Virtual Learning Student Asks U.S. Office of Educational Technology...

...Two Questions

I was greatly pleased to be present at the recent SITE (Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education) Conference here in Nashville as my dear friend Kecia Ray (and also my boss, in her role as MNPS Executive Director of Instructional Technology) and our student Taylor Grantham sat in on "A Conversation with Karen Cator." Along with them were two other educators, one from Wisconsin and one from Denmark.

It was a stellar hour, and I left with heightened appreciation for the work Ms. Cator is doing and also with something else--video! Filmed by colleague and pal Norman Merrifield, it serves as a reminder of just how good media can be when you enlist a professional videographer who wields professional gear. I'm posting the following videos, each a question from Miss Grantham and an answer from Ms. Cator!

 

SITEslides 030811 Merrick

Here's the slides I may share on today's panel at SITE in Nashville, assuming I get the chance. If I don't get the chance, here's the slides I would've shared.

I'll add some notes after the fact just to make the online archive a bit more valuable to others. Until then, use your imagination.

SITEslides 030811 Merrick

View more presentations from Scott Merrick.

Anybody Coming to Music City for SITE?

I've been drafted by my good friend Jan Zanetis onto a remarkable panel session at March's Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education conference, to be held here in Nashville March 8-11. The panel, on the future of distance learning, includes Jan, Kathy Hayden, Mike Lay, and Kecia Ray. It'll be great, I do believe!

Anyone coming? If so, comment away and let's get something going during the conference, even if it's just a meetup for a few light beers and some dynamite honkytonkin' at Tootsies Orchid Lounge!

As usual, I'll be the Virtual Environments guy, and I'm looking forward to sharing our Virtual Learning experimentations with OpenSim and the great work my global colleagues and I are carrying out in Second Life via ISTE's SIGVE 3rd Tuesday Speaker Sessions. ISTE, like many other educational institutions, are greatly reducing their investments in Second Life, partly due to our national economy and partly in response to Linden Labs' relatively recent abolishment of what had been a very generous educational discount program. ISTE will be abandoning three of the four islands they've been leasing from Linden Lab for several years now, but they'll be retaining their original ISTE Island and hopefully allowing my own Bloggers Hut to remain standing. They are also discontinuing the weekly Speaker Sessions that esteemed colleague Kevin Jarret had run for several years, but the good news is that the SIGVE Sessions will continue as the sole remaining offering of its kind. Once a month, my good friends, we'll continue to see, hear, learn, and backchat about the best that Virtual Worlds have to offer for education.

If you're coming to SITE, gimme a holler!