Virtual Plates in the Virtual Air!

Andy and I sat down last week with an inquisitive Second Life Mooc 2017 group to share with them what we do at the International Society for Technology in Education's Virtual Environments Network. It's a lot!

I'm thinking this video will be a nifty resource for our work at ISTE17 this year. Don't satisfy yourself with watching this, though there is a nice tour of our Headquarters in Second Life toward the end). Come by our table in San Antonio or drop into Second Life on Tuesday, June 27, from 12pm to 3:30pm to meet our inworld and in-life colleagues!

Our hour was just shared by the wonderful Nan Zingrone, SL Mooc 2017 administrator, at the Mooc's YouTube presence (Teaching and Learning Online). Enjoy...

End of Spring Update and Second Life Mooc 2017

Dear folks,

I hope your dwindling days of Spring are wonderful ones. I had the best Fathers Day yesterday, beginning at dawn with a fishing foray up to Marrowbone Lake, home to a long telephone conversation with my extraordinarily talented son in Philadelphia, champagne with my beautiful bride, then a long nap followed by dinner with with my multi-talented, gentle, lovely daughter and her husband down south at the edge of Brentwood. We capped the day off with three episodes of Vikings, snuggling on the sofa, and a restful night's sleep. Now it's 364 days until my next Fathers Day and I plan to do everything I can to make them every bit as wonderful.

I have high hopes for a new position at Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools after a call-back interview for an exciting new district level specialist position this past Friday. That's all I can say now but stay tuned. If the ~130 encouraging responses to a Facebook post asking for spiritual support are any indication, that future is bright. Think good thoughts on that front, please.

I'll be working full-time this week to plan my upcoming week, starting Saturday, in Texas, starting at ISTE2017, where it should be no surprise to anyone who stays up with developments that I'll be co-presenting the dynamic ISTE "Virtual Environments and Games & Simulations Networks Playground and helping put on the annual "EduMachinima Fest," all on Tuesday, June 27. I will try to blog daily from San Antonio as part of my reflective practice and in order to share learning. Stay tuned here at scottmerrickdotnet.

Meanwhile, learning is going on. Surprised? My dear buddy Andrew Wheelock--engineer of Virtual Pioneers in Second Life, my musical-chairs-teammate at ISTE Virtual Environments Network, and host of "Coffee with a Geek"--and I took time to share what VEN does at the third annual "Second Life Mooc" a week ago Saturday. This amazing month of learning, organized and coordinated by Dr. Doris Molero, Dr. Nancy Zingrone, and Dr. Nellie Deutsch, is still going on, and I want to plug it in order that you may pick and choose your own live learning opportunities. Word has it that its name will change next year in order to reflect its broadening focus on other virtual environments learning potentials, beyond Second Life. Meanwhile, check out the SL Mooc course syllabus, the Mooc itself (free registration), and the Mooc schedule. Dive in!

If you can't make the "real world" ISTE Conference in San Antonio, please keep an eye out here for announcements of inworld (Second Life, primarily) events to help connect you with the learning. I will be live-streaming at least one hour of the Playground in San Antonio, likely on Periscope.

Be of good cheer as we enter SUMMER this Tuesday! We've earned it!

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.

Nashville Views at End of Spring

As we move on into June toward the first day of summer, I have been enjoying my days, fishing at  Marrowbone Lake several times, helping my honey of 30+ years at her beautiful store, Tinwings, keeping the lawn (sort of) manicured and the rain garden healthy, doing housework, and planning for ISTE 2017 in San Antonio. I have re-established my relationship with Active Worlds, forged ahead into VSTE's "Summer of Survival" in Minecraft, and begun a regular meditation practice with a new online platform called "Headspace." I've been out on my Xootr kick scooter several times already (pictured near the center of the pano below), and now that 51st Avenue North has been re-imaged into a calm route with gorgeous new blacktop, parking all up the west side and bike/walking up and down the east, I see myself doing that more regularly as well.

beautiful Nashville from the center of the John Sigenthauler walking bridge

I am hot on the trail of a couple positions for the upcoming work year and I've signed on with a major international consulting company to take on clients for training management work. I'm working, as I have done so for a good while, with my dear brother Ed and to help him bring in clients for his own industrial workplace and employee safety consulting firm, The Augustus Group. And I'm doing writing for 372WN, the fantastic community publication I've mentioned in previous posts. For a time of the year when it should be down-time, I'm up. 

I picked up a nifty Aduro long lens for my iPhone via Woot last week, and I'm going to enjoy taking pics with it henceforth. Its 8x magnification is clean and easy to mount with its clip, and here's a teaser, taken from in front of Tinwings, about 6 blocks away from the new art on the grain silo:

the new public art on our Silo Bend iconic silo

Last night, Lee Ann and I drove out west toward Montgomery Bell State Park to the home of a friend and colleague of hers and enjoyed nosh and beverage and a fantastic house show featuring the original music of Dorado, only two of the band members performing acoustically for the small gathering in its beautifully wooded setting. Forrest Miller and James (a one name, multi-talented guitarist and singer, is James) entertained with guitar play and vocal harmonies that were nothing short of beautiful. I'll be in their crowd this summer at least once when the full band plays for fans.

Have a great week. Don't be a stranger! Here's some art built from stray railroad parts picked up on recent dog walks:

"interdependent"

Birthday 2017

As I ease into my bday tomorrow, it's the last half-day of the school year for students. It's a teacher in-service day the next day, then we are done.

I have been "released. Eligible for re-hire." That means I have my parsed out paycheck for my 10 month school year for 12 months, coming to me until the end of July, and I have insurance for me and my family until July 31. My school, the struggling Warner Enhanced Option Elementary School, has eliminated the computer teacher position: That's me. I am applying my head off, and I feel I'll fall into something great, where hopefully I can make more of a difference in children's lives than I was able to do at Warner. I'm sad for the kids. They need technology, and they won't get it without a geeky teacher, a technology advocate.

As I have often explained to the querulous--there is the city, the river, the stadium, the projects, and our school. Okay, I suppose it's not "our" school anymore after tomorrow, but it has been for a year. And this has been a year of eye-opening for me. I need to get some distance on it, and I need to rest in order to get the smile in my eyes. Stay tuned.

I will be at The Old Gas Station in The Nations tomorrow after work for their "painter watching" party, to watch Guido van Helton as he applies coats of paint on the Silo Bend silo. If you're around, drop in for a local craft beer and a hug. I'll be there from 4:30 or so until I'm tired of drinking free-on-your-birthday beer!.

Here's the even more iconic grain silo as it appeared this morning on my way to work:

ISTE 2017 is ON!

I am so excited that:

Just got registered today. It's been touch and go with the loss of district support for the travel, but I have a roomy for the first time in over a decade to save housing money and I'll do the Curly Shuffle like I usually do when the conference is in Texas: I'll fly into San Antonio and my brother will pick me up at the conference's end on Wednesday, then we'll drive back to his lakehouse in Montgomery, Texas, on Lake Conroe, for a weekend of fishing. I'll fly out of Houston home. Yay! Thanks to the ISTE Conference Committee for working with me on all this!

Back at it in Nashville

Hello, world,

Back to work at m school after a fabulous 2000 mile road trip from Nashville to Brooklyn last week. I used the Waze app almost exclusively to get from city to city and then all the way home, with stops outside of Roanoke on the way up, then New Hope, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; Frederick, Maryland; and Knoxville, Tennessee on the way home.

Brooklyn was so much fun, and it was just the right thing for my soul to spend some time with my boy, Colin. At 21, he's growing up--learning to manage a day and to plan for his future as he meets people and makes new friends. Last year, he was pining to be somewhere else, and he came to the conclusion that he wanted to life the "best of the best and the worst of the worst." I don't think he found the latter, if you discount how freakily expensive it is up around the Big Apple, but he certainly is finding his center, which in my opinion is the best of the best.

Those of you who are hooked up with me via Facebook, I have a photo album that almost conveys how much fun this time with my son was. He is writing staggeringly evocative lyrics, currently wrapped in acoustic guitar sort of alternative folk clothing. I can't wait to hear more, though that's always been the case. You can find him on SoundCloud with a little searching, and that's a fun trip, since he tends to store works-in-progress there.

Here's the lad taking a load off on the wall in central Times Square:

Just wanted to pop in to say that this was a trip I needed. It reminded me, after surviving--often less gracefully than I would like to--a difficult year of career change, that I am more than my day to day work. Sure, I work hard hoping that I am making a difference in the lives of at least some of my very needy, very impoverished students; but I am also a traveler, a poet, a musician, and a kind human. I intend to hold onto the feeling that I matter, even on the most difficult days. You do the same. Good day.

372WN!!!

Just dropping into me bloggie to note my highly excited pride at being included in the stable of writers for the new publication, 372WN. It's edited by the multi-talented Miriam Drennan, and each and every one of its writers is a resident of West Nashville.

372WN's homepage

It can be read online in its "issuu" incarnation, but I'm partial to the heavy-stock, hefty, beautifully printed magazine itself, free in racks at stores and businesses all over West Nashville. So far, I've had four articles published in the first two issues, I have one slated for issue 3, and I'm working on two more for the June-July issue. FUN! Pick one up, or click one up.

Virtual Reality in Support of One's Mental Health

At La Digue du Braek in Second Life

In my volunteer life, I work with some of the brightest minds in learning and teaching. Serving this year as Chair of the International Society for Technology in Education's Virtual Environments Network (VEN) affords me at least weekly opportunities to actually meet with them. Scheduled meetups are on Tuesday evenings.

After a long day at a very demanding, often-times emotionally draining teaching job at a struggling inner-city school, meeting with these friends (and it seems there are new ones joining in every week), though they may be in New York, Colorado, or Australia--actually being with them, my Second Life avatar embodying my self--helps me relax and know my worth in the world.

Once a month, on the month's first Tuesday, friend Barbara Seaton leads a session called VEN Writers Group. We visit a "sim" that is evocative in some way, artistic, moody, and always creatively designed and implemented, soak our(avatar)selves in the ambiance, and each of us pens some creative writing piece around that experience. The following month we meet at our Second Life Headquarters and share our work by turns.

Last month, we met at VEN HQ, chatted together for a moment, then visited an amazing place modelled after a mixed beach-and-industrial location on the coast of France. I confess that I did not write my piece that night, but later, closer to the sharing meeting, I penned a poem after a particularly hard day at my teaching work. I can't share it here because it is a bit too dark and personal, but it will soon be among the writings shared at our group's website at http://venetwork.weebly.com. The picture above was taken there, and you may visit it in Second Life via this link.

For comparison after you visit in Second Life, see this video drive-through of the "real world" location.

On another Tuesday of every month, we meet for a VEN Focus Session, formerly a "Speaker Session" but more and more participative in the way of a field trip, often to other virtual worlds besides Second Life. Do you want to take a moment to view an archival video of this experience? It might just spur you to get your own avatar at http://secondlife.com and come and join us! Do!

Visit the VEN livestream archives to view one of 11 recorded live events.

Nations Homes Video

...and, by way of overcompensation for my recent radio silence from scottmerrickdotnet, here's a little video composed of photos take from New Years Day 2016 up to June1. Enjoy:

The Beer@Noon Diet!

Good day, good human,

I have lately been doing some writing for a new publication, a West Nashville-focused periodical entitled 372WN. I'd highly encourage you to pick one up at one of the many distribution racks you'll soon begin to see around our fair city.

That has kept me busy writing, but not so much blogging. My challenging work at my East Nashville elementary school has also limited time and energy for blogging, and I've been maintaining my new school blog regularly as well. All that said, I'm apologizing for letting my scottmerrickdotnet voice go pretty well dormant.

I recently rediscovered an item on my desktop that I want to share here, and I'm thinking that it's well-timed, this being the first day after Thanksgiving, when I went back for thirds of the Lemon, Rosemary, and Black Tea Brined Grilled Turkey I spent those well-allotted hours overseeing yesterday. Enjoy (and you're welcome):

Welcome. If you are reading this you have an open mind. Good on ya. And you’re a guy, most likely. There are not a lot of diets for us, serious or otherwise. This, my brother, is a secret. Share it not. Keep this to yourself.

The briefest backstory on the planet:  I weighed in at a Higi station in mid-July at my local Kroger pharmacy, only to discover that I was exceeding my “normal” weight by around 14 pounds. The report showed me at 219 pounds and “At Risk.” Not good. We’ll talk about my blood pressure levels later. Look:

Shortly after that inauspicious beginning with Higi, I flew to Denver, Colorado for two weeks, the first week for a professional conference, the second a week with my dear, dear wife and her Denver family, just relaxing. I knew there would be beer involved. A plot began to brew in my wee little mind. Listen, I’m 6 feet tall and at that time I worked what can be described as a desk job (I’m now back in the classroom). I stay pretty active, but not aerobically, not on any regular basis. I walk my dogs every day. I’m sure that helps, but it’s certainly not the 30 minutes of cardio exercise recommended by the pundits. What to do? What to do?

Have you seriously looked into one or another of the “usual suspects” diets? Whatever miracle drug, diet plan, club or cult you look at, the bottom line is clear. Every single motherlovin’’ diet you look—assuming it doesn’t rely on some kind of (usually dangerous) miracle drug--at ends up saying that the best long term results come from cutting calories and increasing exercise. Every single one. Hello? Hello? Hellfricking-o? Let’s do that!

One way to accomplish that necessary combination that is by “Time-restricted feeding” (TRF). Yeah, “TRF.” It’s an actual thing.  Reducing the window in which you eat, and doing so consistently, helps your body burn fats more efficiently and, at least according to http://greatist.com/eat/breakfast-weight-loss, will result in weight loss and furthermore, the maintenance of that weight loss.

My daily caloric intake over the past year or so has been pretty stable. Let’s look at a bulleted list of daily dietary habits:
● zero or low calory yogurt or a guy kibbie (think pan toasted bread with a hole in the middle, add a fried egg and basil) in the morning, sometimes a ~180 calorie breakfast bar if it’s the kind of morning I am off late to work and need pocket-portable food (“Let’s go somewhere we can eat in the car!”)
● a sandwich or plate of something yummy for lunch, taken at or packed to work from my lovely wife’s storefront, Tinwings, by pilfering the employee food bin
● a handful of nuts or a stick of cheese from the fridge when I get home to tide me over to
● a beer, or two, or three
● dinner: a balanced, delicious meal prepared by me or by my lovely wife, who happens to be an accomplished catering and fresh retail foods chef
● a cocktail or two

What can we do to create a time-limited experience that will moderate caloric intake, keep the body healthy, and have fun doing it? I took the lightning bolt to the brain:

The Beer!@Noon!Diet!

● Nothing but black coffee and water before noon
● A “good beer” at noon

              * Don’t drink crappy beer
● Anything you want after that, but…
                *always leave something on the plate
                *eat less than ¼ of the bun, when applicable
                *moderate any other alcohol intake
                *drink water all day
■ A 12 oz. glass of water between any other of any kind of beverage, and
                *keep your eyes open for terrorists
● No snacks no problem—oddly, but true to research, that extra water you are drinking will let you feel generally less hungry
● Walk the dog (or yourself) every day
● Do three instances of 20 minutes increased pulse rate per week, minimum
● Smile

● Do it over and over again, for as long as 2 weeks at a time
                *Go off of it when you want, come back when you want

Colorado is certainly the craft brew state of the nation. Just take a look at the Colorado Breweries List, and yes, that’s a thing, too. I’m too lazy to count them. Well, maybe I should. Okay, I tried but lost track. I’m sorry. Count them for yourself. Hundreds, I say, hundreds. Probably my favorite discovery of the trip was Great Divide’s Hercules Double IPA. Man oh man is that a great 12 ounces of glory. It’s a no nonsense hopfest, with a citrusy start and a serious hoppy finish, all the while malty rich and full of flavor. 

Here’s the thing. After practicing the Beer@NoonDiet from June 23 to July 8, I returned to my home in Nashville. On July 9, I visited the same Higi.com station at Kroger on Charlotte Avenue. I weighed in at 217, just a two pound weight loss. But my body fat ratio, as measured by higi, was now in the “Acceptable” range! Huh? See:

I continued to keep to the B@N Diet on weekends and follow the other practices during the week. Two weeks later I was down to 206 pounds and every other indicator told me I was in the normal range. My body fat percentage crept lower and never peaked out of the Acceptable range again. We’ll talk about my blood pressure levels later.

I’m a schoolteacher during the school year, and I obviously cannot break out this fantastic diet then, except…Maybe. On. Weekends. What to do? What to do? Make it the “Juice@NoonDiet” during the work week. Follow all the other tenets, only make a (no larger than 16 oz.) nutritional juice with your NutriBullet and pack it for lunch. Keep that water bottle handy. Keep that body-fat ratio in the “Acceptable” range this way.

Don’t Worry. Be Happy. Fish a lot.

Fun Reference:
The Only Beer Diet, lol:http://www.menshealth.com/weight-loss/the-beer-diet