"Innovator" Reflections, Part 6

Well, hello there. Happy Monday.

A great long weekend included fishing at my favorite stomping grounds, Lake Marrowbone, up in Joelton. I caught and released seven of the finny creatures, and if you haven't caught my fun interview at EduTalk Radio from last Thursday, it's archived here. Please join me online on Thursday for a much more detailed hour about our work at MNPS Virtual School on EdWeb.net.

I promised (what was I thinking?) to reflect daily on accomplishments related to education that I might consider would help explain or supplement the explanation for the decision on the part of T.H.E. Journal to designate me as "Education Innovator of the Month" for June 2014, and I frankly had to take a break over the weekend. For one thing, I was so impressed by my friend Lucas Gillespie's own EdWeb.net webinar on Gaming in the classroom that I spent several hours over the weekend leveling my female Blood Elf up to level 25 (of the maximum of 90) in order to be able to explore the community that is the Inevitable Betrayal Guild. I'm happy to say she's there, and the experience of getting there brought back fond memories of the year or two a decade ago when I played through all the Lara Croft Tomb Raider games. I of course watched both movies, and, yes, if Angelina Jolie runs for public office, as the skimmy has it lately, she's got my vote.

All that to say I enjoyed the writing respite, and that I want to talk briefly about ISTE SIGVE (the Special Interest Group for Virtual Environments), now rebranded as ISTE's Virtual Environments Network. In 2009, along with a group of virtual worlds in education enthusiasts, I helped innovate it. I'm not going to detail that again, because that's been done. Avail yourself of the hyperlinks in the following paragraph to understand mo' bettah.

SIGVE has taken on its own life since that labored birthing, working up a mission, writing a proposal, leading the proposal through the administrative hoops to approval, creating the wiki that houses years of research and resources (as of this writing 6,240 pages of information), all that. There is a new group of leaders emerging, many of whom I have never met in the physical world. In just a few days, we'll be meeting again at the huge annual ISTE Conference, sharing physical hugs (with no sexual harrassment, I might add) between empassioned educators who meet from a distance, regularly, in online platforms embodied digitally as avatars. It's sense of place at a distance, informing sense of recognition in person.

It was powerful in 2009, and it's powerful now. There's something about meeting someone you have gotten to know in a virtual world, meeting them in the physical world for the first time. If you haven't experienced it, you might think I'm nuts, but it's true. The closest I've come to describing that feeling is a reunion with a long-lost sibling, or a cousin you were best friends with but with whom you've lost touch over the years. It's recognition, and the immediacy and the strength of the emotion it fires is another testament to the existence of the soul. Through words and play online, one has gotten to know the soul of the avatar one has spent time with. It is the soul one recognizes in the eyes and the body of the individual one encounters in physical space. That's what fuels the hug.

Some of my best friends (you know who you are) I met and grew to know inworld long before that first hug. I look forward to renewing that bond in Atlanta beginning Friday of this week.

Two Wonderful Professional Development Opportunities!

When it rains it pours. In a good way this time.

I'll be sharing about virtual worlds next Monday morning at a uniquely blended online and in-person conference in Iowa, all from the convenience of my garage home office. I did so last Saturday as well, and the forum platform was the same, Google Hangouts. Last Saturday's one hour session was a panel on the impact of technology on learning and teaching, organized and moderated by dear friend Jane Wilde at Marlboro College in Vermont; and it was thoroughly enjoyable, archived at YouTube (a feature of Hangouts). You can watch the session right here if you wish, or watch part of it and come back later to finish. It's digital, y'all.

Scroll on down to see the schedule for the Iowa conference, which is designed in such a way that I don't really have to present at all, just attend, share the viewing of a K12OnlineConference video presentation I created last year, and then be present via hangouts for q and a. I do plan to desktop share my current build for MNPS Virtual School in Kitely, though, so if you want to watch via the live YouTube Stream have at it! Here's the "Connected Learning Hangout":





And here's Leigh Zeitz's online poster for the ITEC:

Learn from Leaders in

Our Online PD Community

These leaders in the field will video conference into our sessions. We will watch their videos on their topic and discuss ideas afterwards. Experience this innovative model for professional development.

Monday – October 14    (Room 309)
*	Scott Merrick - Tennessee Virtual Worlds for Learning and Teaching: Power Examples to Get You Thinking Scott Merrick has been exploring 3D online environments and their potential for extending learning and teaching onto the global stage. This session uses a live exploration of a custom-built Wallwisher.com webpage with voice narration created in Audacity. Learn a little bit about several more or less randomly selected (from hundreds existing) examples of the power of virtual environments to help establish “sense of place at a distance.” 10:45 – 11:35
*	Naomi Harm - Minnesota Creating Seven Habits of Highly Effective Professional Development Learning Experiences Naomi Harm explains how technology can radically change instructional strategies to bring about socially meaningful learning. Learn how an organization can move to deeper and more creative staff development practices. Seven online highly collaborative tools will be explored and demonstrated. She will discuss how to provide support for an online community-based reflection portal for educators. 12:40 – 1:30
*	Leigh Zeitz - Iowa Making 21st Century Learning Come To Life in Your Classroom Dr. Leigh Zeitz will explore 21st Century Learning from the practical side. What is a 21st learning environment? What is the difference between 20th and 21st Century learning? Dr. Z will share ways to integrate new paradigms into your classroom and tools/applications that can address today’s students’ learning needs. 1:45 – 2:35
Tuesday – October 16   (Room 309)
*	Shelly Sanchez Terrell - Texas The Magic of Mobile Learning Shelly Sanchez Terrell advocates transforming learning through mobile technology. Features and apps allow learners to move around the classroom sparking creativity and imagination. In this session, we explore activities that get learners analyzing, and engaging with the concepts they are learning. These activities with mobile devices include recording videos, taking photos, and recording audio. We will also explore fun apps that allow students to be imaginative and creative. 8:00 – 8:50
*	Bud Hunt – Colorado Make/Hack/Play – Lenses for Learning Bud The Teacher shares the journey they have taken to conceptualize and develop their Discovery Center for Make/Hack/Play in his Colorado school district.  This session will be valuable to Iowa educators because he identifies the many ideas/problems/issues that they encountered as they entered the Make Movement and how they addressed them. 11:00 – 11:50
*	Tricia Fuglestad - Illinois Teaching Art in a Technology Rich and Connected Classroom Tricia Fuglestad, PBS Teachers Innovation Award winner, explores Integrating technology, web 2.0, and interactive tools in her art room. These activities give students the opportunity to enhance their 21st-century learning skills, practice creative problem-solving, and develop higher-level thinking as they create art. Tricia will share stories and examples from her technology-rich elementary art room and how their online connections have enthralled, enriched and engaged her students. 1:00 – 1:50

THE BEST ISTE EVER: Day 3 Reflections

Where are we? Monday? Yes, Monday, June 24, 2013. My Day 3 of ISTE13.

Up early and down to the Westin Riverwalk's fitness room to get fit. Or at least fitter. And maybe a little less fatter.

My schedule this day looked like this:

Monday, June 24
	8:00am-6:00pm	Presenter's World Hours Location: Registration West
	8:00am-9:30am	MSIGOL   SIGOL Forum: Connect, Collaborate, and Create with a MOOC! Location: SACC 103A
	8:30am-9:30am	An Integrated Model for Teacher Evaluation and Professional Learning Location: SACC 001B
	11:00am-12:00pm	SIGOL (Online Learning) Annual Meeting Location: SACC 102
	11:30am-1:30pm	Volunteer Leadership Lunch Location: San Antonio Conference Center, Lonesome Dove Room
	12:30pm-4:00pm	Innovation in Teacher Education Playground Location: SACC Park View Lobby
	2:00pm-4:00pm	Maintain Academic Integrity in the Cybersphere Location: SACC Tower View Lobby, Table 28
	5:00pm-7:00pm	Happy Hour at AWE Location: Esquire Tavern Hello, Thank your for RSVPing for the Happy Hour at ISTE in San Antonio!
	5:30pm-6:45pm	SIGVE Machinima Fest Location: SACC Lila Cockrell Theater
	7:30pm-8:30pm	FlipSwitch Dinner Location: Barriba Cantina with 1 guest

It should be clear as mud by now that I populate my schedule at ISTEs with conflicting events, so that in some cases, where my attendance is not required, I can choose from events of interest without resorting to the online Conference Planner or the app, which was a much hyped new feature of this year's conference. I couldn't miss the events highlighted above because I was committed as a co-presenter in some way. It's an interesting aside that I missed everything I was not committed to in that way.

So. SIGOL Forum: Connect, Collaborate, and Create with a MOOC was a hoot. Korean television was there, y'all. Really.  I was a bit late so I missed our Kae Novak's introduction, but I heard my friend Jan Zanetis's and Scott Garrigan's. These three shared perspectives on MOOCs, Massively Open Online Courses, from three very different perspectives.

Kae Novak, an Instructional Designer at Front Range Community College in Colorado, created and oversees, with Lucas Gillespie, the GamesMOOC. The details she provided to her breakout session were invaluable--everything from badges, to levels of engagement to her own philosophic take on churn rates. She comes from the higher ed plane but hobnobs with a whole bunch of K12 educators and her work there will certainly be of value as we shift focus from standardized testing to authentic games-driven assessment.

Jan Zanetis is Education Advocate at Cisco, Inc. in Australia. I've been a friend of Jan's since working together in the mid 90's at the Vanderbilt (University) Office of Science Outreach. Her share session and breakout table both consisted of informative overviews from the perspective of a highly placed corporate education resource person (she is National Education Advocate for Cisco Corporation in Australia).

Scott Garrigan, from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, has worked with MOOCs at a university level almost since their inception. He shared some predictions about where all this is going and I can tell you it's disruptive. That's a good thing.

The camera crew from South Korean television, gathering material for a 60 minute documentary on MOOCs, gave our Scott Garrigan beaucoup attention, as he is likely the one of the three panelists with the most experience creating and leading them. His breakout table also gathered the most attendees for both sessions, including me for the 2nd one.

SIGOL Annual Meeting 2013

As the SIGOL Annual Meeting got going, outgoing President/Chair Anita Harris welcomed the good-sized group and quickly passed the torch to incoming President/Chair Mike Gormans, who after a few words introduced moi, incoming Vice-President/Vice-Chair, and we got straight on into our breakout sessions, and I was on-the-fly assigned to host the Professional Development breakout. I briefly described the bi-monthly series I had put together for 2012-13, "Priceless Professional Development in Less Than 59 Minutes." I think the assembled were underwhelmed, but that could be a good thing. On my lonesome, I threw all that together on the fly and it worked, sort of. Input from the table attendees told me:

• A survey of PD needs is in order. We should be delivering Professional Development opportunities "just in time" instead of "just in case."
• We could look at offering 3 or so strands or themes and alternating them. Perhaps the offerings should be monthly instead of bi-monthly.
• Data. We need data. 
• Promotion is important. We had light turnout almost uniformly last year. Promotional announcements went out over the SIGVE ISTE listserv and Twitter and Facebook, but a systematic approach should be instituted and followed.

So all these notes I pass to our new Chair of Professional Development. Mike, our Chair, and moi, our Vice-Chair, are here for you. I do have to mention that when I tossed out the ask, "Okay, so who's going to drive the survey of PD needs?," there was sustained silence. I followed that up after applying admirable teacher wait-time with "Boy, I sure know how to silence a room, don't I?"

Never mind, we'll get it done!

After the meeting, Andy and I headed straight down to the Riverwalk Level to the lovely Lonesome Dove room, where tasty boxed lunches, foot massage machinesISTE Core Volunteers. I took advantage of all of them. Wow. Thanks, ISTE!
, a real live back massage, and a goody bag awaited invited

I then headed down to the Innovation in Teacher Education Playground, which SIGOL was nominally co-hosting, and enjoyed a long talk with Jay Heap from Georgia Virtual School. I discovered that his team has been working on an online teaching certification program, a 30 hour online course, completion of which they are going to require before even looking at a teacher application. I'm fascinated and will watch this development closely, because I know we need to develop a more extensive teacher training program and this may well be it. I also admire his institution's Open Source commitment.

I set up around 2:00 to share MNPS Virtual School's teacher education work but by then things had slowed down so much in the Playground that I had little attendance. Still, duty done. I believe that SIGTE's Chair, Randy Hansen, from National Louis University, did a great job of lining up his learning stations and putting on his first Playground and that this one deserves space next year in Atlanta.

I made my way then to the ISTE SIGVE EduMachinima Festival at the 2500 seat Lila Cockrill Theatre to help get things started there. Yes there were a few seats left over (attendance counted right livestreamed audio and they watched the same things we were watching via youtube links.
at 20 of the stalwart) but we had another 20 or so in Second Life, into which I

We had an absolute blast. One day we hope to fill a theatre like this one with people who actually want to partake of the entries for this, the third year of the young film festival's life. You can view the judge's awards right off this page, seriously and solidly worth your time!

ISTE SIGVE EduMachinima 2013 Winners*

People’s Choice

A Real-Time Interactive 3D Virtual Retail World by Konstantin Lakic, Dragan Lakic -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLvpZuW7558 Length: 3:34

Judge’s Awards

Best Overall
Invitation to Dance by Kae Novak- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMQ3QvWZKfQ Length: 0:51
Best Special Effects
rgMOOC Trailer by Kate Guthrie Caruso, Sherry Jones, and Stephen Getter - http://youtu.be/XORjygrnzk8 Length: 2:38
Best Editing
It's never to late to start something new by Christel Schneider - http://youtu.be/iQfA7AyQDvA Length: 1:41
Best Sound
Red Barn Door - By Tanya Martin, Original Muisc and Lyrics by Woodsong Zapatero in Second Life set design by Bluebarker and Gridjumper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn2KSHityks&list=UUUT1UrqlEV79TraMafVfX5Q
Best Machinmatography
Annabell and the crocodile by Christel Schneider http://youtu.be/WQO9TLdBTVM

*from http://sigve.iste.wikispaces.net/EduMachinima+Fest+2013

Following the EduMachinima Fest I headed "home" to the hotel and changed into casual wear and took out with Michael to Pat O'Brien's for the Gaggle Party. I can share the invite now the party's over:

It was fun, and I found my MNPS Virtual School crew, or at least James and Adrienne, perched up high at bar tables overlooking the wild open courtyard below. I was tired though, and after one local beer I made my exit, or attempted to.

Kecia Ray and moi

The aforementioned (yesterday) trio of young teachers from our district stopped me and bade me stay a bit. I'm glad I did because Kecia stopped in and I got a great pic with her (or at least I think so):
 

 

 

And here's us with the Antioch Gang of 3 and colleague Doug Renfroe:

After that one more brew, I did head "home," getting an early to bed for the big next day. Here it comes, Day 4, and soon.

ISTE 2013 Day After: Reflections are Coming

Hey, all,

It's the day after ISTE13 and I'm in Conroe, Texas for a few days fishing, visiting with my dear older brother Ed, and sleeping, recovering from THE BEST ISTE EVER. This will be the header for my upcoming reflections. Last year I found doing so and focusing on a day by day recap helped me organize my thoughts, and I was flattered (a very recurring feeling at ISTE, which for me has become sort of a Third Life, where I seem to wear either a halo or a shining golden aura or an oversized shiny sheriff's badge as I make my way through the hallways and streets and so many people seem to know me) to be told last week by a major event organizer that at least one of my reflections made one very prestigious presenter happy. Please remember as (or if) you choose to read these reflections that I feel awkward about mentioning some of this because it may sound like I'm bragging or something, but I hope that writing about this phenomenon may help me make some sense of it. At the end of the day I will be back at my desk, feeding the squirrels and birds on the fire escape outside my office window, and relatively anonymous.

So that's my morning disclaimer as I prepare to head out for a 4 day Texas fishing license (or whatever version is the right thing to obtain so that I'm legal and supporting the regulation efforts in a field that has contributed so much to my sanity, such as it is. (UPDATE: I discovered that I already have an annual license and just had to pay 10 dollars for the trip to print out a new copy! That's a good start to the trip!)

Yeah, the first day of ISTE 2013 I was making my way toward dinner at some site we had yet to pick with my team from MNPS Virtual School along Riverwalk and it seemed like every other person we encountered on our walk gave and got a hug from me. ISTE's CEO, the energetic and brilliant Brian Lewis, outstretched his big hand for a passing shake and a how-de-do as we made our way home from dinner. That was when my cherished boss Dr. James Witty, walking behind, said out loud, "I feel like I'm walking with the Godfather." Funny.

 Many of my Virtual Worlds peeps hugged and were hugged early on as we made our way to the Hyatt by the San Antonio Conference Center. I was noted by name from the podium at two important events, one when dear friend and ISTE President Kecia Ray claimed her coveted Pink Jacket, the "Making IT Happen" award, and noted that "I know Scott Merrick will be happy I received this because I'll stop threatening to steal his," and once when Barbara Treacy at the EdTechLeaders Online  Online Learning Institute used me as a directions example "So if you want to hear Scott Merrick you'll go to Table 3." I really am not convinced that this is some convergence of the universe around name-branding Scott Merrick, but I have to admit I couldn't pay for this kind of attention/mention. i should be selling something. Maybe it's happening because I'm not!

What's up? Well, joining 20 or so of my colleagues onstage at the Opening Reception in the main hall in front of 8 or 10,000 people to receive my Presidential Volunteer Service Award didn't hurt, but mainly I think it's just that I've so loved attending ISTE (formerly NECC) over the past decade or so and have so connected with bloggers, videoconferencers, virutal worlders, ISTE staff, and all manner of other groups that all that has simply made me recognizable  (all this without ever performing, or even attending, EdTech Karaoke). Facilitating the immensely successful SIGVE Virtual Environments Playground and accepting the role of SIGOL Vice President this year likely didn't hurt. Co-hosting with the aforementioned Dr. Witty and colleague Micheal Terry a roundtable at this year's Online Learning Institute certainly contributed to the awareness. But seriously, it's simply all about sharing with and embracing (often literally) so many outstanding, student-dedicated, and motivated educators, all day, every day of my life. My big secret may be that I always try to stay positive and hopeful, and that I have, over the years, built a Professional Learning Network (and a Personal one) of people who know what they are doing and, perhaps most importantly, who are not above learning how to do it better.

My annual "Me and David" snapshot

I ran into my old pal David Warlick at the Blogger's Cafe during the conference and asked him how his conference was going. he smiled as broadly as I've ever seen him smile and said, "Great. I'm not presenting." Next year? Maybe I'll pursue that route in Atlanta.

Meanwhile I'm going to be reflecting in upcoming posts about how my own conference went. I hope you stay tuned.

Over and out. Time to get a worm on a hook in the water.

ISTE 2013 Post 8: Last Day of ISTE Proper

Well it's late, and I'm packed to store my luggage at the Westin Riverwalk desk when I check out at 7:30 in the morning. Why do I need to check out so early? Simple. The Online Learning Institute.

When I tell people that I've dedicate my entire final day to this event I invariably get the concerned look. I have taken to explaining "Last year I attended, resentfully for that reason, but you know what? It was the highlight of my ISTE."

Read why at http://scottmerrick.blogspot.com/2012/06/online-learning-institute-2012.html , and hopefully again right here after the event. The agenda for this event is here.

I'll go on record saying that if this event can be described as the highlight of my ISTE I'll eat my shoe. I have high hopes for it, but I cannot imagine that it will trump the EPIC Leadership: Beyond the Hype of Gamification event Sunday morning, or the SIGOL (Online Learning) "SIGOL Forum: Connect, Collaborate, and Create with a MOOC!," or Jane McGonigal's awesome opening keynote, or the SIGVE Virtual Environments Playground, or the hugs from friends I only see once a year.

No no, it won't trump any of those events, but I'm so looking forward to it.

We find ourselves amazed. Last year, I was able to reflect on the train to Ojai. This year I don't have that option, so I'll do so at my back end vacation with my dear brother Ed at Lake Conroe. All's good. I'm tired. I'm going to sleep now. Hugs all around.

ISTE 2013 Post 6: Arrival

We're heeeeere, y'all. I flew in today with my team from MNPS Virtual School and yes, I should be going to bed in my lovely Westin Riverwalk 12th floor hotel room, but I remember that I promised a blog post daily. Here's today's.

We all arrived fairly early at the airport and spent some time over beverages and nachos at O'Charley's before boarding the plane. We had a last minute gate change and arrived as the B Group for Southwest was boarding and I hoped into line since I was assigned B2. An alarm went off and the attendant said, Uh-Uh, you're going to San Antonio, you don't want to get on this plane--this plane's going to St. Louis.

Ha. Embarrassing but at least the system works. I'm not in St. Louis. I've never experienced that particular situation, since the plane at our new gate was boarding right when we should have been. All sorted out, we waited for that plane to board and ours to arrive, disembark passengers, and got loaded in around 15 minutes late. We arrived in San Antonio just that late and I missed my first event, a SIG appreciation event that included Riverwalk boat tours. We headed down to the Hyatt, past the convention center, stopping in there to pick up our registration materials, and ran in to my first dear friend, Marianne Malmstrom, in front of the Hyatt. After chatting for a while we parted, but not after more hugs and handshakes from Sarah Rolle, Chris Luchs, Kae Novak, Adam Bellow, Andy Wheelock, and Jan Zanetis. It has begun.

Speaking of beginning, if you haven't registered for this year's Leadership Summit (this year called "Epic Leadership: Beyond the Hype of Gamification," I understand there are a very few seats left. It starts at 9 am at the self-same Hyatt adjacent to the Convention Center and I'll be there by 7 or so to help organize and set up for success. If you have attended these events in the past I can say one thing: This will be like none other. Don't miss it! A talk by opening keynoter Jane McGonigal, direction from the incomparable Peggy Sheehy, and an event that is really, well, a game--there, I've given you a few clues. Here's another:

After a darned good dinner at Durty Nellie's Irish Pub, we hit the Hyatt again for an MNPS  ISTE attendees get together at our incoming President Kecia Ray's lush Presidential Suite. It's only fitting, and it was interesting to meet several new local colleagues and to fetch a hug from Kecia and one from the lovely and personable ISTE Board Member Gwyneth Jones. 

 It has begun. I'd better get to bed. Blog you tomorrow. G'night.

Thank You, Jane Wilde!

Jane, 
you as you know are largely responsible for our astonishing success. I hesitate to say that when we have another day (or, pleasantly, it feels like a half day) of sharing and learning, but I feel pretty confident we're onto a model that works. Maybe we can collaborate on a good long article L&L will pick up, or for some other venue. Extending the sharing of the sharing.

Today I'm out early at 8:30 for the panel discussion "Distance Learning Comes of Age" and I'll be sitting on the panel sharing our success very briefly as well as sharing some details of our successful distance event coordination. What's the name and venue for your paper in Toronto? I'd love to share that as well.

We'll debrief after your rousingly successful paper presentation. If you ever, and I mean EVER, need any help from me just hear that old "You've Got a Friend" song in your head and pick up your cellphone and just call on me.

Wow.

Much love from Denver and always everywhere,

Scott, and on behalf of SIGVE

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:12 AM, Esme Qunhua  wrote:

Hi there Scott,
Wow! I am amazed by what we have accomplished in the past two days.  We have had our share of "tech-happens." But even the variety of glitches have been interesting and kind of funny. I mean, what can you do when the basic building instructor can't log on, and even if she could wouldn't be able to rez stuff. (Note: This was due to a Linden Lab database issue that developed at the time of the final presentation by Cindy Burton on Tuesday).

So many of the presentations have been inspiring.  The amount of content that has been shared in such a compressed time period has been awesome.  Please share my appreciation with your volunteers.

Esme

--
Esme Qunhua/Jane Wilde
Geek
Faculty, Marlboro College Grad Center
Marlboro College Graduate School

Invitation to Participate and to Learn!

Hello, ya'll,

I'm spending this day packing for ISTE 2010 and the surrounding two weeks in Denver and helping to prep the house for our house sitter, typing out "away lists" for our good close neighbors, and checking in and out of various online platforms to make sure none of the elements in our complex planning for the SIGVE Virtual Environments Playground have gone derailed. I'm keeping light on my virtual feet, dancin' like a butterfly and stingin' like a bee.

I want to invite any and everyone to keep abreast of our work in Denver by frequenting the links below, especially between June 26 and June 30. After that I'll be laying around and having family fun in Denver 'til the 7th of July, when we return home. I'll be off out to Boston July 21 by myself for the Apple Learning Institute, and I'm sure that by then I'll have a great deal more to share.

To put things in perspective, we have put together 35 live presentations over 3 days, mostly a half hour each, back to back, the entire run of the Playground, starting Mountain time 8 a.m. Monday morning, June 28 and running up to Playground closure Wednesday, June 30, at 1 pm. In the playground is a small presentation stage, a table station with 8 hardwired-to-a-dedicated-subnetwork Macbooks, and there are 4 hardwired Earthlink PCs stationed at tables around the room. At any given time there's likely to be a Playground Poobah or other helper at one of these machines to help you learn about how the 3D internet and 3D virtual worlds can make your teaching and your learning more effective, more relevant, and more...fun. There. I said the "f" word. An LCD projector will be displaying presenter slides, inworld tours and demonstrations of (and from) various worlds on a Promethean Board, and casual seating will allow visitors to plop down and login to anywhere they wish via conference wireless.

Here are the key places to check for ISTE SIGVE fun and learning:

The SIGVE Wiki
is the official nucleus for the International Society for Technology in Education and it includes schedules, updates, links, and resources surrounding our growing community's work in the arena of learning and teaching in virtual worlds. If you're an educator, even if you are not an ISTE member, I invite you to join this wiki and to add to its exponentially increasing value. The global community of educators (and students) involved in this work can use your expertise, and ISTE's wiki platform makes it easy to share.

The ISTE SIGVE Playground ustream
will, bandwidth cooperating, be the place where live video from within the SIGVE Virtual Environments Playground can be found during scheduled Playground hours. That's (Mountain Time) 8:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Time Zones made easy for ISTE SIGVE Pg
will help you translate our local Mountain Time into your own local time if you are not in Denver or in the Mountain Time Zone.

To my Playground co-facilitator Lisa Linn, to my inworld Grand Poobah Jane Wilde, to Marianne and to Rosie and to Julie and to Noreen and to Kelly and to the erstwhile Andy, to Terra and to Wanda and to everyone else who knows they've worked hard enough for the old guy to have had the wherewithal to remember to type their name here but didn't, and to all those other colleagues who are invested in SIGVE but haven't yet taken advantage of the opportunity to contribute (and I know that you will!) please, ya'll, please offer your congratulations and gratitude along with my own.

I hope you can find time to join us and to take advantage of the work that dozens of folks, all volunteers, all working from their divergent geographical locations over the past 9 months or so, have put into crafting our event for ISTE 2010. We gift, to you, the ISTE SIGVE Virtual Environments Playground!

ReactionGrid Opens Up New Vistas for Teaching and Learning

If you follow my blog Oh!VirtualLearning! you may already know that I have been appointed facilitator of the new ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Special Interest Group for Virtual Environments. Certainly you know of my interest in this amazing, complex, fascinating (and enabling on so many levels) development in online communcation. As SIGVE "Poobah," I enjoy the company of a great many educators more capable than myself in our effort to help make some sense out of all the myriad virtual worlds out in the metaverse, to assess their value (or lack of it) for learning and teaching, and to collaborate on innovative efforts that leverage their functionalities toward the betterment of education.

At last year's National Educational Computing Conference, or NECC, in Washington, D.C., it was announced that future conferences held by ISTE would do away with the NECC name, that the next annual conference would be named "ISTE 2010," establishing the new naming convention for future years, and that it would be held in one of my favorite cities in the world, Denver, Colorado.

I am excited to be planning already for ISTE 2010, and even more so that I received in my email this morning the notice that my Presenter's login is now available, along with a link to it and to my presentation, the Virtual Environments Birds-of-a-feather session, so that I could provide a description for the program. Another email contained news that friend Jan Zanetis's proposal for a "panel of experts" on Distance Learning has been accepted, and she's somehow managed to add me to that panel. I truly do always tell people interested in virtual environments that there is no such thing as an expert, and if you are talking to someone who claims to be one, the best course of action is to run screaming from the room. Still, I'm flattered, of course, and it'll be fun to join Jan, Kecia Ray, Scott Parks, Howie DiBlasi, and Cathi Swan for an hour of fast talking about the future of distance education, and to do it for a target audience of school and district administrators.

If you've read this far, you deserve a little "Easter egg," and here it is: I've entered OpenSim's ReactionGrid by purchasing a region of my very own, and I'm calling it "Scottsperiment."

Here's a SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Scottsperiment/128/128/26 . Note that you must be logged into ReactionGrid to make that link work. Visit ReactionGrid's website to download a viewer that is compatible with OpenSim and come explore. I'll be posting more information as soon as I've finished my initial terraforming and land parceling. It's going to be fun...