Learning in Virtuality Archived Session

Access the archived Horizon Wimba session go to Blackboard>Course Design Institute>Communications>Live Classrooms>Learning in Virtuality Archive.

[slideshare id=485368&doc=virtua2-1214409150287338-9&w=425]

Learning in Virtualities on June 24

More from Metaverse U

Wish you’d been at the Metaverse U Conference last month? You’re in luck! The Metaverse U folks have now realeased YouTube mini-flicks with participant comments (much like Suzanne’s below).

In addition, they are beginning to put up blip.tv video of speakers. First up: Vladlen Koltun, a Stanford computer science professor and founder of their Virtual Worlds group. Subject: Dryad, a prototype intuitive, high quality, customized 3D modeling tool for “the rest of us” that uses collaborative design space exploration.

More videos promised soon!

My 2 cents about the Metaverse

At the MetaverseU Conference at Stanford last month, the asked all of us these 4 questions:

- What excites you about current metaverse technology?
- What concerns you about current metaverse technology?
- What will be most the surprising impact of metaverse technology on society within the next decade?
- What barriers will metaverse technology never overcome?

Here’s what I said

Here’s what others said:
http://youtube.com/group/metaverseuWhat are Metaverse technologies again?
The Roadmap describes them as those that fall under these categories- Augmented Reality, Lifelogging, Mirror Worlds and Virtual Worlds.

MetaverseU reflections

MetaverseU
Some quick reflections on the conference before leaving Palo Alto. Themes and comments that resonated for me.

It was great, intellectually stimulating event, and a fun, interactive crowd.  I was though disappointed at the lack of opportunities to have conversations.  Lot’s of folks attended via SL, and to facilitate a more democratic discussion, those of us live were asked to fill out cards with our questions that would be given to the presenters. It didn’t work really.

Reflections after ELI - Tweeting, Faculty, Second Life

Just returned from the Educause Learning Initiative’s Annual Meeting — Connecting and Reflecting: Preparing Learners for Life 2.0. I learned a lot and yet there are always those tidbits that you walk away remembering. The first was the experience of Tweeting during a key note session. There was essentially a conversation going on among the audience, as if we were passing notes, for lack of a better analogy. I missed the next featured session and thought I’d check the ELI Twitter feed to see what I could glean. Nothing really. You hadda be there. There was not summary, no context. It was truly a conversation in real time.

The next tidbits happened at my presentation Introducing university faculty and instructional staff to second life: A pilot initiative. It was well attended for the last day of the conference. I argued for the unsustainability of workshops as a default means of learning new technologies (e.g. Second Life) and wanted to have a conversation with the audience. I heard some good ideas, compromises between traditional follow-along workshops and unstructured workshops. The word workshop was even questioned, what about having learning labs. It reminded me that we have a Fac Room in ITS for that very purpose. So it would be a matter of staffing it with someone with that skill set. That sounds too easy, so it might be.

Then after the workshop I had a nice chat with Kyung Huh from the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment at U Texas, Austin. He’s been supporting their SL initiative which has been around since 2006. Like us they’re looking at its instructional value. He said that for the most part, faculty projects in SL don’t end up becoming what they set out to be. And it appears that while they perceive value in teaching in SL, it’s not instructional value but administrative value. In the end, they use SL to meet with students, either formally or informally. I thought his experience and insight was useful and mirrors our thinking too.

Finally, I saw one faculty presentation demonstrating the use of SL in a class. Two instructional designers were dedicated to a class of 20 graduate students to help them recreate/interpret a novel. In this case, they created rooms in the house, the main setting of the story. They had to find, build or buy what they needed. The instructor’s research in materiality in literary criticism prompted this approach. I saw that connection right away and didn’t become skeptical with the Engagement word, until she began reporting out student experiences and technical frustrations. I couldn’t help but slouch back into my same old song and dance: Engaged with what? And why? What about weighing the time on technical and supporting tasks with the student learning outcomes of the class?  I asked myself if she could have accomplished the same goals with PowerPoint, like Laurel Amtower did.

And finally, finally, in listening to others in faculty development, support roles, I realized again that we’re doing something quite extraordinary. Now I have to figure out how to tell a story about it.

SL educators events calendar

I wanted to post the calendar here. It’s also under Links. I forget to use it too. It’s however a great, quick glance at all kinds of events. The SL search function works too, but this is much more to the point.

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