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.

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.

University of Western Australia Machinima Awards 2018

Hey, y'all,

I logged into SL this morning to an announcement of an upcoming event and I went there.

You may or may not know that the ISTE Virtual Environments Network meets most every 3rd Tuesday of most every month to view and share machinima. What is that? It's film made from video in online games or virtual worlds. This hour was the culmination of a year of competition and the organizers were clearly dedicated to the art of machinima.

I had to go. Now I have my work cut out for me (in spare time, certainly not in my work day as middle school Technology Teacher). I want to view as many of the winners as I can. I've browsed around a bit, and what I've glimpsed is nothing short of stellar. I have a link for ya.

The videos were originally archived for viewing at the site linked below, but it appears to have been taken down. I'm not sure why, but I can speculate: Second Life has been known to be a bit picky about websites using the moniker "SL" for any part of their names. So, skip to the bottom for a list I pulled out of an immense text chat log.

Here are the winners for the University of Western Australia's 2018 Machinima Awards, as judged by a panel of educators from diverse geolocations. The big winner is at the very end, just like the winners were presented!

Judges:

 - Chantal Harvey - Judging Panel Chair

- Harnake Hunspal - Freelance Producer and Director

- Tess Baxter  – Digital artist and PhD candidate in contemporary art at Lancaster University

- Craig Harbison – CEO of Diamond gate Films, 

The panel for the Merlion Prize was jointly led by Singh Albatross and Kaylee West. The panel for the PookyMedia Prize, led by Pooky Amsterdam (these winners are not shared because their links were not shared in text chat, and viewing them is, after all, the point of this post)

. 

The panel for the UWA Prize & Craft Prizes, was led by Janway Zifanwe.

AWARD FOR ENCHANTMENT: “Art and Transformation - a dialogue at intervals” by LAMPIHALER,  -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOb2XDFioOY

THE INNOVATION AWARD:  “A Night of TV” by SECRET RAGE of Dallas, Texas, USA -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHeYXFK5LGE

THE ARTISTRY PRIZE:  “Alcyon and Ceyx” by JOSEPH NUSSBAUM -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2oRAJF_qXQ

AWARD FOR RHYTHM: “Happy” by IONO ALLEN of France -- https://vimeo.com/250912097

ANTON MESTER AWARD: “Staring Into the Aperture” by VEYOT -- 

https://vimeo.com/239689140

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY: “MemesZ” by TANTRA SANGHA & M1NN0TAUR -- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYN5_W3iGes

EXPERIMENTAL FILM AWARD: “Change Dreams” by ELLE THORKVELD -- 

https://vimeo.com/246845975

BEST DOCUMENTARY STYLE ART FILM: “A Journey from the Past: Singapore” by DIANA ROSE of Jakarta, Indonesia -- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fImRu5VW9g

UWA SPECIAL PRIZE (3-way tie): 

     “For Love and Art” by AMELIE MARCOUD -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VLT4rPnVag

     “Never Say Never” by SUZIE ANDERTON of Inworld Films -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-llbqYfZpk

     “The Amalgamation of Objects” by CHIC AEON of Corvallis, Oregon, USA -- https://www.slartist.com/slartistuwa-amalgamation-of-objects_bd7a7f678.html

Slartist@UWA Machinima Challenge SLARTIST@UWA MACHINIMA CHALLENGE WINNERS ARE:

5TH PLACE: “Cerulean” by Bryn Oh of Canada -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhIKEak5p3Q

4PLACE: “Before the World was Made” by ISABELLE CHEREN of the UK -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=042sdxgvBIU

3RD PLACE: ”The River of Forgetting” by NATASCHA RANDT and KARIMA HOISAN of Gelsenkirchen, Germany and San Isidro del General, Costa Rica -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikl7lnCOP1k

2nd PLACE:  “Serendipity” by TUTSY NAVARATHNA of Pondicherry, India -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMMmbpwlMrc

1ST PLACE: The WINNER of the Slartist@UWA Machinima Challenge: Art of the Artists: “Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) and Intrusion Detection System(IDS)” by GLASZ DECUIR -- https://vimeo.com/249233312

Enjoy! 

Midnight Reef in Second Life

Enjoying some virtual down time when I have real down time. :)

https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cFeX2RDFmc

Symbaloo Virtual Environments

Hey, y'll,
I spent a bit o' time over the weekend creating a Symbaloo mix for Virtual Environments. I think you might find it useful if you want to share some seminal resources on the topic. Embedding here:


You're welcome.

Article published at iste.org for educators new to learning and teaching in virtual worlds

Oh, yes oh yes oh yes:

Machinima by Students or Teachers? Submit to the Force!

Machinima Submissions are Now Open!

2015 Categories
2015 Submission Form 

It's Machinima mania at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference this year! Machinima - it’s a portmanteau of the words machine and cinema. It is the screencapturing and editing of 3D games and virtual environments. Are your students or maybe you making these? They can be made in Minecraft, Roblox, World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online or any other video game or 3D environment.

Here is an example of one of the past winners. Lego Universe- Crumple’s Pet Skunk Tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llf1zfk4nmQ See the learning happening there. We’d love for you and your students to submit your Machinima videos. You need not attend the conference to participate. If you or your students are especially prolific in creating Machinima, you can also submit your Machinima channel.

At the 2015 ISTE Conference in Philadelphia, we will be announcing the winners of the 2015 EduMachinima Fest on Monday, June 29, 5:30–6:30 pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

The EduMachinima Fest is a new media Film Festival showcasing games and virtual environment formats combined with cinematic arts to teach, inform, entertain and inspire. The EduMachinima Fest features both Student and Educator entries in a variety of categories including digital storytelling, tutorials, and narrated gameplay. Technical achievements such as editing, screen capture (machinimatography), sound and special effects, are also recognized. Machinima provides students with an opportunity to express themselves creatively and/or demonstrate content knowledge in sandbox game environments like Minecraft, MMO’s like World of Warcraft, and virtual environments such as Kitley and OpenSim. 

Machinima can include real-life video and greenscreen, but always includes some form of digital environment. The fest will feature individual and collaborative works as well as channels with series designed to tell a story or instruct.

If you have any questions, please contact Kae Novak at gamesmooc@gmail.com.

So copied from  http://connect.iste.org/blogs/kae-novak/2015/04/23/2015-machinima-fest By Kae Novak posted Thu, Apr 23, 2015 08:39 PM

Working Outside the Space Outside the Space Outside of the Box--

I just returned home from what I'm calling a "drive-by keynote." I flew out of Nashville early yesterday morning with a short connection in Philadelphia, had dinner with my dear buddy Andy Wheelock in Fredonia, NY, slept two doors down from his lovely home in a beautiful bed and breakfast (Edwards Waterhouse Inn), had breakfast with his two wonderful daughters, rode the 45 minutes with him to West Seneca, delivered my 45 minute keynote, attended Andy's GREAT session "60 Google Apps in 60 minutes," served up a technology-challenged but well attended/received session on 3D Virtual Learning Environments, and flew home, taking a break to enjoy dinner at Wolfgang Puck's in the Chicago airport. I sit here pretty durned pleased that the twitrecord will show (search #outtheboxdw15) the keynote was fun and informative and inspiring and not just for me. Andy streamed it over Google Hangouts, so...

Thanks, NYSCATE and all those dedicated teachers bringing good change to Western NY. It starts with you!

And here's a link to the .pdf version of my presentation.
All the videos included in it can be viewed in the "video" folder at the same link.
Finally, here's my brief share during my noon workshop session with Andrew Wheelock the same day: Enjoy, and Try Something new!

NYSCATE Digital Wave in March--KEYNOTE! and omg

I'm pretty buzzed. Thanks to my friend Andy Wheelock, primarily, I'm sharing my first (and maybe only--I don't aspire to be a road warrior) conference keynote address at the NYSCATE Digital Wave conference this March 13. They folks there shared info in a flyer today (see above). You can read it in the copy I saved in my Dropbox.

There's so much going on this spring.

Top of the list is my lovely daughter's wedding to much loved Tim Buell in April. I'm proud and happy and already rehearsing my toast, which I'll likely flub despite the rehearsal.

Before we get there, though, there's the first annual v-TEACH Leadership Institute Feb. 27-28, then the aforementioned keynote in Western New York. I will also be presenting a session about 3DVLEs there. Be there or be non-virtually square.

Colin had his first day today at what one knowledgeable singer-songwriter friend categorized as "the best recording studio in the world" this very day. He'll complete 6 months of daily coursework at Blackbird Academy and emerge expert in studio recording. He's recording 8 songs now with Reel Love recording studio here, on his own with Bad Ladies, and I can't wait to hear the final runs. Lee Ann and I are the Executive Producers, investing toward the sure day when the world embraces his immense talent.

Lee Ann will be opening the Tin Wings storefront in the Nashville The Nations Neighborhood any week now. Prepare to be amazed and blessed by enhanced access to artful food of the highest order. I took in a test kitchen batch of "Butternut Squash Crumble Bars" today and the verdict from colleagues was unanimous: Tin Wings Worthy!

We'll put the house on the market shortly after Miranda's wedding. It's too much house for the two of us and we need a moving adventure. We're tired of walking past rooms we don't use!

There's stuff brewing at MNPS Virtual School I can't even talk about, but I can talk about my excitement at taking over our Middle School World History class as v-teacher. I'm diving into that full force, finally able to do what I've helped others do for years now--teach online. The spring semester consists of ancient history topics like the Roman Empire, Indian and Chinese dynasties, and Eastern and Western Africa. I'm of course working my way through the course content now, in order to be familiar with what the students have been working with. It's very neat stuff! It can be better, I know, and I'll work to make it so.

Julius Scottus

Keep on doing the next right thing. That's what's driving me.

#thisisnotaholidayupdate

Two Wonderful Professional Development Opportunities!

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

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

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





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

Learn from Leaders in

Our Online PD Community

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

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

ITEC in October Looks Promising

Here's something to blog about--old friend Leigh Zeitz emailed me the other day and invited me to share in a remote session at the Iowa Technology & Education Conference in October. I'll do so.

This "flipped" conference is built upon educational videos which are watched onsite and then augmented by a Skype or other technology-supported videoconferencing platform visit by the video's creator. For my session they selected my K12 Online Conference piece from last November. This prompted me to go back and revisit it and, what do you know, it's pretty interesting.

I've been pretty much removed from 3-D synchronous learning environments for the past year or more as my "real-life" work has captured my passion and focus, such as it is (that's a little joke for those who know me and my sometimes scattered attention span). I've been too busy with that to even propose a topic for this year's K12 Online Conference, which I see will be Keynoted by one of my very favorite Professional Learning Networkers, Shannon Miller. Sheesh, another online event for my calendar, albeit a distinctly necessary one.

In preparation for this session I plan to do some update research, so do stay tuned for that. Meanwhile, if you missed it, you can take that 20 minutes and catch the original here:



I for one am looking forward to ITEC, and to catching as much of the conference as possible, with luminaries and PLN colleagues Jeff Utecht and Kathy Schrock amongst the speakers. I'd actually love to get up to Iowa, but I can't see pulling away from the important work I'm doing at MNPS Virtual School to do so.

Thanks, Leigh and ITEC, for the invite, and I'll be there virtually and promptly!

"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!

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!!!

Vanderbilt Web Spiders Presentation

This morning I shared Second Life with a group of folks at Vanderbilt University called the "Web Spiders." They're interested in Web development. I got a warm reception for my contribution to their knowledge base and even received applause for my little machinima about the CSO's entry into the 3Dinternet, our new presence on Lighthouse Learning Island.

I'm adding a couple URLs that came up in discussion, ones that are not in the presentation files below:

Congressional Hearing on Virtual Worlds

A great graphic representation of commercial presences in SL (a year and a half-old, btw)

MUVErs LLC

Here's an interesting side-by-side shareout from Google Documents,



then Slideshare:

Virtual Environments for Education--Second Life

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: vanderbilt scottmerrick)

Virtual Worlds "Second Coming" Article

Web Watch writer Tim Ferguson has penned an analysis of the current and future states of virtual enterprise in an insightful article at silicon.com. In it, he forwards the notion that the initial failure of enterprise to capitalize on the technological advantages VE can offer was due to a hasty misread of the tools' capabilities and potentials, the very same sentiment I heard at SLEDcc08 from our pal Sarah Robbins. At that Tampa, Florida conference, she said that "corporations should stop whining that there's no potential just because they didn't do it right." That's the quote to the best of my memory, and that's pretty much what Ferguson has to say today. His is a fascinating summary and well worth a read. From the article:

Organisations are discovering myriad ways to benefit from virtual worlds.

The first and perhaps most obvious is collaboration. This includes holding real-time meetings in the worlds with each member participating via an avatar. It can be a big cost saver, as it removes the need to fly workers around the globe.

Virtual worlds can also help teams spread across several locations work together and co-ordinate projects.

The virtual world Qwaq, for example, allows users to create rooms that can store documents relating to a project, and where team members can meet up to share those documents and discuss the project using their avatars, IM and even VoIP.

I took a quick look at Qwaq, and it looks like a solution for companies to isolate their involvement in the 3Dinternet to collaborational meetings (which is certainly a nice market niche, but not necessarily one that will enable broadly innovative uses of virtual environments). It's also pricey, imho, when with a little flexibility an existing platform like Second Life can be used for similar purposes. I'll investigate more fully and report out. Perhaps a Qwaq-er could comment here in response and elucidate further?

Last day of NECC--Rockin' and Reelin' from the Week!

Wow, this has been a fantastic week, and I thank my administrators at both University School of Nashville and the Vanderbilt Center for Science and Math for making it possible for me to go. I also want to thank ISTE and its administrators for giving me stage above and beyond what I expected here, and the fantastic Claudia L'Amoreaux (Claudia Linden) from Linden Lab for being there for all of us every step of the way. Toss in a deep bow to Steve Hargadon and the organizers of the pre-conference Edubloggercon "unconference" for giving me a rich day of networking with and learning from some of the best minds in the forefront of educational advocacy.

One of the limitations of what a dear Second Life friend calls "meatspace" is that one can only be in one place at any given time. We are often able to rise above that limitation with the Internet (when the wireless connection works--no jab at the tech folks here: I'm sure they're doing everything they can to make things work) by twittering, blogging, ustreaming, ninging, and such; but it remains an absolute limitation of physicality. That said, I want to say I missed hanging out with my IVC friends this year. My amiable and extraordinarily capable colleagues in that arena, friends for nearly a decade of collaboration, will always be my friends, or at least I hope they'll allow me that privilege. I've simply been limited this year by the Meatspace Law: "1 body, 1 place."

I'll be working over the next week to summarize as succinctly as possible my amazing adventures here at NECC 2008. Until then, I'd like you to chew on the following:

I believe that virtual environments hold so much promise for education in so many ways that I've thrown in with that group here at NECC, also a dynamic, dedicated, pioneering band of educators. I believe that so much that I'm proposing a new ISTE Special Interest Group, and I'll propose that it be called SIGVE, for "Virtual Environments." I talked with ISTE Membership Director Jennifer Ragan-Fore last night at a small gathering of ISTE Docents, and she seems to think it can happen, in part based on the full house Birds of a Feather session we staged Monday here in San Antonio. Anybody else think so?

I'm prepared to pursue what steps it may take to get it started. This, as friend Cathy Walker said last night when I discussed it with her, is a first and most important step toward legitimizing this fertile field in the minds of reluctant administrators, especially the ones who hold the purse strings for teacher professional development programs. Let's begin to work together to bring ISTE member focus to the potentials of the 3D internet. What say? Kitty, send me that paperwork?