NMC Campus Observer

The Mega Pile of Evolution of Communication Symposium Media

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Jan 16, 2008 10:59pm

it’s been quite some time since the NMC Symposium on the Evolution of Communication, held way back in early December, 2007. It was such a huge event, its taken us this long to organize all the resources (please activate your avatar’s nodding head in agreement animation).

Below we provide some of the highlights, mainly links to the archived video of the sessions. These videos were archived from our set up that provided live video streams to our overflow sims, but required some moderate post production editing. You can find a complete list of symposium resources on the main NMC web site, including additional papers, links, presentation files shared by the presenters.

First on the list is Howard Rheingold’s keynote presentation Co-Evolution of Technology, Media and Collective Action “the big picture/long view of the way technologies, communication media, and collective action has co-evolved”.

Keynote video: (42.Mb Quicktime, 21:16)

In addition to the video of the presentation, we had Howard’s words transcribed, and we have combined both into the new publishing platform, CommentPress that allows you to attach comments at the paragraph level of the text (this was the same format we explored with the Symposium white paper). We encourage you to visit the site and contribute by posting comments to Howard’s ideas at http://web.nmc.org/coevolution.

In addition, we posted the questions that were collected from the Second Life audience (the audio for this segment was of too poor quality to include in the video).

In addition we have video or audio from all of the other presentation sessions…

We were excited to welcome back to NMC Campus Johnny99 Gumshoe, who provided live music for our opening reception. Be sure to check out the Symposium slideshow that features his music..

We can always count on an exciting presentation when it is from Cynthia Calongne, or as we know her with the billowy SL hair, Lyr Lobo.

In the opening session for the conference, she certainly set the pace with R U 1337? Exploring Changes in Internet and Virtual World Discourse where she used a fun trivia game device to lead us on a discussion on the culture of gamers and virtual worlders. This was one of the most well attended conference sessions.

Presentation video: (108 Mb QuickTime, 47:39)

Next up were Nick White and Joe Tojek from Capella University who took an interesting approach to discuss Evolutionary Theory Applied to Communication Goals and rolled in some small group activities.

Presentation video: (84 Mb Quicktime, 39:03)

The next session proved that you can conduct a great presentation in Second Life without using any screens or rezzing any objects.

In Virtual Spaces, Authentic Relationships: The Nature of Friendship Online , Kieran Cannistra and Doug McDavid from IBM Almaden Research Center led us on a fascination journey of stories and ideas on professional/personal interaction — all just by speaking to the audience.

Presentation video: (116 Mb QuickTime, 50:33)

You can always count on Jared Bendis to provide a lightning fast, visually engaging, and provocative presentation in any world, real or virtual.

In Digital Tattoos, Digital Hoarding, and Social Networking: Turning Gold into Lead, Jared took us on a rampage through a long list of web sites he has created perhaps just to push these boundaries of communication. If you could not keep track of all the wacky sites he showed, you can find the links on his web site.

Presentation Video: (99 Mb Quicktime, 44:29)

The stage was then handed over to our colleagues from Seton Hall University, Heidi Trotta, Mary Zedeck, and Mary Balken. Heidi and the two Mary’s provided a session on Critical Analysis of Literary Works Using Virtual Worlds.

The “presentation” part was just a piece of the session. They then conducted an exercise/activity having people use selections from sets of imagery to describe a piece of text from well known literature (it was Huck Finn).

Presentation Video: (44 Mb Quicktime, 20:02)

Closing out the first day of the symposium were our colleagues from way on the other side of the real world globe, Kim Flintoff from western Australia at Edith Cowan University and Alexander Hayes, Australian Flexible Learning Network located in eastern Australia.

Kim and Alex put out some powerful ideas that are on the forefront for Australian educators in terms of access to electronic networks and services, in a session they called Evolution | Revolution: Architectures for Participation that included a bit of role play.

View Presentation: (102 Mb Quicktime, 51:27)

And that was just the sessions from Day One!

Our first presenters on the second day of the Symposium, Jason Mellen and Brian King, Bowling Green State University, earned the heroic effort award. The both were presenting live from Austria, and although SL voice worked perfectly in dress rehearsal, someone at their location decided to flip on the firewall. So with some juggling, we were able to stream their audio in via a Skype conference call, for their session Bridging the Lifelong Learning Gap.

You can find many of the session resources in the Lifelong Learning Wiki.

Listen (23.9 Mb MP3, 26:04)

Similar to the historical perspective of the Rheingold keynote, David Porush led us on a journey of What the Origin of the Alphabet Teaches Us about the Future of Virtual Reality with a fascinating look at early alphabets, symbols, and communication all the way to the electric grid of the US viewed from space.

And somewhere in the middle, David managed to demonstrate that the Talmud is pretty much a wiki! If you are interested in this talk, be sure to read the papers he shared that are linked from the symposium resources web site.

View Presentation: (96 Mb Quicktime, 45:53)

Taking the center of the Muriel Cooper Coliseum next was the ever vivacious Beth Ritter-Guth, or in SL, Desideria Stockton, for a look at the critical issue of Virtual Citations: Defining and Creating Ethical Content in Virtual Worlds.

As a writing teacher, Beth has continually put a lot of focus of her teaching and SL activity on promoting god habits of reference citing. This session was part discussion of the challenges of citing resources in SL, and including some high energy small group discussions.

View Presentation: (69 Mb Quicktime, 30:22)

And making a second appearance, we welcomed back Cynthia Calongne (Lyr Lobo) to help us learn all about gestures and animations in Move Me! Interactions on Movement and Emotion in SL Course Designs .

In typical Cynthia style, we were all on our feet, active, and learning to use the resources that she provided. She models well the ideal in SL presenting, between designing active sessions to handling Q&A from multiple sources. Go Cynthia!

View Presentation: (104 Mb QuickTime, 47:36)

And fitting for the evening close of the conference, Phylis Johnson from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale took us on a tour of SL Conversations: Recreating Romance In-World in which we looked at, experienced dancing, courtship, social interaction that takes place in Second Life:

This presentation will explore how Second Life has changed the way we interact, date, and romantically engage (or not) online in virtual settings, launching off media reports and “social” research. This presentation focuses on the virtual aspect of “communication” and veers away from much more adult considerations (wink).

View Presentation: (34 Mb QuickTime, 15:21)

Finally, before wandering off to other Sl locations or just shutting off the darn computer, NMC CEO Larry Johnson (wearing his Larry Pixel avatar) provided some closing remarks on this amazing 2 days of the symposium.

View Closing Remarks: (11.9 Mb QuickTime, 5:24)

That’s quite a pile!

Story filed under: Audio / Video, Libary, Resources & Information, Teaching and Learning
Tags: nmcsymposium07
See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)