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.

Sharing a Start Page for Exploring Virtual Environments

I've been working on this work in progress for quite some time. In preparation for ISTE18 in Chicago, Illinois, here it is. Enjoy...

ISTE VEN and G&S Teaser

Good day.

As we approach the International Society for Technology in Education's annual conference dates, this year to be convened in San Antonio, Texas, I'm helping a very active team plan what I believe will be the most complex and intriguing Playground in ISTE history, this year's Virtual Environments and Games & Simulations Playground. In the course of doing so, I'm poking around the internetz (sic) to help me gear up.

I found this archive of a livestream from the 2014 conference and went down that particular rabbit hole to watch the whole 24 minutes. There's some great stuff there and I want to share it, random as it may be. That's how we roll.

Enjoy...

Keep one eye on the web for the live stream (note the two words, since the platform has not yet been decided upon--thought FbLive and Periscope are current top runners) of this year's Playground. You won't want to miss it.

"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.

FABulous Video Describing Second Life and World of Warcraft in Education

Hello and happy May to you and to yours. May Day! May Day!

Give yourself the gift of viewing this 13 minute video comparing SL and WoW and giving specific examples of how learning and teaching can be more immersive. I hate to use the "F" word (Fun) because it somehow seems to lower the educational value in the minds of some readers. But you're not one of those, now, are you?

I lifted this embed from the new issue of Virtual Education Journal, and give yourself that gift as well--it's 149 pages of excellent reading. Get it? http://issuu.com/edovation/docs/april_2014_vej

From Matthew Poole, aka Cyrus Hush:

THE BEST ISTE EVER: Day 4 Reflections

I'll get a start on it. Day 4 was the bomb. Here's the "moneyshot" again  to prove it:

Tuesday morning I actually slept in until 7:30, had a good workout, and dressed smartly for my photo shoot at 11:20. I'd been asked by ISTE to be a poser and you know me, I couldn't resist. But that did mean I was in slacks and had to haul my blue blazer around all day. That's okay though, I look forward to recognizing myself in some upcoming issue of Learning and Leading with Technology. If you check out last month's issue you'll see Andy Wheelock's personable self gracing the inside front cover--like that. You should also catch Andy's article from the May L&LT: http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/201205?pg=5#pg28

I actually had a sit  down breakfast at the Hilton's Riverwalk restaurant, and the breakfast wrap was good but I never had a coffee refill and no one actually checked in with me at any time. I had to flag down a waiter for a check after waiting patiently for 10 minutes. Food=4stars, Service=1.

Off I went, hiking to the Expo floor for my one and only pass through it. I was looking for ProctorU, a remote proctoriing service, but I never found their booth. I did find Atomic Learning and had a nice chat with a young rep who shared just what I was looking for--hundreds of tutorials on Microsoft Access. I have a new mission. I'll spend an hour or so every work day working through Access lessons until I can use that powerful database program to automate as much of my work @ MNPS Virtual School as possible. Right now we're spreadsheet-driven, and I want those spreadsheets to talk to one another. As we scale up to tens of thousands of students, that will be absolutely necessary. I will become an Access Power User, compliments of Atomic Learning.

robin henson..."i shoot people"

The photo shoot went great, with Robin Henson putting me at ease and taking dozens of shots to which I will have access once they are put up on a private flickr account for me. I sat for a video
interview with the gracious and professional Aaron Ragen-Fore, who asked me questions about my volunteering for ISTE and my involvements with the communities therein. I hope any of my responses will be helpful to the organization.

Then it was off to the Playground!

My plan, developed over the course of the past several months, was to host a central presentation area, run by incoming Lowly High Grand Poobah Kae Novak, featuring a rotating focus on the six learning stations, per this description from the program:

Outline
Current plans are to run a learning station for each of six platforms with two experts in person and at least one "inworld." Each station will have a poster highlighting its contents and a display-connected computer and all stations will be connected to the main presentation display via an ongoing Google Hangout. We'll rotate featured presentations at the main display in 25 minute sessions throughout the playground's time. All this will, of course, be piped into Second Life for an audience of avatars representing participants who are educators from around the globe. The Google Hangout Live feature will make our featured sessions available globally via YouTube and also archive the entire thing. We are still accepting recommendations and applications to share, but as this event has in the past run as long as 3 full days we are certain that there will be no shortage of content. This work is so dynamic that we will be working right up to the start of the event to optimize it! Current planned stations (subject to change): Second Life, Minecraft, OpenSimulator/Kitely, QuestAtlantis/Active Worlds, World of Warcraft/Games, and Madly Miscellaneous (wildcard!).

ISTE SIGVE Virtual Environments Playground 2013, a set on Flickr.

As you can see from the photos, we had a good deal of traffic as our volunteers shared non-stop. The makeup of the Playground did not hold its shape though. Kae delegated her presentation work station to the capable Chris Luchs, and the audio of the Google Hangout just could not handle the room configuration. Jimi Hendrix was in the room from the start, and feedback ended up being our biggest enemy. Chris at various times fell back to Livestream, and I took over the second presentation station with my Second Life piece (hosting a 30 minute video of students sharing their perspectives about working in Second Life with David Deeds of Mexico City and a long interview with  Gord Holden, who is up to amazing things in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Cynthia Colongne personed the Madly Miscellaneous station, and she held forth on everything from Scratch to Moses to Cloud Party. Andy Wheelock shared his OpenSimulater build of the Anne Frank home, and immersive experential field trip for students and teachers, as well as Kitely. Peggy Sheehy was a gem on World of Warcraft in Schools, taking over the main presentation stage for a substantial piece on that, Marianne Malmstrom, of course, had ringers in the form of actual live students sharing their spaces in Minecraft, including Zoe, the lovely daughter of the lovely Malinda McCormick, whose avatar was among the first I met when I dedicated my Second Life explorations to ISTE. Bronwyn Stuckey presented Quest Atlantis Remixed and then hosted an hour long Minecraft Meetup over at the Second Life stage. And over in a corner Rosie and Bob Vojtek were mad at it with interviews and features on the release of the new 194 page Virtual Education Journal.

Once our time was up, we held a brief annual meeting, raising Kae to her primary leadership position and sharing new initiatives, such as a MOOC focus, Minecraft research and development, and more.

 After the Playground, several of us headed over to a SIG Reception, where we enjoyed a nice spread of food and chatted with volunteer folks at ISTE, meeting up with Lauren and Heidi, the two dynamic ladies who had done so much over the past months to shepherd us through to this day. I was back at the hotel early that night, in an attempt to catch up on some rest before tomorrow's all-day ETLO Online Learning Institute, at which we were to host a round-table discussion on MNPS Virtual School. So you see, we are not yet done. But we shall be soon!

Thank you for staying with me as I work out some reflections and share my great excitement about ISTE 2013 in San Antonio, Texas. I'm going to hit "Publish" here but may well come back with some more detail as it sparks in my old brain. Day 5, the final day of ISTE2013, coming up next.

THE BEST ISTE EVER -- Day 1 Reflections

Day 1, Saturday, June 22nd.

My stalwart MNPS Virtual Team, consisting of Dr. James Witty, Adrienne McNew, Michael Terry, Anna Harris, and Christine Van Loon, met at the airport, as described in an earlier post. After a fairly uneventful flight,

Adrienne, Chris, and Anna ponder culinary possibilities

we disembarked around 15 minutes late and cabbed it to the Wesin Riverwalk hotel. Due to the late schedule and the even more damaging late flight, I missed an invitation only SIG Core Volunteer event, the first of several, but I was looking forward to the event, which included a riverboat tour.That said, we got all checked in, walked down to the conference center, got our registration out of the way, and popped over the Hyatt, were there were to meet later for an MNPS district get-together. Of course, all my Virtual Environments peeps were standing out front and I got my first hugs of the week. Marianne, Malmstrom, Kae Novak, Sarah Rolle, Chris Luchs, the list goes on, and Andy Wheelock, my brother from another mother. They were wrangling Peggy Sheehy, on edge inside working on the next morning's EPIC Leadership event, so we headed off for dinner, and ended up at Durty Nellies Irish Pub. GREAT service, wild piano bar music and a full house. Afterwards we headed back to the Hyatt to the Presidential Suite where we met up with some of the 20 or so members from our school district in incoming ISTE President Kecia Ray's suite for beverages and hearty chat about our plans for the week. So Saturday, check, travel and social happenings.

Who is this mystery man and what is he doing at EPIC Leadership: Beyond the Hype of Gamification

Cognizant of an upcoming  early morning, I headed back to the hotel and got a relatively reasonable bedtime. Stay tuned for further reflections upon some amazing content starting (what?) 7 am on Sunday morning at THE BEST ISTE EVER. A teaser:

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.

The 3rd Issue of Virtual Environments Journal is HERE!

A beautiful new issuu (sic) of SIGVE's Virtual Education Journal? With two articles by moi and 60 pages of some of the most engaging introductions to what's happening in 3D worlds learning and teaching ever shared with the public?

Bring it on!!!

And thanks, Rosie and Bob Vojtek. FYI, both of those fine folks, who produce VEJ as a labor of love, are vibrant educational community leaders, public school administrators in their "real" lives and active volunteers for educational innovation on an international scale. See what they and many other innovators are up to in virtual worlds. You'll be amazed and impressed, I warrant.

Open publication - Free publishing

Please share profusely. And do visit ISTE Island in Second Life before  it moves to a new, smaller (but most likely more robust) space. You'll want to build a few virtual memories from the heyday of our tribe, now, wontcha?

Cross-posted (and elaborated upon) from Oh!VirtualLearning!

Immersive Australia: Education--A new modality for learning, collaboration, and knowledge production

I came across this report via the SLED listserv the other day and emailed its author, Mandy Salomon, to request a copy. She promptly emailed me one, and when I read it...well, read it yourself!

Thank you, Mandy, for sharing so openly your hard work and excellent research. IIA_Edu_18Dec

Web 2.0 for US! Session at Martin Professional Development Center 101910

I had a great time yesterday facilitating an all-day Web 2.0 (and beyond) session for 18 MNPS teachers. The participants were a very nicely balanced mix of elementary, middle, and high school teachers and we got right into it at 8:37 a.m. The class was supposed to get underway at 8:30 but my watch (this has never before happened) inexplicably stopped at 8:16 and I kept glancing at it thinking, "we have a few more minutes" until I thought "It's been 8:16 for quite some time. Has time stopped?"

Off we went. The session was guided by the PowerPoint/GooglePresentation embedded here and underscored by dialog in a live chat room at http://chatterous.com. I have now pasted the chat log into slides at the end of the pressie and added a few replies to questions or comments I didn't see because I was sharing my little heart out up front of the room. The final slide shares a bit of my own reflection on the day's work.

Please take a few minutes (11, which you will not regret) to view the Ken Robinson presentation we started the day with, because as I said, "I want you to know where I'm coming from..."

Thanks again to all my wonderful new colleagues and my hearty encouragement to you to keep the faith and keep your change moving in the right direction. On of our main support structures at Virtual Learning is "Do the next right thing for our students." You know what it is. You are good teachers.

Here is:

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

Federal Trade Commission releases "Virtual Worlds and Kids..."

Alerted once again by my fine PLN on Twitter, I took the time to read this extensive report and I believe it is so worth sharing that I am herein expending even more attention on a brief review. The report is entitled "Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks." One might think that the Federal Trade Commission would have other more pressing topics to pursue than underage exposure to adult materials in virtual worlds, but considering some of the committee's findings I have to commend that body for its efforts here. I think the report is not only accurate assessment of the current state of the field but also balanced and objective beyond reproach. I'm sure we can look forward to further explorations by government agencies considering that: *"The number of youth participants in online virtual worlds is projected to grow to over 15 million by 9. 2013, with the most significant growth among the pre-teen (ages 3-11) segment of users. See Virtual Worlds News, Teen, Pre-teen Migration to Virtual Worlds On the Rise, supra note 8." and *"Virtual worlds consultancy kZero estimates that the number of registered accounts in the virtual 8. worlds sector totaled 579 million globally in the second quarter of 2009. This figure represents an increase of 38.6% from the previous quarter when global registered accounts totaled 417 million." 

 This report, available online in a 92 page .pdf, is the result of a direct assignment from Congress:"The Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act (Public 1. Law 111-8, enacted March 11, 2009) directed the Federal Trade Commission to submit a report to the Senate and House Committees on Appropriations regarding “virtual reality web programs.” Specifically, the statement read: Concerns have been raised regarding reports of explicit content that can be easily accessed by minors on increasingly popular virtual reality web programs. The FTC is directed to issue a consumer alert to educate parents on the content that is available to children on virtual reality web programs. In addition, no later than nine months after enactment of this Act, the FTC shall submit a report to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations discussing the types of content on virtual reality sites and what steps, if any, these sites take to prevent minors from accessing content."

The report itself runs only 34 pages, but I advise the careful reader to take the time to explore the exhaustive endnotes as well. Anyone who has any interest at all in the educational uses of virtual worlds needs more than a passing acquaintance with the information in this document. I would go further: Any parent of a child with access to a computer connected to the internet needs to read this document.

The methodology of the investigation is itself a model for further researchers. An initial survey of virtual worlds yielded 187 possible targets, which were pared down to 30, mostly on the criterion of popularity, based on reported number of unique visits. "Because one of the worlds, Adventure Rock, could not be accessed by the Commission’s researchers, and two other worlds, Webkinz and MyePets, required the purchase of a plush toy for registration, the Commission excluded these worlds from its survey, resulting in a sample of 27 online virtual worlds." Researchers also communicated directly with the hosting companies of six of the worlds, gaining further insight into policies and procedures. Here's a list of all the worlds included in the sample:

9 Dragons1

9dragons.acclaim.com

AQ

www.aq.com

Bots1

bots.acclaim.com

Buildabearville

www.buildabearville.com

Dofus

www.dofus.com/en/

Gaia Online

www.gaiaonline.com/

Habbo

www.habbo.com

Handipoints

handipoints.com

IMVU

www.imvu.com

Kaneva

www.kaneva.com

Maid Marian

maidmarian.com

Meez

www.meez.com

Millsberry

www.millsberry.com

My Diva Doll1

www.mydivadoll.com

Neopets

www.neopets.com

Pixiehollow

pixiehollow.go.com

Poptropica

www.poptropica.com

Red Light Center

www.redlightcenter.com

Runescape

www.runescape.com

Second Life

www.secondlife.com

Secret of the Solstice2

solstice.outspark.com

Stardoll

www.stardoll.com

There

www.there.com

Vivaty

www.vivaty.com

Wind Slayer2

windslayer.outspark.com

YoVille

www.yoville.com

Zwinktopia

www.zwinky.com

Directed to explore for sexually explicit content and violently explicit content for set amounts of time, utilizing any means possible, the researchers did so registered as adults, then registered as teens, and finally registered as children. They recorded their efforts using Camtasia software and in an extensive Access database form, then their findings were replicated by another researcher to ensure a "99.5% accuracy." Findings are reported in text accompanied by charts and tables, with screenshots of registration screens and more.

Again, this is not as much a review as it is an invitation for you to read and understand committee's findings for yourself. That said, I don't think it's a spoiler to share the report's introduction to its concluding recommendations to Congress and the industry:

As reported above, the Commission found very little explicit content on virtual worlds open to children under age 13. The Commission found a greater concentration of explicit content in worlds that permit teens to register, and where teens are likely to congregate. Although some of the teen- and adult-oriented online virtual worlds in which the Commission observed explicit content have taken steps to restrict minors’ access to explicit content, their efforts have not fully succeeded. Virtual world operators can do more to limit youth exposure to explicit content. Given important First Amendment considerations, the Commission supports virtual world operators’ self-regulatory efforts to implement these recommendations.

The report goes on with recommendations that include establishing more effective age and content filtering mechanisms, creating better age-segregating structures, employing full-time inworld moderators with policing tools, and creating better parent and youth education. All good measures, all contributing to the value of this timely and informative report. My own recommendation? Read it!

crossposted from Oh!VirtualLearning!

Nashville Sign Project in ReactionGrid

Please visit and comment! Here's a little video that explains a little 'speriment I put together to share a small printmaking exhibit from a high school art class led by Lesley Patterson-Marx. Extending the audience is the goal, as well as encouraging comment on a global scale. We'll see how it flies at Scottsperiment Island in Reactiongrid!

Find more videos like this on Virtual Environment Education Videos!

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...

Story Quest Next Friday!

Attention, writers who are in Second Life!

[5:59] IM: Jenaia Morane: (Saved Sun Mar 15 00:31:08 2009) My name is Jenaia Morane. I'm a writer and teacher in RL and the founder of The Virtual Worlds Story Project here in SL (www.tvwsp.com).
[5:59] IM: Jenaia Morane: (Saved Sun Mar 15 00:33:40 2009) Next week on March 20 I will be celebrating World Storytelling Day with a Story Quest. Writers will choose from one of five genres and travel all over SL to get clues to write their stories. The day will conclude with storytelling, prizes, music, and dance. I'm hoping you might help me spread the word. I'll drop info about the event in your inventory, but please feel free to contact me if you have questions. And of course I'd love to see you at the Quest ;-)

Here's the notecard Jenaia dropped me, "heatened up" a bit with working links:

The Virtual Worlds Story Project Presents: The Second Life Story Quest

The Virtual World Story Project is pleased to announce its first annual Story Quest, to be held on World Storytelling Day, March 20, 2009.

With a goal of helping writers and storytellers imagine, craft, and share Second Life stories, the Quest will lead participants along one of five Story Trails. Along each trail will be a series of Enchanted Books. Touching the books will not only provide information to include in the story, but clues that lead to other points on the trail as well.

The Quest will allow participants to choose from one of four genres, and be held across multiple sims in Second Life. The Quest's final stop will be Karuna (the new HIV/AIDS sim) where participants can sit in scenic surroundings to write, submit their stories, and/or get help from writing coaches.

The day will conclude with story readings, the awarding of prizes, live music, and dancing.

This event is ideal for educators wishing to help students learn to write well and experience the immersive and creative possibilities inherent in virtual environments.

DETAILS

Date: Friday, March 20th

LOCATION: Starts on Storybook Island OR Karuna (use either of the two LMs to pick up your Quest instructions)

STORYBOOK LM: Storybook Island, Storybook Island (66, 187, 21)
STORYBOOK SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Storybook%20Island/129/70/25

KARUNA LM: Karuna, Karuna (202, 73, 22)


Start Time: Story Sleuths can pick up their first clues on Storybook Island at Midnight.

End Time: The Quest ends at 5:00 pm SLT. That is the time that stories must be submitted. The rest of the festivities, which include story reading, live music, and dancing commence immediately after. The awards ceremony will be held at 7:00 pm.

Questions: Please IM Jenaia Morane or drop her an email at: jenaia@tvwsp.com

"Why Second Life?" Presentation to the Center for Science Outreach and School for Science and Math

My presentation to colleagues at Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach went pretty darned well!

I'll flesh this out more in a bit, and I have most of it on audio so it'll likely be our Snacks4theBrain! episode 80, but here's the slideshare, ya'll (with the caveat that I talked over the slides like a madman and had a great deal of fun doing it!).

Why Second Life Scott Merrick For VU CSO

View more presentations from Scott Merrick. (tags: virtual worlds cso)

There'll probably be a tidied up version by the time of the podcast. Several links came to mind as I was chatting the dozen or so folks up. Thanks to Ronee Francis, my new friend and colleague at the Vanderbilt Discover Archive for coming in, and thanks so so much to our driving force, Dr. Virginia Shepherd, Director of the CSO, for being there. Her cancellation of a trip to Cleveland likely had nothing to do with my little session, but it sure was good to see her there...

Oh, for grins, here's the Prezi.com version, which I worked on for hours and had to set by the wayside due to its automatic and currently apparently unfixable tendency to truncate long URLs. I have it on good authority the makers of Prezi are working on the issue and I hope to use this fun and "non-linear" presentation tool more in the near future!

Here, by the way, is the URL for the ISTE/SL beta orientation I mentioned a couple of times. If you go there to create your avatar, you land first of all at ISTE Island, a great place to start out!


Cheers!

Do Students Like "Technology X"???

Daniel Livingstone produces "Learning Games," the prolific blog that is currently the "Blog-o-the-Month" at ISTE Island's "Blogger's Hut," the little property my Second Life avatar (Scottmerrick Oh) manages for ISTE. A recent post of his, entitled "Do Students Like Technology X? Do they need to?" illustrates the incisive nature of his thought and regular "shareout."

In it, he cites Judy Robertson at Heriot-Watt University, in Edinburgh, UK, who has recently made comments on Virtual World Watch discussing the results of a survey she took of her first and second year computer programming students about their attitudes concerning Second Life. The students' opinions go some distance toward helping understand the puzzling demographic of Second Life, one which puts the average age (and the most active age group) of SL users somewhere around 41 (according to the most recent study I could find). Students reported reluctantly appreciating the value of the platform, but generally disliked it as a whole. Remember, these are 17-19 year-olds. In my personal experience, irl, I have an uphill battle to convince anyone younger than 40 to even look at Second Life, though I don't have access to many first year college students. What has been your own experience?

Linden Lab could do well to value comments and surveys like this in high regard, in addition to watching age averages as they seem to trend upward slowly. SL creator, Philip Rosedale, by the way, was born in September, 1968, which by my math puts him smack-dab in the user-average "playing field." Is this a koinkidink? I wonder...

PLEASE vote!

Hey, all,

My other blog, the one about Virtual Environments in the service of education, has just garnered a nomination for Best Use of Virtual Worlds in the Edubloggers Awards 2008 race. I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd click on over to the site and vote for "Oh! Virtual Learning" so I might take home the "Eddie" in that category this year. Voting goes through December but I'm all for pulling out ahead early and staying there. Not that I'm competitive, heheheee. Here's the link:

THANKS!!!

Fantastic "Case Study" Features "Teen Perspectives on Second Life"

I'm going to cross-post this to "Oh! Virtual Learning" just because it's so cool. Seldom do I find extremely detailed treatments of education in Virtual Environments, and this one is nothing short of extraordinary.

Steve Collis is "a French/English teacher, and 'Head of Innovation' at Northern Beaches Christian School and its innovation arm, the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning" in Sydney, Australia. He recently visited my good friend and colleague Peggy Sheehy at her school in Ramapo, New York, to examine how she has become the nation's premier "virtual pioneer" in using VE to facilitate teaching and learning for her young students. He reported out a week ago at his blog, "HappySteve" (a great name for a blog!, subtitled "Teachers, Technology, Learning"), and I want to urgently suggest (is that subtle enough) that you go visit the particular blogpost (permalink) to view his video documentation. Bookmark it, share it, shout it to the world(s).

Steve, who doesn't know it yet but soon will be roped into my own Professional Learning Network, says of his travels,

"If there is one thing that has stood out to me from her observations on the educational value of a 3D virtual world, it's the notion of a "Psychosocial Moratorium" - a term coined by Erik Erikson. The idea is that the social space of a 3D virtual online world is particularly 'safe', and therefore particularly beneficial for nurturing the confidence of adolescents trying to figure out who they are, what they are good at, what they stand for and what they are are known for. As someone who has spent countless hours in the safety of online environments, I know exactly what she means. As of November 2008 I am seeking to set up Teen Second Life for my school, and can't wait to see how the students respond. Peggy has many anecdotes of students who have 'found themselves' through what is essentially a scaffold to constructing social identity (my wording there)."

When I first met Peggy, at NECC2007 in Atlanta, Georgia (if memory serves me correctly), I was struck by the same sort of impression. This is a passionately visionary educator, a librarian by training, who has struck out virtually (sorry) on her own and gathered legions of followers to create a productive, successful model of how teaching and learning can differ--now, in the early 21st century--from the stale, tried-but-no-longer-true, instructor-centered pedagogies of our great-great grandparents' schools.

Go visit "Happy Steve" and see what I mean. Literally!

To warm you up, here's an embed of the first in the series of no less than 7 short videos: