ISTE Eduverse Talks Episode #8 Live at iste-eduverse.org!

Hey, all, our recent appearance as MUVErs on the celebrated ISTE Eduverse Talks live talk show series is now live an accessible at the ISTE Eduverse Talks website.

I hope you'll take an hour or so to give it a watch. It's also pretty nice as an audio file, so if you have a long commute that may be the way to do it. Host Kevin Jarrett did a fantastic job of delivering probing questions about MUVErs' development of intricate but finely tuned virtual simulations for teaching and learning, and partners Cathy Walker and John Miller were stellar in their own thoughtful responses. Watching the program has convinced me I didn't do a half-bad job of responding, though it's obvious I strayed from my script a bit :)

Go watch!

Back to Work! Where Did the Summer Go?

I can't really complain. I've had a great summer. 10 days in D.C. at NECC09 helped fill it up, for sure, and three on Lake Conroe north of Houston, Texas fishing with my dear brother Ed. My son's in South Africa on a month long trek with his grandparents and his cousin, and I'm here at USN working to set up my students and faculty for the best year ever.

There's a lot happening here with technology. First and foremost we're implementing the Lower School's entry into the world of Whipplehill, the platform the other two divisions implemented last year for Student Information System and parent and student communication. It's very powerful (and was very expensive, though the cumulative savings over the next few years in "snailmailings" will recoup much of that initial investment. But the main deal, of course, is that many teachers are no different than most other adults--they resist change, either intentionally or subconsciously, and they also underestimate their own facility with change. This can't be a blanket generalization (I strive to avoid those in any event), but it's likely the norm. We do have some amazingly agile technology adopters in our ranks, and it's those I'll be counting on to drive the adoption of our new platform.

Meanwhile I just spent six hours doing some of the drudgery work of enrolling 370+ students into their proper classrooms, K-4, and then enrolling those groups into enrichment classes. I put on some Raconteurs, some Bob Dylan, some Darla Farmer, and finally some Last Frontier Band while I worked, and that helps, but my bottom is sore from sitting and I'm just about outta here for the day. Tomorrow, I dive feet first into schedule sets, entering little blocks of time for every classroom's multiple slices of each day, which vary day by day, so that the system will display each student's actual schedule during the day. It's gruntwork, but it is valuable, I know. Sigh.

We're also dropping First Class email and migrating over to Google Apps for Education. That'll happen any day now and you can bet my help will be called upon as 25 Ts learn how to navigate that platform. It's great though, and about time, I say. Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, I do want to note a successful talk show appearance this past Tuesday night on the wonderful ISTE Eduverse Talks series in Second Life. It's all described at the website at ISTE and its archive should be live in a week or so. The producers told me yesterday that at the high point of the hour we had 66 avatars in the building, almost hitting that magic 71 that closes down the sim. Great for a Tue. night still summer for most teachers! [NEW: Now available for viewing in its entirety at treet.tv!]

I'm off to home to walk my dog and stretch my own old legs. Cheers!!!!!!!!

Eduverse Talks Archive!

ISTE Eduverse Talks episode number 7 is now available for replay at the ISTE Eduverse website. Click the image below to visit, watch, listen, or watch and listen. I've been invited along with my MUVERS LLC partners Cathy Walker and John Miller to participate in another eipisode Tuesday, July 28, so join us there live (5 pm SLT, 7 pm CDT) or check back at the Eduverse website for its own archive a week or so after the show!

I'll be completely off-grid for a couple days as I head to the hills with my honey, so comments here, if any, may take longer than usual to show up. Vacation time, ya'll!

NOT a Second Life!

Cross-posted from Oh!VirtualLearning!:

Facebook post yesterday morning:

Scott Merrick Still reeling from the experience of being on a virtual talk show last night. It'll be up online in a week or so at the show's site. My family watched via the stream URL at the family computer while I stumbled through what I had to say, and the Q and A at the end was the best part, IMHO. Heavy sigh! Thx to everyone who made this happen!

Heavy sigh indeed! It was fun! Most of all, it was fun being up in front of a very nice-sized audience onstage with four other dedicated educators, three of whom I already count among my real-life friends and the forth of whom I'm sure will join those ranks in a couple of weeks, as technology educators and administrators gather in Washington, D.C. for intense networking based on a shared interest in technology for education. NECC, of course, is the National Educational Computing Conference.

You can read the pre-show details now at the ISTE Eduverse Talks site, and that's precisely where the spiffed up [nods to Andrew] show will be up for viewing in about a week. I highly recommend you view it when it's there: This was a great experience, and from the comments from the audience after the cameras were shut down, it was a jewel amongst the growing library of Eduverse Talks.

One comment I made toward the very end bears repeating in print, or at least I think it does.

To paraphrase (you'll have to view the show to hear the original): "If I hear a teacher say 'I don't have time for my first life--why should I go get a Second Life?' one more time I'm going to SCREAM! It's NOT a 'second life,' ya'll, its a rich, rewarding, entertaining, fun, and professionally valid extension of my life, the only life I have, into a creative, challenging, and all-those-other-adjectives new realm." Okay, I embellished a bit, but that's the beauty of afterthought.

Spiff/Andrew also said something that sticks with me. It may be that my reaction to his comment issues from a (unintentional, I am sure) hurtful comment a colleague made a couple weeks at the Vanderbilt School for Science and Math, when I was recording material for my CSO podcast, Snacks4theBrain!. He smiled, looked away from me, and said, "I hear you have three wives in Second Life."

Well, I don't (as I replied, stifling the urge to respond more assertively). And I won't, even though, as Andrew referenced the Bible near the end of our show, "Seek and ye shall find." If you go looking for bad stuff in Second Life, it's there, though as we speak Linden Lab is making serious and controversial efforts to isolate the so-called "bad stuff." But if you gear your time and efforts to seeking creative, innovative colleagues and fun, interesting educational content, it's there, too--and in spades, as I hope this blog has been reporting since May, 2007. Isn't it exactly the same "in real life?"

So the problem, it seems, is in Linden Lab's choice for a name for their metaverse. This is no new idea. I submit, though, that the scoffers and otheres who are letting this intense and important phenomenon pass them by while they choose to spend their media time watching CSI (who did a weird and possibly off-putting episode involving Second Life) should get off their "real" backsides, turn off their TVs [hears John Prine], should simply "Get a Second Life." Remember, it's NOT a second life!

There's a link in the sidebar. Go. Look me up when you've done your assignment. I'll give you a hug. If you're already in, and you're going to NECC09, come see me in the Second Life Playground. I'll give you a hug there. I'm a big fan of hugs.

Eduverse Talks Announcement!

ISTE Eduverse Talks has now posted a description of our little one hour session this coming Tuesday. I hope you can be there. LOL, I didn't know I was a "Case Study" but I guess it's about time. There's a link at the description page to bios of my co-panelists and I think it's worth a read.

If you do not have a Second Life account, by the way, you can catch the show live online at TreetTV! Here's the url for that webpage, the dedicated video stream feed for LIVE Eduverse Talks! Go there Tuesday, June 9, at 5 pm Pacific, 6 pm Mountain, 7 pm Central, 8 pm Eastern, or whatever pm or am it is in your own neck of the woods and the stream'll be streaming. Until then, you'll get a blank Quicktime frame.

Cheers, and enjoy your weekend. You deserve it!