Join in April 9 for the SL MOOC Webinar

This should be fun. We'll have an expanding table and a skeleton of an agenda of topics. Come join us and we'll discuss, yes,  "Everything about ISTE Virtual Environments Network." Established in 2009 as the ISTE "Special Interest Group for Virtual Environments," this community dates back further than that; we just made it official then. It's complicated. It's funny. It's important in important ways. I will be periscoping the session, just for fun. Be there.

If you can't be there, maybe you can contribute if you have pics from 'way back or any comment to add to the conversation. If either, tweet those babies out to #istevenslmooc anytime between now and April 9 and we'll see what we can do to work them in.

I suggest you join the MOOC. As I said, this'll be fun. See who else is presenting"
Second Life MOOC 2016 Presentations   
Life(s) is good,
Scott

Just a Reminder!

 

 

...and I'm really getting excited about it. The Games and Virtual Environments Maker Playground will feature some heavy hitters this year. Shhhhhhhh, just locking down agreements. And the EduMachinima Fest--oh my, will it benefit from the community growing up around our monthly Machinima Nights in AvaCon Grid? You can bet your avatar it will. 

I'll be blogging daily from Denver that week, and yes, that will be a large improvement from the monthly visits I have been able to maintain here. Keep up with the conference if you cannot make it. I've got your virtual back.

Cheerio,

Scott

Nutritious Breakfast. Check.

Just a quick post to sing the praises of NutriBullet. Since my lovely honey picked us up one at Costco a few months ago, I'll do the occasional breakfast and sometimes whole work weeks where the smoothies I concoct make up my whole morning meal. They are surprisingly yummy and keep me going until I take my lunch break and pop over to Tinwings to raid the employee food bin for lunch. Having long been used to more often frying up a couple eggs for breakfast, I feel this is a healthy move and I'm happy with it. Many weekends, I'll also cook up a pot of Steel Cut Oats and add in some low sugar dried cranberries to portion out for quick breakfasts. I'm digging it.

Our Youngest High Schooler is Honored!

Congratulations to our youngest High Schooler, Alex, for soldiering through his first high school curriculum course. What's the big deal? Well, he's in 4th grade, y'all. He's actually not a high schooler at all, but is attending one of our wonderful public elementary schools in the 4th grade. During the school day, he has some blocks of time to take some higher level elementary and middle school classes online, as well as oh, one or two secondary school courses. He's a math wiz, for one thing, and he is sneaking up on a precocious mastery of languages. We think he's a good bet for President in a decade or two.

Alex put the Local television news piece up on his own YouTube and I think it could use a few more views and follows. Yes?

Please enjoy and share:



You also need to see and hear this young gem-tleman play excerpts from two Yanni songs. Love me some Yanni!

Things are Poppin' in Virtual Environments Network!

We are rockin' in Second Life, playing and learning in AvaCon Grid, and planning a whoopee cushion of a Playground for the ISTE 2016 Conference in Denver come the end of June. Catch it all, and one good place to begin is the ISTE Virtual Environments Network in SL:

ISTE Virtual Environments Network

The International Society for Technology in Education's Virtual Environments Network meets regularly for planning, exploring, socializing and more at this Eduisland HQ. Visit often, especially on Tuesday evenings at 5 p.m. (Pacific).

Visit in Second Life

Tonight, being the first Tuesday of the month, we don't meet, though at any given time you may find one of our membership just hanging out awaiting the learning conversations that so often happen there; but every other Tuesday at 5pm we can be found either in SL or in AvaCon Grid, at the marvelous marvelous new HQ built by Helena Kiama. Information about everything we do is available at the SL HQ be we there or no. Come visit! And see the Weebly marquee online for another way to learn about us!

Bernie Sanders: Destined to be our Next President?

Or should I say "doomed?"

I don't generally rant on this blog. So I won't. What I do want to do is to point out what is becoming increasingly obvious--and to affirm, if not to gloat, that I have been an avid supporter since before he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. Before Bernie, there simply was no real hope.

I recently reread George Orwell's 1984. Chilling it is, and so reverberating with correspondences to what's going on in our world today that I recommend it to anyone. In a way, we've been exercising the practices of the Ministry of Truth for a long, long time. He who holds the history books holds the "truth," yes? The genocide perpetrated upon Native Americans, slavery, what's always been around but is now labelled "income inequality," just to mention a few notable/ignoble events and conditions--these have been glossed over, in some cases almost to proportions in Orwell's book, in our textbooks and history books. We've made some mistakes.

The attention-diversion events Orwell calls Hate Days eerily mirror the (intended or otherwise) effects of both Dancing with the Stars and any Donald Trump speech. Our media actually spends significant time on events like this, elevating them to "news," while pointedly taking a pass or glossing over issues like rampant death by police; Congressional mass nuking of social funding while elimating taxes for the obscenely rich; and public health issues like the Flint, Michigan poisoning of the public water supply in favor of budgetary savings. These decisions reek of conspiracy to some, but I think it's really only the way our nation has declined in dedication to the common good.

Remember the "Me generation?" It was misplaced on baby boomers. It's all of us.

I don't exempt myself. Oh, I'll buy an occasional newspaper from the homeless person at the corner stoplight. I'll give monthly to public radio. I'll dedicate my work life to improving online learning options and experiences for MNPS students (and hopefully, helping develop models that can be replicated all over the world). I'll post on social media until the cows come home, with support for Sanders and disdain for his opponents (I really do like Hillary Clinton but she's so much a part of the problem I cannot support her--of course I'll vote for her if she gains the nomination, which I hope does not happen). I'll contribute small amounts of dollars to his campaign. But go door to door? Attend a meeting? No way.

I'm not sure why that's the case, but I will say that as soon as I heard the first glimmers about Bernie Sanders possibly running, I did some research on the World Wide Webz and sent him my first 5 dollars. I ignored all the "he can't win" talk and I threw in. I'm confident he'll win New Hampshire (the most liberal state in the union, to hear some describe it, after all) and probably Iowa. If that happens, folks have to at least listen.

So to you I say, listen on. Make your own decisions but don't make them based on fear (however "not absolutely groundless"), because if we abandon hope and predicate our American decision on fear alone, we lose. If we elect Bernie, we have a chance at winning. I'm hopeful.

Nominate yourself or another virtual pioneer!

Do this! Deadline Feb. 29.