NMC Campus Observer

Symposium Updates Oct 17

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Oct 17, 2006 11:28pm

Wow, another busy day at NMC Campus with events for the Impact of Digital Media Symposium, some of them happening spontaneously. Early today we met up with the glamorous Anya Ixchel, as we were testing audio and coordinating for the SLATENIGHT sessions she is helping organize for Thursday. She showed a bit of her materials for her session on “Avatar As Communication: Some Lessons from My students”:

Anya will present “Avatar as Communication” Friday at 7:00 AM SLT

Visitors took in our video interview with David Buckingham, editor of the MacArthur Volume on Identity:

Video interview with David Buckingham plays in Gonick Ampitheater

If you were on campus at the right time, you may have caught a sneak peek as Howard Rheingold tested our streaming audio and ptacticed his keynote presentation set for Saturday, Oct 21. What an avatar he has, a close mirror of RL?

Howard Rheingold, avatar and photo.

In the early afternoon, a class from University of Washington visited for an in-world guest lecture from Richard Bartle (“Professor Something”), inventor of the MUD. A transcript from this session is available.

At 5:00 PM we held a discussion on the Symposium topics at the meeting for the NMC Teacher’s Buzz Session:

NMC Campus Teacher’s Buzz meeting, Oct 17, 2006

We had some fabulous discussion on avatars and identity, forms of expressions in SL (hugs), and credibility. See the great exchanges recorded in the meeting transcript.

And tomorrow, check out the TEDTalk video with Jeff Han on on human-computer interfaces, playing all day in the Gonick Ampitheater. Show up at 12:00 PM SLT/PST in Woolsey Hall classroom for the Second Life Educators (SLED) panel discussion on “Are We Playing Games? Finding Legitimacy in the Academy”:

Second Life is filled with brilliant proof-of-concept trials by educators working alone, unfunded and often after hours. Only a few academic efforts are official, integrated and well funded. Why is that? What keeps the mainstream IT folks at bay and banishes early adopters to the fringe of “game studies?” This panel will define the legitimacy gap, explore how it might be breached and go on to discuss what teaching in Second Life could look like with broad acceptance. How will students use streaming 3D when navigating an avatar is as common as logging in to MySpace?

it should be a great discussion; our thanks to Jeremy Kabumpo (aka Jeremy Kemp) for organizing and moderating our panel:

• Terry Beaubois (Montana State)
• Aline Click (NIU)
• Josephine Dorado and Dan Winckler (Kids Connect)
• Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins (Ball State)
• Sharon Tettegah (UIUC)

And just added is a session at 5:00 PM, Second Life in the Classroom: Making the most of it where virtual worlds communication experts Adrienne Haik and Peter Haik of Metaversatility will speak on the best ways to take advantage of the Second Life platform in university-level classes.

Lastly, Wednesday at 6:00 PM is the deadline to submit photos for the Impact of Digital Media Photo Contest — check out the details, submit some pix, and you might pick up the L$5000 top prize!

Story filed under: Teacher's Buzz,Teaching and Learning,What's Happening

See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)