back and my feet, all of which always suffer at these things--miles to walk every day, not even taking into consideration getting to and from the train station!

I think I'll go ahead and post this, continuing later! I'm off to explore the environs with my bro-in-law. More later!

Day 3, Saturday:  I was up early and at the train station and took a minute to take my first pano of the trip, uploading it to Facebook. I was amazed to see that when it was posted it wasn't the short and wide still version, but when I viewed it on my phone it was actually interactively 3D!

In, registered, and with my Presenter ribbon mounted on my nametag, I got my first hug from Louise Maine, who was working the greeting station. I resolved to chronicle those hugs and of course stopped doing so after a dozen or so, but here's the starter list from that botched effort, copied from iPhone Notes:

Louise Maine

Kathy Schrock

Jill Brown

Lee Zeitz

Steve Hargadon

Barbara Bray

Vickie Davis

Coleen Kimball

Gordon Dahlby

Susan Larson

Kecia Ray

Jan Zanetis

Will Richardson

Mary Howard

Andy Wheelock

Sandy Wagner

Jessica Medaille

Cathy Cavanaugh

Barbara Seaton

and, and, and...

  That's the point of this conference, actually--hug collection. There were many, many more. You know who you are!

First stop, Hack Education! This "unconference" has blossomed from "EduBlogger Con" which was initiated in 2010, the brainchild of the stellar edublogger Steve Hargadon. From 8:30 to 4pm the pre-conference Saturday of ISTE, hundreds of thought leaders meet and many of them propose discussion topics. These are posted on the walls and attendees then commit to one of them by initialing the sheet, votes are counted, and however many discussions there are meeting spaces for are announced, and discussions ensue. Lunch break. Another session. and another session. This year there was an additional space for every proposed leader whose session was not chosen, where they could go and have the topic/discussion for whomever showed up. Here's a pano of the room (note the topics on the wall), and I periscoped the opening remarks, which you can view here.

I ran over to Bubba Gump's again, this time with Andy Wheelock, my brother-from-another-mother (I have several of those, don'tcha know). Then we headed back and I dived into a three hour paid session led by the amazing Will Richardson. This session:

Creating a Modern Vision for Teaching and Learning With Technology (WH022)

[Explore and create : Workshop]

Saturday, June 25, 12:30–3:30 pm
Hyatt Regency Hyatt Regency Capitol Ballroom 7

Will Richardson  
All too often, educators implement technology into their classrooms and schools without a clear, compelling vision for its use. As a result, little or nothing really changes in terms of the learning interaction for students. We'll take a look at how to build a vision that transforms, not just digitizes, learning.

Will pretty much held forth for the entire 3 hours, and I could have done 3 more. The core of the session was that we need to align our beliefs about what powerful learning is with our practices. Here's a graphic that I put together from Will's work that he shared to help hammer the point (with apologies for the unclosed quote):

I have just simply had too much fun in Denver with my in-laws and my honey. I do promise I'll be completing this thang next week, the week of July 11! I have copious notes and my memory box is still working pretty darned well. For now, last night the Denver Rockies demolished the Philadelphia Phillies 11-2 on a beautiful, if a bit sweaty, evening at Coors Field. Here are two panos:

I promise!

Day 4 (Day 1), Sunday:

This was the first official day of the conference!

I tooled in on the train and went right in, visiting the Expo floor. What a complete zoo! It always is, and this year was no exception. I

PLACEHOLDER--WILL BE CONTINUED AND UPDATED UNTIL COMPLETE!

Reflections on ISTE 2016 in Denver, Colorado

It's been my annual habit since 2005 to reflect upon the goings-on at the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education. This year I am continuing the tradition. The following will be a rambling, first person, eyewitness account of events in Denver that'll mix the personal with the professional, opinion with fact, and observation with reflection. I'm making this stuff up, as are we all.

During this year's conference, I...

1. experienced my final day as Associate Virtualization Engineer at MNPS Virtual School, a story in itself,
2. led the most successful Virtual Environments Playground ever, and saw the partnership with the Games & Simulations Network function like clockwork to share learning, playing, and teaching in innovative ways,
3. made several real connections that will help bolster my severely reduced income and lead me to help promote technology in education in meaningful ways,
4. explored Denver, mostly its world-class food, with my peeps;

First:

This year's "moneyshot" from the annual meeting of ISTE VEN

Above, witness a special group of thought-leader educators who have more fun than most. The Playground on Tuesday, 2-5pm, was arguably the very best ever. See my June 21 post for that schedule. In addition to the ongoing "main stage" presentations, the tables saw consistent conversations and demonstrations that were unfailingly informational, upbeat, and helpful. Mary Howard, center above, bugged me a couple times, "What are you actually doing? You're just wandering around looking important." I guess it looked like that, but wrangling the mainstage to make sure we stayed on schedule, taking pics (with Rosie Vojtek's iPhone mostly), and Periscoping as much of the events as I could kept me busy. The layout of the Playground had two main stages, one at either end of the space, with flatpanels for presentation. This year we chose not to compete with on another with concurrent events, alternating presenters for each PLN. I was able during the keynote talk by Cynthia Colongne to bring her talk up in on the flatpanel down at the distant far end, Periscoping it up at the main stage, connecting my iPad down at the far display with a Periscope viewer on the iPad. Mash-up heaven, y'all.

Okay, here we go, more or less linearly:
Day 1, Thursday: I arrived in Denver's airport around two hours late on Thursday, June 23. It was wicked hot below us from Nashville to Denver, and we had repeatedly hit microbursts of heat along the way, resulting in the poor young mother next to me totally freaking out each time. The worst was yet to come, as our Southwest pilot made not one, not two, but three landing attempts, hitting ugly turbulence and pulling out each time. We never really got close enough to really call them landing attempts. Maybe "descent attempts" would be closer to the right nomenclature. At any rate, after the 3rd failed attempt he announced that we didn't' have enough fuel to circle in the hopes that we would wait out the turbulence, and that we were on the way to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Landing safely there we sat on the sunny tarmac of this tiny airport with the door open as we refueled, four other planes ahead of us in that queue. Once we had achieved a full load of jet fuel, we taxied, took off, and landed safely in Denver with little turbulence at all.

I took the train to Baggage Claim, got luggage without incident, and caught another train into downtown Denver, where my bro-in-law, Jim, picked me up outside of Union Station. Soon we were at my first Denver gnosh, fish tacos at The Pioneer, near his home. Soon after that we drove the 6 blocks or so home, to Grey Gables:

Grey Gables, est. 1887

Grey Gables, circa 1889

This was Elizabeth Iliff's (founder of Iliff School of Theology, later DU) home and is right off Observatory Park in lovely South Denver. More on that later. We stayed up a while and retired.






Day2, Friday: I woke up early, taking Ginger, the beautiful Golden Retriever,

off on a walk through the neighborhood before heading off into the first 1 mile walk of many to come. I took off west toward the University of Denver and past it, to to the DU light rail station. Walking through that campus was a joy every time. It's beautiful, and also empty of students this week, so I pretty much had it all to myself every time I walked or biked through it. Later I played around with Periscope, 'scoping several "Walking Ginger in Denver" episodes. Kinda fun. I was using those walks to practice for the 'scoping I would do at the ISTE conference. Check out all my Periscopes.

I bought my ticket from the vendor machine at the University of Denver light rail stop, hopped aboard, and went to the CCC, the Colorado Convention Center.

Spire and stands at the DU soccer field

I had arrived.

I couldn't get into the CCC yet, so I strolled around downtown for a while, landing in Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company for the first lunch, delicious clam chowder and a Caesar salad. Yum.

Coming out of lunch, I ran into my dear friend Kecia Ray, who was hosting ISTE for an unprecedented fourth year in a row. She was with Dallas Dance, a fellow board member, and after hugs and chat we parted, but not before Kecia had offered access to her penthouse room for breaks and where I could be able to stash gear I didn't want to be hauling around all day during the conference. She's the best. I took advantage of this offer several times, and it helped both my back and my feet, all of which always suffer at these things--miles to walk every day, not even taking into consideration getting to and from the train station!

I think I'll go ahead and post this, continuing later! I'm off to explore the environs with my bro-in-law. More later!

Day 3, Saturday:  I was up early and at the train station and took a minute to take my first pano of the trip, uploading it to Facebook. I was amazed to see that when it was posted it wasn't the short and wide still version, but when I viewed it on my phone it was actually interactively 3D!

In, registered, and with my Presenter ribbon mounted on my nametag, I got my first hug from Louise Maine, who was working the greeting station. I resolved to chronicle those hugs and of course stopped doing so after a dozen or so, but here's the starter list from that botched effort, copied from iPhone Notes:

Louise Maine

Kathy Schrock

Jill Brown

Lee Zeitz

Steve Hargadon

Barbara Bray

Vickie Davis

Coleen Kimball

Gordon Dahlby

Susan Larson

Kecia Ray

Jan Zanetis

Will Richardson

Mary Howard

Andy Wheelock

Sandy Wagner

Jessica Medaille

Cathy Cavanaugh

Barbara Seaton

and, and, and...

  That's the point of this conference, actually--hug collection. There were many, many more. You know who you are!

First stop, Hack Education! This "unconference" has blossomed from "EduBlogger Con" which was initiated in 2010, the brainchild of the stellar edublogger Steve Hargadon. From 8:30 to 4pm the pre-conference Saturday of ISTE, hundreds of thought leaders meet and many of them propose discussion topics. These are posted on the walls and attendees then commit to one of them by initialing the sheet, votes are counted, and however many discussions there are meeting spaces for are announced, and discussions ensue. Lunch break. Another session. and another session. This year there was an additional space for every proposed leader whose session was not chosen, where they could go and have the topic/discussion for whomever showed up. Here's a pano of the room (note the topics on the wall), and I periscoped the opening remarks, which you can view here.

I ran over to Bubba Gump's again, this time with Andy Wheelock, my brother-from-another-mother (I have several of those, don'tcha know). Then we headed back and I dived into a three hour paid session led by the amazing Will Richardson. This session:

Creating a Modern Vision for Teaching and Learning With Technology (WH022)

[Explore and create : Workshop]

Saturday, June 25, 12:30–3:30 pm
Hyatt Regency Hyatt Regency Capitol Ballroom 7

Will Richardson  
All too often, educators implement technology into their classrooms and schools without a clear, compelling vision for its use. As a result, little or nothing really changes in terms of the learning interaction for students. We'll take a look at how to build a vision that transforms, not just digitizes, learning.

Will pretty much held forth for the entire 3 hours, and I could have done 3 more. The core of the session was that we need to align our beliefs about what powerful learning is with our practices. Here's a graphic that I put together from Will's work that he shared to help hammer the point (with apologies for the unclosed quote):

I have just simply had too much fun in Denver with my in-laws and my honey. I do promise I'll be completing this thang next week, the week of July 11! I have copious notes and my memory box is still working pretty darned well. For now, last night the Denver Rockies demolished the Philadelphia Phillies 11-2 on a beautiful, if a bit sweaty, evening at Coors Field. Here are two panos:

I promise!

PLACEHOLDER--WILL BE CONTINUED AND UPDATED UNTIL COMPLETE!

ISTE 2016! On the way Thursday! Free hugs!

I'm so buzzed. I laid out my traveling clothes today so Lee Ann can pare them down tonight for packing. I'm getting in Thursday to Denver, Colorado to spend two weeks at my dear sis- and bro-in-law's beautiful home by Observatory Park, and the first week will be spent with my international peeps, old and young, old and new, innovators and thought leaders one and all. My biggest contribution to this year's ISTE2016 program is one built collaboratively by many people. I am absolutely certain it will be the best Playground ever, and we've been doing these for quite a few years. They've all been good, but this one looks...different. See what I mean here (note--all times are local to Denver, MDT):

More details are available at the session's online document at http://bit.ly/GS-VENpg16. Go see what I mean. Meanwhile, if you are there, find me. If you are not there, visit http://tinyurl.com/isteven in Second Life and at any given time we will be meeting in there as well. Finally, watch for 'Scopes at http://periscope.com/scottmerrick or just @scottmerrick on Periscope.

I'll also be helping out with the Online Learning Network's "Speed Dating, Falling in Love with Online and Blended Learning" event on Monday at 12:45-1:45 in CCC 405. That'll be a blast for sure! Michele Eaton, Doug Renfro, Nathan White and I are going to load your brain up with dynamic and empowering testimony from leaders in the field. Join us for that as well!!!

I can't wait, 'cause...

Yay!

Symbaloo Virtual Environments

Hey, y'll,
I spent a bit o' time over the weekend creating a Symbaloo mix for Virtual Environments. I think you might find it useful if you want to share some seminal resources on the topic. Embedding here:


You're welcome.

New Horizons for this Olde Educator--"Eliminated"

Well, well, well. Just when I thought I was on track to spend the final few years of my education career making sure that MNPS Virtual School (which I helped create from nothing) has a future worthy of all the planning, design and implementation we have put into it since August, 2010,  it appears that my job position is to be "eliminated" on June 30, 2016.


I'm looking forward to exploring new opportunities in the coming school year, most likely in an elementary classroom for the first time in nearly six years. I have applied for several 10 month teaching positions and I'm hoping to hear soon from the right principal in the right school who has an identified need for an experienced, innovative, and student-centered classroom teacher in grade 3 or 4. Perhaps this is just the world's way of telling me I need to be working more closely, and daily, with young learners--giving them direct and daily support and encouragement, challenging them, and helping them understand how to be both safe and productive in today's and tomorrow's accelerating landslide of information. One thing is  sure--we'll have fun together. That's been my teacher tagline since my first 3rd grade classroom in 1996:

I'm looking forward.

But wait, one slight detour...

"Eliminated?" I didn't know that was even a thing. Wow. Let's see what Google has to say about that word:

Let me say it straight: I find myself feeling baffled, confused, devalued and even disrespected by what has been presented as a necessity "due to budget cuts for the school year 2016-17." But I will not let all that make me bitter. I am too positive for that. I care too much. I have too much to offer to let it bring me down. Forward we go.

After June 30, dear reader, I'm a free agent.

If you know of any interesting opportunities that might be pursued, let me know. I don't want to move from my new home in The Nations Nashville, but I can and will commute for the right work.

Have a great week!
Scott

Everything About ISTE Virtual Environments Network

April 9, 2016:

https://youtu.be/_a08u_ERn5M or right here!

Watch:

New monthly meetup for Writers Workshop!

Guest post by Barbara Seaton, aka Helena Kiama--Thanks, Barbara!

 Please join us for this maiden voyage of a new feature at ISTE Virtual Environments Network.

  Tuesday, April 5th, at 5:00 p.m. SLT:

Mementos Cathedral in Chouchou

from zikiquesti.blogspot.com

Have you ever been immersed in music or visited a place that transported you to another reality or evoked feelings that made you see things in another light? In those moments you transcend the day-to-day busy thoughts, focusing on some small aspect of life in which you gain new insight.
Join us in the new ISTE SL VEN Writer’s group as we find and experience thought-provoking regions in Second Life that use visual and audio components to take us into another reality in our thoughts. From there will we write about our experiences, whether it be a poem, short story, essay, a short video, or just thoughts, to share with the group the following month.
For our first meeting, we will travel together to such a region, and spend some time there, exploring, taking pics, listening to the music, and letting ourselves become immersed in the moment. Some may wish to free write (write whatever comes to mind) during this time.

We will initially meet at the VEN headquarters at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduIsland%209/62/99/22 and travel together to our first region.

ABOUT THE LOCATION:
Mementos is a cathedral floating in the sky. It is a very old build in Second Life, but absolutely beautiful in detail.
HUD:
You can pick up their cinematic HUD at the entrance which moves your camera slowly. I highly recommend you walk into the cathedral and find a good spot for your avatar before putting it on. Otherwise, it can be a little difficult to walk. Once the HUD is on, use your arrow keys to set your camera “flying.” (What is happening is that your avatar is turning, but the camera is delayed, then floats smoothly to catch up and swings past you.) Combine this with scrolling in and out and just enjoy. Hitting ESC returns your camera to you.
BEFORE YOU GO:
Be sure to have your audio stream working to listen to the music. For photographers in the group, you may wish to set your graphics to advanced lighting.
BECOME IMMERSED:
Once we arrive and go in, we ask that you keep IMs and chat to a minimum to allow yourself and others to become immersed in the experience.

Happy Fall from Nashvegas, TN

It's been a while since I posted. Wanted to share some developments.

Lee Ann's been workingworkingworking at Tinwings, LLC, her "EEE" (entreprenurial epicurian enterprise), full-bore since well before they opened their storefront at 816 51st Avenue South last spring. Like any startup, it's hard, but perhaps unlike every startup, it's magnificently rewarding for her, her partner Ursula, and for the small but mighty group of workers she's employing, mostly very part-time. She and Ursula are the core of the operation, and they are both working overtime and under-compensated, paying back initial investment with hard hard work. I'm proud of all of them, but mostly so of my dear Lee Ann.

Our house is on the market. I cannot BELIEVE the work it took to get it there, but it's there, and we are living on a stage set, prepping it most mornings to be as ready as it can be and working on a 4 hour notice of showings. We had one over the weekend and another yesterday, and we are optimistic that it will sell soon--it's just a matter of the right buyer falling in love with it the way we did nearly ten years ago. Think good thoughts for us.

School is going great guns, and I'm teaching this semester. It's challenging, and such a learning experience to be working with a large student roll in two courses in two grade levels. Specifically, I'm working with 7th and 8th graders in Social Studies classes, 7th grade World History and 8th grade U.S. History. There are specific challenges I cannot share here, but I will say it's never boring! It's Fall Break at MNPS this week, so I'm killing trees. I printed over 200 pages of .pdf versions of my two course's Keys, in order to save time grading by accessing them without the stages of logging into Office365 and clicking to find the folder, bringing up the file in a viewer, and scrolling or searching to the appropriate assignment or assessment to find rubrics and notes about grading. I can just pick up the hefty tome and move to the page, holding it in my hands.

I'm surprised by all that, but since every day is a learning experience, my preference for a hard copy for this task (not at all typical for me, in any arena) is simply something I'm learning from. I like surprises as long as they lead to improvements in fairness, support, and learning on the part of my students.

A couple of other upcoming things are in my radar. In my volunteering arena, I'm captaining a stellar group of volunteer reviewers who are tasked with selecting a set of proposals accepted for ISTE 2016 in Denver, Colorado next summer--those submitted in the theme of Distance Learning Resources and Open Educational Tools. I've glanced at the 32 proposals we will be reviewing and they look good. I have every confidence in the process ISTE's put in place and we'll get the job done. Yay.

I'm also driving down to Atlanta, GA in a couple weeks to serve on the AdvancED External Review Team for a university down there. This service is one I have done before, in Massachusetts then, but I'm going to be working full-bore from a Sunday evening to a Tuesday afternoon before driving back home to Nashville and back to work Wednesday.

Finally, and actually temporally before the other two, I'll be attending a live viewing of the Democratic debate on the 12th, at Tailgate Brewery on Hwy 70. If you are interested in joining us, fans of Bernie Sanders for President, at 7 pm, go here!

Full event details:
https://go.berniesanders.com/page/event/detail/4v9p9

Again, yay. Take care and be hopeful. You might choose, as my dear brother Ed does, to not watch the news. It's skewed toward the trivial and the negative. It's the Roman Colosseum of today. Take care. 


This looks so cool:

Reflections from ISTE2015 in Philadelphia, PA, Part 3 of 3

Let's get this done.

Up at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, sitting in my family room with my two pooches and my kitty, it's weird to me that ISTE2015 is a thing of the past. Planning for it and looking forward to it is such a part of my life every year that this period of a month or so after it's over is kind of like post-partum blues. I'll be sharing stories with friends and colleagues in Second Life at http://tinyurl.com/istevenetwork this coming Tuesday at 5 p.m. Second Life Time. For the uninitiated, that's SLT, or as most folks know it, Pacific Time (set that way because Linden Lab, the company who created and develops Second Life, is in San Francisco, CA.). Please join us if you can. I hope to take folks to our "My Favorite Sprankle" art show in AvaCon grid afterward, so if you haven't yet entered the contest, this will be your chance to do so with some virtual hands-on help.

Contest information is at this padlet page.

Okay, Where was I?

Tuesday, eh? Tuesday morning I slept in. Up at 7 I ordered and enjoyed an in-room breakfast, really quite good, then walked over to Target to pick up some supplies (including 150 balloons--more later on that), then gathered up my wits and my backpack from my room and headed in on the shuttle. I will comment that Philadelphia rush hour traffic is hell, much worse evan than Nashville's very bad rush hour cluster-cuss. The 5 mile run from hotel to the Philadelphia Convention Center drop-off location took 40 minutes, and I rued my casual pace of the morning as we sat for 15 of those to get through the final light in front of the Center. I dashed to the (of course) far end of the site to the Poster Session area where we were presenting

Game-Based Learning: Games Optional, Poster Session

with David Deeds, Andrew Wheelock, and Scott Merrick.

This was David's baby, and he had done a stellar job of proposing and planning a poster session where we could share virtual worlds learning and teaching with educators new to the notion or more experienced and willing to share with us and our attendees. The poster session format is a really good one, and it appeals to me because it's casual but can be very powerful if done well. This one, only peripherally with my help, was done very, very well. It was also located at the highest-traffic spot in the floor of 30 or 40 locations. I'm glad I got there early, because David was already implementing his plan. He had done the math and figured we could fill up our poster bulletin board with 40 images from virtual worlds. Andy and I helped by submitting some from our own stock and David had printed them up at his school in Guatemala and mailed them to my hotel (since at the last minute it was iffy that he would even be able to attend--luckily he was!). He had also prepped an 18 minute video (warning, file is 1.5+Gb huge) containing hundreds of photos from his own photo stash, which ran on a monitor on the table top and helped further fuel conversations. Here is a snapshot from the session: 

Andy Wheelock and David Deed man the poster session!

Part way through the two hour poster session I took off to and beyond the other far end of the Convention Center (of course) to the Marriott Hotel, where an appreciation luncheon for Core Volunteers was being held. I'm glad I did, because the "favor" this year was an outstanding computer briefcase, which I accepted, along with a box lunch for me and for Andrew and his briefcase. I had to run back to the poster session with those, though, so I could not take advantage of the chair massage station, which would have been a wonderful thing, sigh. ISTE is awesome about honoring its volunteer leadership, and has always been, though I will say it's better than ever with last year's addition of Simon Helton as Community Engagement Manager. 

We broke the poster session down ad 12:30 because we had to get to the Playground, slated to start at 2:00. I was working on adrenaline now. I popped into the Presenters' World support room and created sheets containing multiple instances of the following:

Bring this slip to Playground C (LOOK UP!) with your email on it for a chance to win one of 3 fantastic ISTE Book Store books! My email: ________________________________________

I then printed of multiple sheets on neon-colored paper and handed scissors and balloons to the lovely Mary Howard. Mrs. Howard took them to the Playground and started folding the slips small, inserting them in balloons, blowing them up, tying them, and writing in large letters with black sharpie, "Pop Me!" on each and every one of them. We roped several others into helping, and by around 1:30 we had 60 or so done. At 2:00 p.m., the starting time of the Playground, we had only 4 or 5 visitors in the Playground. As one, we picked up balloons, hauled them to the railing overlooking the busy hallway below, where two other playgrounds were enjoying visitors from the heavy foot traffic, and tossed them over into the crowds below. Stepping back into Andy and Mary's presentation, which was just getting underway, we heard what sounded like a gunfight echoing through the Convention Center. Just 5 minutes later an ISTE volunteer came waving two of the balloons and shouting "Please stop!" She was laughing, but apparently Google had been presenting one of the Playgrounds below and they were a bit upset at the commotion. I deeply apologized, but looking around I could see that we had pulled in 20 or 30 new faces, and Andy and Mary were now sharing with a rapt, if small, audience. Here are all the presentations we gave in the 3 hour block, and here are some photos I snapped:

 

If that .mp4 doesn't work for you try this link. 

All three tables were hopping the entire time period. Andy and Mary kicked things off at the presentation station with an informative and inspirational session on their fabulous "Islands of Enlightenment" grant project(s), The Dr.s Patterson presented remotely about their Sub-Quan math innovations in Second Life, AW3DU CEO Rick Noll rolled out stellar developments in the ActiveWorlds platform, including the reboot of Quest Atlantis--this time with the addition of teacher quest-making kits(!!!); and finally Marianne Malmstrom and Peggy Sheehy shared some absolutely brilliant observations about what makes Minecraft engaging for both students and teachers.

The rest of the evening is a blur. As it turns out, this is the night I actually did the trek to City Pub for that huge filet mignon pictured in part 2's post. Dinner Monday was a burger at Friday's across from the hotel. All that meal stuff doesn't really matter. It was sustenance to help fuel the fire of participation in the best annual educators' conference in the world.

Wednesday, I packed everything up, checked out of the hotel, and headed over to check out the Expo floor on the last day with Andy. We sat in on a quick presentation by a vendor and Andy won a remote control helicopter in their drawing. Our last official act before I headed to the airport was to head to the far end of the Center (of course) for Anna and Sasha Barab's fantastic and informative presentation of their work with Quest2Teach, a training simulation for pre-service teachers that they have given their hearts and souls to create and roll out. Here is one of their slides, and if you'll take the time to read it you'll see why this was the perfect finish to a perfect conference. These two individuals embody dedication to forward-thinking and innovation. They are not just criticizing the way we've done education over the centuries, they are providing models for new ways to get the job of education done, and they are making them available to the world. I left the room feeling honored to have spent an hour with two of the smartest humans I have ever met. Don't believe me? Just take a look at the scholarly articles Sasha has published over the years. When you're done there, Check out Quest2Teach and request your own guest account. It may be that you can use this in some setting of your own, for the benefit of your teachers and students. I've completed all three simulations and can highly recommend the experience!

Dr.s Anna and Sasha Barab

The flights home, routing through St. Louis and sitting on that tarmac in ridiculously powerful thunderstorms, got me in too late to get to my son's gig at The End, but you can hear some of what they by all reports powerfully performed at their BandCamp site. Do yourself and us a favor and pick up a download. As their Executive Co-Producer, along with my beautiful wife, Lee Ann, we thank you!

Reflections from ISTE2015 in Philadelphia, PA, Part 2 of 3

Allllllrighty then.

I have been at this education game a while. Certainly not as long as many, as I came to it late in life. Actually, I spent the first half (or so--exact numbers to be determined at a much later date) of my life educating myself. Returning to college at the age of 40 I got all formal with it. Now, just last week, my work to help build online learning options for my hometown of Nashville, Tennessee has ramped up a bit. I'm still in the same position, but it's been redefined as half-time actually teaching and half-time supporting teachers and working on the system as a whole. New job title? Yup. How's this for a woozy? "Associate Virtualization Engineer."

I'm fond of saying that my brother, Ed, who is a real engineer, is very proud of me. Here at MNPS Virtual School, which I helped conceive and create, hired in 2010 by my dear friend Kecia Ray to do so, we are still making things up. Associate Virtualization Engineer: Really? Really.

So, to lasso my focus and drag it back around to the topic of this post, I have always contended that anyone who is sent to a conference or event by his or her school or school district should be required to report out about it to the rest of the faculty/staff. I have thus tried to always do that, usually in blog posts. This is part two of "How I Spent Your Money" for my colleagues and Nashville tax-payers. I'll get on with it.

Where was I? Checking Part 1 now.

Wow, I only made it through Sunday.

Okay.

I mentioned I took the shuttle into the Philadelphia Convention Center. Usually at ISTEs I prefer to walk like a madman. Many a year I've had to purchase foot care products to help take care of overworked extremities. This year, it took a good long while for MNPS to process my registration payment and reservations, resulting in my being parked 'way out of the beaten trail, 5 or so miles from the convention, at the Crown Plaza Philadelphia West. That had its good side and its bad side. The bad was that I had to shuttle in and cab back if I missed the last running shuttle at 7:30pm each day. I could have wangled a public bus, but not with my gear--I had a huge bag containing a green screen which I'd brought for the Online Learning Network's Community Fair and my backpack with laptop and other electronics. And Philly has a good train system but the closest station was, you got it, 4 miles away. The good side was...hmmm, well the room was clean and the staff was friendly and many of my local colleagues were there as well, including Carl Carter, Tabitha Batson, and others from The Academy at Old Cockrill. Wainhouse Reasearch's Alan Greenberg, an old colleague, was also parked out there and I ran into him a couple times for catching up.

Monday. My whole schedule is online in a Google Doc. http://tinyurl.com/scottiste2015. That helps me recall that my first deal that morning was the ISTE Professional Learning Networks Leadership Awards Breakfast. I got there early for the 8:00am breakfast and joined my dear friend Andy Wheelock at the "kid's table" up front. Susan Larson from ISTE joined us for a photo-op. I try to always sit up front in a big room because I can be distracted by everything between me and the speaker(s).

It was a table of 8 or 10 and filled up quickly, and Mike Gorman, out-going President of the Online Learning Network joined us along with other leaders from other networks. This past year I was Veep of that PLN, and by rights and tradition I should have stepped up into the primary leadership role. However, mid-year I began to see that this coming year will be a huge one for my school's growth, and together with Mike we identified the ineffable Michele Eaton to step up into that role. One of the best decisions I ever have made, methinks, since Michele is completely competent, capable, and driven and will take the PLN places I would never have imagined. Yay!

The breakfast was yummy and the event warm and thankful to all the international PLN leaders in the room. I was able to bestow the OLN's Online Learning Award to Jennifer Garcia from Equador, and then to step up on my role as Co-Chair of the Virtual Environments Network, with Andy, to do the same for Rosie Vojtek for the first ever Virtual Pioneer of the Year award. It was particularly rewarding to hear all the folks who were stepping up as first-time leaders stand up and share why they were doing so--there were probably 20 or so of those who made me proud and who made all of us excited for the future of ISTE:

After the breakfast, I joined Andy at the PLN Lounge to help share the good work of the Virtual Environments Network. We took turns speaking extempore about what goes on there (see http://venetwork.weebly.com) and then let the website speak for itself on the display screen. We seriously plugged the Virtual Environments Playground, which we'd determined was going to need that since we were parked up off the beaten path upstairs. More on that later.





That done, it was time to eat again. We made it to the PLN Leaders luncheon in time to enjoy the meal and make it to the part where we both received the President's Volunteer Service Award, Andy a Bronze and me a Silver. As soon as the requisite photo was taken I hauled myself across the Convention Center to:

OLN Presents: 2015 ISTE Online and Blended Learning Extravaganza

Monday, June 29, 12:45 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

PCC 204C
It was already underway. Michele had so wonderfully organized, rehearsed, and delivered this set of 8 marvelous 5 minute presentations that all I had to do was sit up at the presenter table and smile. I was particularly struck by the closing presentation by Bill Gumula, called "The Compassionate Online Classroom," which I plan to share with my teachers at our new teacher orientation come the 1st of August. Slides are here, if you're an ISTE member and can login. There are 177 of them from all the presenters!

That was, indeed, an information packed hour! Susan Poyo's "Partnering with Virtual Schools: Transforming Teacher Prep" also rang some big bells for me. We are going to need to do a lot of work with pre-service teachers to turn out capable and forward thinking teachers if we are to successfully grow online learning in the right directions, and Susan's group is spearheading that aspectd of the movement.

From that event I spent a bit of time on the Expo floor. As always it was amazing. I was to take it in with small visits over the course of the conference. Here's a quick 360 video:

Then I had to get to a small portable room at the edge of the Expo Center. I had an appointment to take a preview look at the beta Google Expedition, a Google Cardboard development that though it can use some polish, looks promising for delivery of virtual field trips to students using that cool 3D imaging hardware/software package. 

The Machinima Fest was my final official event of the day. I hiked another mile or so within the Convention Center and ended up in a good-sized theater. Though there were more folks in it than have yet attended the Festival, we looked pretty sparse in that room. Andy presided with Gridjumper helping and I sat off to the side and shared it with Periscope--we had a total of 19 viewers over the coming hour or so. New this year was a keynote speaker, and then the prizes were awarded. I have not seen a published list of winners, but I'm sure it's coming soon. Here are the award categories, and congratulations to the winners of this increasingly prestigious international film festival! You know who you are!

Machinima Awards
Best in Category Awards

Judges Awards

Technical Awards

Best Overall

Machinimatography 

Editing 

Special Effects 

Best Sound

Literary Quality Awards

Script Writing 

Captioning 

Character Development 

Best dialogue 

Best narration

People’s Choice Awards--Voting was open to the public during the week prior to the Machinima Fest.

After the Machinima Fest, I took a cab back to the hotel, caught a salad at TGIFridays, right across the parking lot, then put in for the night. I'm going to save this as I need to get to work--you know, that Associate Virtualization Engineer gig? So we'll go 3 parts. I'm certain I can get the thing done in one more stab at it, even though Tuesday was a very big day, featuring the now somewhat legendary "Balloon Popping Event" that got me in trouble with ISTE and with Google, of all companies, in the afternoon. More later, good reader. Good day.