Oh! Virtual Learning! The Book!

Hello, and may this day find you well and safe, two iffy constructs in these dark days for American government and public safety. But that's neither here nor there (although it may feel like everywhere).

I stumbled across this in my Dropbox whilst looking for an ancient song I had written in the mid 1970s. It is from Sharebook, a feature that appears no longer to be available at blogspot.com for bloggers to archive their work, and it begins with a post from May 7, 2007 and ends with one at February 21, 2012. The blog went on for a few posts, and featured a revival announcement in August, 2023. That last is, though, the last. The revival never was followed up upon, and will not likely be.

Still, this little online book, spreading across some 277 pages of .pdf file, is fun to explore, at least for me. Many of its links got lost in the process of publication and a cursory click-thru demonstrates that many of the links that survived take one to a polite "page not found" message.

During Oh! Second Life!'s publication online, I was teaching young kids about technologyin independent then public schools whilst helping my wife to raise our own two kids, and Second Life for education was my primary creative side hustle. My involvement with virtual worlds for learning spread and grew over decades, until upon my May, 2022 retirement I audibly brushed together my hands and for reasons I can understand better than I can explain, I turned my back on the teaching world. I will herein say that I was so done with the reshaping of schools into businesses, and the data-driven administration of them (just how accurate was that data, beginning with standardized testing results?),  that I was, like, outta there, and for good--for my own, if for no one else's.

https://bit.ly/scottsecondlife will get you there.

So. There you are. Pretty much the sum total of my educational experience over 5 years of the nearly two decades of what people called Leadership in that field. I made friends, and many of those were from other geolocations--Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Japan. Once we loosely organized, we were always just on the "about to be" side of the Bell Curve of Adoption. It may be that those still involved will always be, and will pass, in turn, their own fascination and dedication to its newbies, who will one day do the same. It may be that the experiences within virtual worlds are simply so unfathomable to the unitiated that they will never be of real use to the powers that shape "the education system." Who knows?

What I know is that these engaging fascinations, with their promising and unfulfilled possibilities, are archived palpably in the blog, which is still available on Google's blogger.com platform (possibly useful if one wants to pursue a lost link) and shared here for as long as my Dropbox footprint evades the inevitable and eradicating winds of time. 

Stay well. Stay safe. 

Be Good and Have Fun.

Scheduliberated!

 Happy birthday to me, celebrating 72 trips around Old Sol. AND happy retirement, only 2 days away as I write. I want to say a few things about retirement, or rather about the generally accepted social descriptor for it: "retired."

Thinking about actually being it, I began letting friends and colleagues know my plans a month or two ago. It took a good long while to jump through the hoops a "retiree" needs to master, but I was generally feeling pretty darned good about it all. Then I began noticing:  Nearly everyone who discusses it with me brings a number of negative connotations into our communication. 

"What are you going to do?" "Won't you be bored?" "You'll be looking for a part-time job, won't you?" "I'd be so bored." Or, from several folks' personal experience, "I got tired of sitting around at home, so I got this job/volunteered here. It keeps me busy." That's the  story I have heard from a tenured now 120 day former retiree in my school, from a clerk in a liquor store in Chattanooga, and from a dear man who brings meals to my school (soon my former school) on a weekly basis. I am certain that I'll hear it again.

Well. My dear old daddy used to tell us whiney boys, "If you're bored it's your own damned fault." Really, he did. And I took it to heart, I guess. 

1. I will not be looking for a part-time job. Or a full-time job.
2. I do not get bored. 
3. I love my home and keeping it a nice place to be (which is work, by the way). 
4. And I will be just as busy as I want to be. I'll fish, I'll write, I'll get better at my mandolin and my guitar and my  bass guitar. I'll draw and paint. I'll spend more time enjoying my life with its one true love, Lee Ann; I'll be more available to my beautiful children--Miranda and Tim and Colin and Kat; I'll explore Tennessee; I'll travel frequently/ I'll, I'll, I'll...God knows what, you can bet if it's interesting I'll be doing it.

What is a way to refer to retirement that does not drag in all the negatives? 

A search for synonyms at Thesaurus.com yields 29 synonyms for "retired." These are arranged in three tabs for one's viewing pleasure, according to that respectable resource. The next time a new aquaintance asks me the most common question any adult asks a new aquaintance, "What to you do do?," how do you think I might reply? Should I choose to respond with one of these? 

• The first tab is "adj. having withdrawn from active life." Ow. Its examples are:
• elderly
• resigned
• superannuated
• emeritus, emerita (I kind of like that one)
• in retirement
• The second is "adj. having been withdrawn, with
• detached
• removed
• secluded
• sequestered
• apart
• isolated
• retreated
• seperated
• withdrawn
• distant
• The third? "adj. done working"
• discharged
• humble
• sequestered
• withdrawn
• inactive
• retiring
• immured
• shy
• cidevant
• otiose
• cloistered
• secluded
• superannuated
• emeritus
• unfrequented

What the hell does "otiose" mean, anyway? Further investigation brings up "idle," "indolent," "listless," and "slothful" as synonyms for otiose. Dig this: its definition at Dictionary.com is 

adjective

1. being at leisure; idle; indolent.
2. ineffective or futile.
3. superfluous or useless.

So friends, I'm over it. That may be a little odd, since, really, I'm just beginning it. But here, I'm coining a word. Right here, right now. Ready?

New acquaintance: "So, what do you do?"

Me. "Oh, I'm(image from cooltext.com).

There. And, from my dear friends Matt amd Anitra, a birthday treat:

 Hey, y'all, 

Hope everyone is safe and well. Lots of good indicators now but we must not let down our vigilance and distancing habits. I pray (yes, I do that) predictions of another surge are hollow and that they are thwarted by our common set of healthy-keeping habits.

Meanwhile, the post is to share that I recently signed a contract with Microsoft, albeit no money involved, to allow them to feature a curriculum piece I submitted to Microsoft: Education Edition almost a year ago. It's up. Educators using :EE to teach, please know that a key feature of this "lesson" is imminently adaptable to virtually (sic) ANY discipline or class. Just change a few key features like the vocabulary list, replace my example in-world with one of your own making, and GO FOR IT. 

I am looking foward to seeing how innovative teachers do so.  

Check out

Don't be a virtual stranger! Share your successes and challenges with me scott@scottmerrick.net!

Things are looking...

 Good morning, y'all, and Happy Saturday. We made it through our first "real" virtual schooling week in Nashville's MNPS and things are looking:

1. Hopeful
2. Complicated
3. Confusing
4. Inequitable

Hopeful, because I'm not only characteristically optimistic (my avatar name in many 3D platforms includes the name "Optomystic"), but I feel proud of the steps my public school district has taken toward reaching its mission of providing "a great public education to every student, every day."   It is crystal clear that the capable leaders of our district, in both administrative and technological arenas, have brainstormed vigorously and have arrived at the best ways we can carry on with that vision given the circumstances of the times. They have also demonstrated enlightened oversight based on the science of the pandemic. We are fully virtual and though a decision will be made by September 7 whether we will continue that for the foreseeable future, I am hopeful based on current evidence that we will. 

Complicated, because we were not ready for this and are making up for lost preparation time in the deep middle of the public health crisis. Back in 2010, I left a darned good career at a wonderful independent K-12 school to research, create, and make accredited and sustainable the first public online school in Tennessee, MNPS Virtual School. The story of why my job position was "eliminated" is complicated in itself, but pertinent here is that my own vision for the school envisioned that by now, in 2020, the MNPS Virtual School would be serving thousands of students enrolled full-time. That never happened. According to the best information I can get, the school is still serving just a handful of students. Serving them well, I am sure, but not serving many.

Now, pan forward to this school year, where students are issued Dell laptops by drive-up school pickup, along with, if requested, T-Mobile hotspot devices for internet access. Our kids live in a portion of the city where internet service is often spotty at best. The infrastructure for online learning at massive scale is just not there. Hopefully, the city will be working on that in the near future.

Confusing, because as I learned implementing learning at Virtual School, individual student motivation levels are varied in the extreme. To complicate matters further, and immensely, in our school, a large majority of students are ELL, English Language Learners. There are at least 18 unique native languages represented in our student body. The process for attending school virtually has been made as clear as possible by school and district administration and faculty, but "mileage varies" on both motivation and understanding--something always present in the classroom together but even more daunting for remote learning.

And finally, Inequitable, because--see Complicated. But also know that socio-economic disparity is darkly shining over our student population. Many students have younger siblings they are responsible for while their parents are working two or three jobs to pay rent and put food on the table. Some are going to work with their parents because there is no way for them to be looked after at home. Some are actually working construction jobs to help out with poverty level income. It's inequitable, okay? Not okay.

But mostly I'm hopeful, and first days with the small numbers of students who showed up to online class have been promising. I am hopeful that numbers will increase steadily until by the end of this 9 weeks we will have students who are ready to begin the second quarter of the school year with full attention to learning, and faculty who have it all (or most of it) figured out and are ready to lend full attention to teaching. Remotely.

Meanwhile, I want to share from this morning's "The Skimm" blog. Avail yourself (and subscribe to weekday updates from The Skimm, the closest thing to unbiased news I have been able to find):

DAILY COPING TACTICS

If you can’t afford to see a professional or want strategies for coping in-between sessions, there are tips and free resources out there to get started. Here are some of our favorites:

Tips: 

• 54321 Method...A mindfulness tool that grounds you in the present. First, identify five things you can see. Then, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. This helps shift your attention to your surroundings and away from the intrusive thoughts in your head. 
• 3x30 Plan...Exercise at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes. This can mean walking, yoga, dancing, taking a virtual class. 30 minutes is one Friends episode. And exercise will be there for you (when the anxious rain starts to pour). 
• Breathe...You’ve heard this one before. Our stress guide gives you some breathing and relaxation tactics for managing stress (which can be a trigger for anxiety). 
• Schedule “worry time”...Take 15-30 minutes a day to identify what’s making you anxious and write it down. Because the first step is recognition and the second step may be starting a very sad handwritten book.

Apps and Websites: 

• Frame Therapy...This mental health platform offers free digital discussions on everything from racial trauma to coping with heartbreak, dealing with anxiety from layoffs, and more. It also helps match you with therapists within your budget. 
• Sanvello...An app that uses techniques based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to manage stress and anxiety. It includes things like daily mood tracking, meditations, and an engaged community—plus, it syncs with your Apple Health app. 
• National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI)...A hub for all things mental health—including personal stories, educational guides, and insurance info. 
• Breathe2Relax....Because “breathe in, breathe out” is easier said than done. This app, created by the National Center for Telehealth, guides users through breathing exercises to help manage anxiety levels. 
• Happy Not Perfect...A mindfulness app and site with a range of meditations for specific issues, plus tips for sleeping better and easing anxiety.

Podcasts: 

• No Feeling is Final…The host, Honor Eastly, explores her journey with anxiety and depression. Her personal experience helps equip listeners with tools for dealing with mental health on a daily basis. 
• Terrible, Thanks for Asking…Host Nora McInerny lost both her husband and father to cancer and had a miscarriage within several weeks in 2014. Here, she explores the ways grief and anxiety have affected her life, and how she and others respond to the dreaded “how are you?” question. 
• Ten Percent Happier…Host Dan Harris, an ABC newscaster, had a panic attack live on GMA. Now his podcast and bestselling book by the same title explore Panic Disorder and anxiety, and all the changes he’s made to take control of them in his own life. 
• The Calmer You…Anxiety expert and hypnotherapist Chloe Brotheridge (and her soothing voice) dishes out solutions for achieving a more confident and calmer self. 
• Anxiety Slayer...Provides interviews with mental health professionals and actionable tips for managing anxiety.

theSkimm

Mental health stigmas are real, but so are treatments. Anxiety does not mean weakness. Anxiety does not mean indulgence. Anxiety means you’re human—and learning to manage the condition and live your life.

Skimm'd by Eugenia Cassidy, Becky Murray, and Avery Carpenter Forrey

Reflections on What Could Be Isolation, But Isn't

I'm experiencing an ongoing therapeutic program designed to promote resilience in this time of societal retreat. Thankfully, my school district is footing the bill, and I admire that in an employer. Thank you Metro Nashville Public Schools.

The online platform is called Tiatros. I haven't done my research to understand the etymology of that word, but I should. Heck, let me pop out right now...

Hmmm. Makes sense. You can read the founder's story of the digital startup for yourself. But here's a  definition, thank you Google, from Wiktionary:

Etymology

From English theatre, French théâtre, German Theater, Italian, and Spanish teatro, Russian теа́тр (teátr), from Latin theātrum, from Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”).
Noun
teatro (accusative singular teatron, plural teatroj, accusative plural teatrojn)

1. a building where theatrical productions are performed, theater (theatre) (building)

1. everyone related to such a building, collectively (its actors, set designers, administrators, etc.)

1. the art of theater

Derived terms

• pupteatro (“puppet show”)

• somerteatro (“an outdoor theater”)

• teatra (“theatrical”)

• teatraĵo (“a theatrical production”)

• teatrejo (“theater, playhouse”)

• teatrotajloro (“costume designer”)

See also

• kinejo (“movie theater”)

Like I say, it makes sense: Essentially, the core concept of the therapy, which includes some lecture video, some meditative audio, and some reflection in answer to questions about one's life, is that telling and sharing one's story is a healing process. I tend to agree. Anyway, I want to share one part of my story that I shared in answer to a question about a difficult effort in my life, one that has not yet been fully realized and may never be. Here it is, copied and pasted from my online response:

 I have been advocating for being "together at a distance" through virtual worlds for nearly all of the twenty-five years I have been a teaching. I had elementary school students in a space called Quest Atlantis twenty years ago, and I recognized the value of immersive synchronous learning environments so strongly that I founded ISTE's Virtual Environments Network with at its core a network of educators primarily meeting in Second Life, a massive online avatar community where I have met many thought leaders who have become cherished colleagues and friends. That work still goes on, as the PLN's mission has expanded to all digital realities. I lead a daily get-together in a range of virtual spaces as we speak, today in Engage, which offers a platform on computer but primarily on 3D goggle devices, to watch educational TEDTalks and discuss them. A handful of educators from all over the world have spent two weeks in Second Life, then two in VirBELA, then these two in Engage, experiencing being together at a distance in different ways. We'll be in AltspaceVR the next two weeks then lord knows where after that. There are over 70 virtual synchronous worlds at latest count. Maybe we'll see them all. Getting the Education mainstream to pay attention has been a challenge but  I'm still plugging away, with a little help from my friends. Yes, it's been difficult and confusing, until it's not. Google all that. It's a thing, and in this time when we should be exploring and considering new alternatives for learning, it's a powerful thing.

There. I got that off my chest. Now I'm sharing it with you, emphasis added in post-production. I just laughed a little. Stay well and safe.

Be inspired

Dear fellow educators, and, well anyone.

This past two weeks I have been sharing Education-themed TEDTalks with a handful of other teachers who met with me in Second Life. Details about that are at the event's supporting website.

Yesterday my friend in Egypt (yes I was with her as an avatar although I am in Nashville and she is in Egypt--see how that works?) used the randomizing spinner I made at classtools.net to select the video. I was glad the event takes place over text chat and not over voice: Over the next hour, I found myself occasionally tearing up at the beauty of what we shared together. It was Gustavo Dudamel conducting the gigantic El Sistema youth orchestra, then its paired TEDTalk, El Sistema's founder Jose Abreu talking about how Venezuela's national orchestral youth program came to be and grew into a replicatable program.

I want to share both of these here.

You are welcome.


 Join us, Monday-Friday, every week, as we continue our journey through impassioned, inspirational TEDTalks every educator should watch at least once.

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.

Moving through 2019 (it's all going to be okay)

Blogslacker that I am, I drop in here on a Saturday morning to share with you that I'm actually really blogging more regularly at my classroom blog. To see a few things, head on over to the Falcons Tech Lab blog and subscribe to that one if you want to keep up. More and more, I'm focusing on my work at my work, trying to establish a solid learning environment for my ~800 students who cycle through it in the course of a school year in 9 week chunks.
It's a continually changing set of challenges, with 8 good-sized classes each 9 weeks, coming in in alternating A-day/B-day rotations. Our kids are largely in Hispanic-rooted families. Recently I polled a 9-weeks set of classes to see exactly how the language piece breaks down. This was in the way of an end of quarter reflections poll, using Google Forms as its vehicle. Look at this:

from Falcons Tech Lab classroom poll end of quarter 3, 2019

I do maybe have one little announcement. Those close to me may remember that I have been planning to retire at the end of the school year 2019-2020. Well, I'm rethinking that. Although I will have just turned 70 at the end of that May, I think I'm good to continue teaching, I like to joke, until they haul me out of my lab with a toe tag. I absolutely love my work, and now, after persevering through the extraordinarily challenging and frustrating two years that involved teaching in a very difficult inner-city elementary school and then working in two separate buildings with two less than optimal computer setups I am in a lab that is new (albeit with old, wi-fi connected, PCs) and beautiful and which I am making work to everyone's learning advantage. We got into Minecraft successfully this past quarter, and through initial forays into that platform I am inspired to tweak procedures and lessons to really take kids forward in digital citizenship, empathy, conceptual skills, and coding. Of course we will be elsewhere in each 9 weeks journey, but this development is, as I say, inspirational.

The weather over Spring Break, which ends tomorrow night, has been odd, which kept me off my favorite fishing lake, Lake Marrowbone; but that has led to some new organization of curriculum as well as time with my dear son Colin. Today, Saturday, Miranda and Tim are coming over to hang out and have a big vegetable dinner at home with us, then Colin and I will uber downtown to the Mother Church, Ryman Auditorium, to see and hear a favorite indie performer, Kurt Vile, with his band The Violators, opened by The Sadies. It'll be a great time. Tomorrow will be a good day, then I meet my ~200 new students Monday and we are off to new explorations and adventures in the Falcons Tech Lab. I'm good to go.

May you live and learn. Be Good and Have Fun...

ISTEVENFocus112018Valibrarian

For our November 2018 third Tuesday ISTE Virtual Environments Network Focus Session, we welcomed Valerie Hill, aka Valibrarian Gregg, to the VEN Headquarters for "Digital Citizenship: Sharing Stories through a Community Drum." 

Watch...

Then if you are of a resource-exploration mind, explore...

English Learners and EdTech

In my school, in my computer lab, over 65% of the students are English Language Learners. I struggle with ways to help them. The best results are when I can literally take a knee, point to their computer screens so that they are doing the clicking, and help them one-on-one. That can't always happen, since there are so many more of them in any of my 8 sections every 9 weeks than there are of me. 

One of my classrooms working on computer programming concepts

But help is on the way: An esteemed colleague at McMurray MS shared this information last week with all our teachers. I highly suggest allotting some planning time to explore this wealth of information about EdTech and ELL. If English Learners are in your classes, and they sure are in mine, it will be a help to you! Copying and pasting his email (from Mr. Jason Smith at McMurray Middle School:

FYI: “This toolkit brings suggestions and resources for educators who want to utilize new technology-based resources to help their EL students gain proficiency in English and meet academic goals. The toolkit offers five guiding principles for educators to apply in exploring new ways of working with and supporting EL students through technology. In addition, the toolkit has a companion—The Developer Toolkit which provides guidance for developers on the needs of English learner students and their teachers, tips on supports to include with their products that may be especially useful for English learners and ways they can communicate about their products with districts and educators of English learner students to facilitate adoption.”

https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-releases-study-and-accompanying-toolkit-ed-tech-english-learners

https://tech.ed.gov/edtech-english-learner-toolkits/

Enjoy, and comment here if you implement an idea that helps in this prominent area!

Why Educators Must Teach Discussion

Hi, y'all,

Much better now. I slept upstairs last night for the first time since my bicycle accident. My sleep app, Sleep App, tells me that last night was the first really good night's sleep I've had in over a week, since I installed the pesky (but useful) thing. On the mend.

I actually "slept in" until nearly 7 a.m. this morning, a rarity for me. Once I carefully negotiated the stairs to the living room, I logged into my computer and of course went straight to Facebook, where I visited the ISTE Virtual Environments Network page (subscribe for updates on all things 3D and VR). That led me to our diva Mary Howard's post on medium.com, here:


which I find absolutely fascinating and motivating. Good job, Mary Mary! Somehow, and I am unable to retrace my steps, though I believe it was a recommendation on a sidebar at medium.com, I hit upon Howard Rheingold's fantastic article about student discussion, explicitly hosting them on discussion forums (remember them?) rather than on social media platforms, aka Facebook. Fascinating. Read it. Let it guide you to move into this arena for building students' thinking and communication skills.

Do you find yourself motivated to move toward this in your classrooms? Then go all the way with your time right now. Set aside a half hour or so to read the whole 21 page Edward Gallagher article Rheingold references at the end of his short piece, Teaching Students to Talk to Each Other: Improving the Discussion Board. I PROMISE your time will be well spent. Gallagher's metaphors and instructional design are completely, ineluctably, inspirational and practical! Do it. Do it now!

ISTE2018 Chapter 3--Monday!

Monday was a huge day for us. We started out by racing to the conference center, arriving at 7:00am. Our "Ready Player 101: Imagining, Creating, and Sharing Worlds in Digital Reality" Playground was scheduled to open at 8 and run to 11:30. I had scoped out the space on Saturday and I was thoroughly satisfied that we had planned this playground more thoroughly than any in the past. Well, at least since they had been re-allocated a half-day time slot. Back in the day we had full days, and before that, 3 day Playground!

I set to work establishing a working station at the presentation area, which included a 40" or so flat panel video monitor with a single PA speaker on a post stand, a tall single cocktail table, and 18 upholstered cubes for audience seating. I had scheduled connectivity testing with the three (of six) presenters who were doing so remotely. Those went well--Skype worked great for voice, Second Life was doing okay despite a low frame rate of delivery, Sinespace functioned fine over Skype desktop share, and we were good to go with sound and video by the time testing was complete.

Before the Playground

After the Playground

 Rather than blow-by-blow the event, I'll just give you a set of references that will lend understanding:
The schedule (of our side):

Many of the presenters shared their slides and/or other resources, and those can all be accessed our conference "Digital Tote" folder--see

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QCC9XAzKs6eiGXcaxu1dtkX05dGct0_h

Description: AR/VR Resources, Virtual Environment ideas, Merge Cube Lessons and MORE!!

If there is something you need that you don't see there, please comment here and we'll add it to the folder.

It was crazy before it started. Sort of off in the corner during setup I was spared the pre-scheduled swarm (which proved to be prophetic), but as soon as Mary and Andy started setting up our tables they were swamped by eager conference attendees filled with curiosity and an eagerness to learn. As a result, vibrant learning sessions were already in full swing there by the time my first scheduled presentation was scheduled to begin--and it was to feature Mary and Andy! Our first flexibility was to point folks to their tables to join in on their learning sessions that way (lesson 1 of many).

My second scheduled presentation station event was difficult to "audience" (not that I can recall that word being verbed). The Playground was packed, both our side and the far side (from me) staffed by the Games and Learning PLN. Table presenters were talking and demonstrating on laptops a mile a minute. The G&S Network's presentation station, opposite ours, was full of folks, due both to Kae Novak's audience enlistment mic work and to the placement of that presentation station. I went to work on the mic, sounding a little like a carnival barker, and in a few minutes we had a tidy audience of 6 or 7 to watch Brant Knudsen login to Skype and to Second Life to share the fantastic Pirate Battle Game he uses in his classes at The University of Hong Kong. Yes, we were sharing LIVE from HONG KONG!

That is one of the best affordances of virtual worlds: a sense of presence at a distance. It's perceived co-location despite geographic remove. Brant was actually "with" us at 9am US CDT Time although he was also in Hong Kong at  10pm his own time. Groovy.

Meanwhile, the tables were rocking, and since the presenter from Unity3D had not arrived (and never did--they were swamped in their own way on the Expo floor. That turned out to be okay since there was lots of unity going on over on the G&S side), Bob Vojtek took over the 3rd table while Rosie Vojtek peopled the long table sharing info about Virtual Education Journal. Bob had an admirable pile of 3D gear laid out, including haptic controllers and a 3D camera, and he was walking people through 3D everything, many for the very first time. Andy was sharing CoSpaces and OpenSimulator with eager learners, and Mary was rocking her table with a pile of Mergecubes and sharing lesson plans for using them in the classroom. Weeeeeeeeeeeeee! Click to play:


Toward the end of the Playground, during the part where our connections at the presentation station was more or less taken over with a Second Life feed and the sound in SL failed us so I was looping the movies they were sharing there on the screen, I did a few minutes Facebook Live Video that I think may give you even more of a sense of how that active morning went. Here it is:


By the end of the event we agreed that it had been the best Playground in a long long time. We packed up all our gear and signage and tried to leave the space as clean and ready to set up as we found it.

Monday? Just getting started! Andy and I decided to run up to get lunch and we headed up to the place I had stopped into for dinner Saturday, Weather Mark Tavern. We had the burger lunch special-- delicious--and then got back down to the conference center for some Poster session cruising and Mary's presentation.

Mary did a stellar job with her presentation, "Is 3D for Me?" The ppt for it is available in her digital tote, and it is most definitely worth however many clicks it will take for you to get to it. I took a few pics there, too, as Mary shared everything from basic definitions of 3D to lesson plans replete with templates. Follow Mary's blog "Using Your Smarticles" to reap regular rewards from that connection. She's absolutely amazing:

Andy and I headed back up to the hotel for a bit of a rest. Shortly after we got there, our friend Caitlin Krause, just in from Switzerland, texted Andy and wanted to get together. She was going to run down (literally, run) from her hotel farther north to ours. When she texted she was here, we met her downstairs and decided to go for coffee. It was WINDY, though hot, and it was so great to catch up with her and where she is in her mindfulness journey as we strolled up to Starbucks. You can learn a bit about Caitlin at MindWise, her website, but I feel like I know more after spending only an hour or two with her. All her work, she is more and more discovering, boils down to the importance of human connections. At one point she mentioned that when people want to plumb her expertise about things mindfulness, she increasingly

finds herself talking about connections. It's a rarefied path she is on, and I look forward to following her as she nurtures her spirit and her charm and her intuitive grasp of how things work to move her work forward. Mary joined us, and later Caitlin's pal Andy. We talked a bit deep, laughed a lot, and learned what one another was doing. I suggested we head over to Buckingham Fountain (see that previous post for more) to enjoy the early afternoon. We did.

Are we still on Monday? I told you it would be a big day. Caitlin and Andy #2 left for their place and the three musketeers of virtual reality strolled inland in search of a place we could have a beer or two or three. Our presenting work was done (excepting one small Tuesday morning task for me, which turned out to be quite fun for me). We ended up at Kitty O'Shea's Pub, close to the hotel, for dinner--delicious--then at Buddy Guy's Legends, which I describe in detail in that much-referenced previous post, then put in for a good night's sleep. Here, though, you must see this (thank you, Mary!):

and this:

and finally, and good night (watch for Take 4, the finale, soon!) this:

Quickjumps: Chapter 1, Chapter 2,  Chapter 4

ISTE2018 Chapter 1--Extra-Conference Fun

Starting this on the plane on the way home from what I am currently feeling is my best ISTE ever. Because of that, I believe I will just blog a sentence or two about my best experiences at this best event. So. The first installment will mainly focus on my take on the Windy City and things that I did on this trip outside the realm of ISTE, what I'm calling "Extra-Conference Fun." Don't get me wrong, there's lots to talk about from the conference. If I try to get it down in one post, it'd be book length, so I intend to split it up. Let’s get started.

Chicago

I had never really been to Chi-town, and wow, was I wowed. I booked our hotel room months prior using booking.com (“our” refers to the estimable Andy Wheelock, a brother-from-another-mother and my partner in VEN antics and accomplishments) and I had been intrigued by the historic nature of the Congress Plaza Hotel, and it all worked out extraordinarily well. With very few exceptions, everywhere in this vibrant city that I went I was cordially greeted and well-served. I begin by listing topics and will come back and fill in. Wish me luck.

Chicago 360 & TILT

A while back, my good friend Dr. Helen Crompton responded to my Facebook post about TILT with a challenge. I of course accepted, because who wouldn’t lean 45 degrees out of a 94th story window to spend an hour with Helen? Here’s a Chicago Tribune news story about the attraction and here are a few pics:

photo: Dr. Helen Crompton

photo: Dr. Helen Crompton

Congress Plaza Hotel

...is haunted. I didn't have any experiences my first two nights, but Sunday night, when Andy had arrived, we'd popped out to South Loop Pub for a sandwich and a beer (thanks, Mave, for the friendly service and for being our first of many Irish servers in Chicago) and retired. We slept soundly, but sometime during the night the toilet flushed. It wasn't Andy and it wasn't me, so our only logical conclusion is that the haunt had to go potty. Or maybe it was that gangster who was drowned in a different toilet in the hotel. Built in 1893, it's loaded with history and by gum, despite some cosmetic update needs, we enjoyed staying there. I booked 'way early through booking.com, and we enjoyed a rate that was around half of the standard one! I'm just making it up about the drowned gangster.

DIvvY

I discovered DIvvY (clever spelling with the two v's lower case emphasizing the DYI) after I had done several Lyfts and immediately after my first one in prime time--EXPENSIVE!) and it both saved my wallet and supported my efforts to lose weight. I had lost around 8 pounds with a new daily workout regimen prior to hitting Chicago and though I gained most of it back #eatingChicago it would have been much worse if I hadn't converted some of that fine food to leg muscle with DIvvY. Bike racks are all over the place and at $15 +tax one can hop on a 3 speed bike and just GO, with unlimited 3 hour rides. Convenience, ease of use, and fun=10 of 10. There was one glitchy day my last one when the nearest bike rack was full and the ensuing efforts to grab a bike frustrated my efforts to get to the conference center for my Volunteer shift (I never made it and was excused but I did get to keep the cool deep purple teeshirt). The app tells you where the racks are and how many bikes are there, but it doesn't update that number often enough and I passed up the nearest rack which was full but down/offline/locked to hit the next two which showed two and four bikes respectively but were empty when I got there. Fix that, DIvvy! 

Lyft

Lyft was my go-to "I'm running late and I need to get there as fast as I can" tool. The drivers were almost uniformly friendly and capable. And Andy and I were easily able to hit the "Share" button on the app so we kept our 50/50 deal alive and well easily.

Yolk

Best. Breakfast. Ever. Great service from Sophia, and we ordered identical breakfasts. Unless your dietary inclinations forbid, don’t pass up the following, scarfed from the breakfast menu online.

CORNED BEEF HASH & EGGS House made corned beef, seasoned potatoes, green pepper and onion. Two eggs any style. Toast, pancakes or english muffin.|14breakfast. 

Awesome! Go Yolk!

Buddy Guy's Legends
If I had to pick my favorite "non-curricular" event of the conference it may be a tie, but the tie would be broken by a signed first-day-of-release vinyl album and a picture with the man himself. Andy and Mary and I had just popped in for a beer at the bar and, being poor teachers, were inclined to balk at the ten dollar cover charge, though we paid up and found three of the only very few seats left in the house. Tables were full and we had the clear intuition that something was going on in the club: full tables on Monday night? It was announced that it was "Jam Night" and the band onstage commenced to hammering out some right fabulous blues. A bit later on it was announced that the 82 year-old Buddy was at the bar. We all turned and saw him, sitting quietly with a small entourage around him, dressed snazzily in a black shirt and white pants. The announcer also said that his new album "Buddy Guy: The Blues is Alive and Well," had dropped today and was available for purchase on vinyl and CD at the cashier stand. I stood up, walked over, and purchased the vinyl, a heavy gauge double record set with a simple design featuring full cover photographs of Buddy on each face. While I was paying the cashier, a man behind the counter ripped off the shrink wrap and grabbed a sharpy then walked over to the bar and Buddy signed it! I honestly think I bought the first copy sold at Buddy Guy Legends! A few minutes later Mary grabbed my hand and walked me over to approach Buddy Guy. "You have a big fan here, Mr. Guy, would you let me take your picture with him?" That happened. Thank you, Mary!!! Here's the proof:

Buckminster Fountain

My first day in Chicago, my first "wake up in Chicago" day, the weather was so gorgeous I decided to bike around South Loop, enjoying the lovely gardens, the paved bike trails, the wholly beautiful lakeshore, and Buckminster Fountain. Donated to the city and fired up in 1927, it is a memorial to Clarence F. Buckingham by his philanthropist sister, and it is recognized as one of the largest memorial fountains in the world. I took a 3D image on my iphone with the Occipital3D app and, despite some missing patches it turned out pretty well:

Visit https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10217579388335535&l=78217a847a for the 3D version

The Bean

I had heard about it, had made foiled plans to visit it with a colleague, and I had to see it up close. I biked over up the bike trail north then cut underneath a dark overpass to get to Cloud Park where the Bean resides. Once there, after a couple failed attempts, I had a decent Facebook Live 2 minute video. Watch ...

I think the Bean is a great place to leave off. Next episode I will focus on the fantastic conference itself.
G'day!

Quickjumps: Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4