NMC Campus Observer

2009 NMC Conference

NMC Virtual Worlds : Jun 16, 2009 03:42pm

NMC Conference Program: The Metalic Version, originally uploaded by cogdogblog.

We’re back from the 2009 NMC Conference in Monterey, California and as with every year it was an incredibly engaging experience. While every year allows us to meet individuals with Second Life projects on the horizon and those we’ve collaborated with throughout the year, it is always an extreme pleasure to see what is going on in other realms of new media education. As with the rest of NMC, the NMC Virtual Worlds project is committed to pushing the boundaries of innovative uses of technology for learners and educators and absolutely no virtual world developer on earth could have a better organization in which to feed and fuel that dedication.

A few favorite moments:

* Exploring the concept of a learner’s “suck threshold” as Kathy Sierra so eloquently outlined to us in her keynote.This concept is one that is particularly poignant and will be lasting throughout the year for me as a Virtual World Developer! I will continually be asking myself how to create virtual environments that move learners from a noobie avatar to an engaged, involved, collaborator before they feel discouraged by the sometimes complex notions of virtual spaces. We’ve often discussed how important it is to remove finer grain technical aspects from a Second Life educational experience so that the real learning is in the content, but somehow the “suck threshold” strikes a stronger more encompassing chord!
* The marachi version of Star Wars’ “Catinia Song” shared with us by Marco Torres during his keynote session, which subsequently stayed in my head the entire day!
* Meeting the Adobe Training staff and realizing what a waste of CS3 Master Collection it is that I am focusing only on Photoshop!
* The absolutely amazing pictures produced by the Point Lobos Photo Workshop lead by Bill Frakes and Don Henderson.
* A conversation with Jared Bendis of Case Western Reserve University and Ruben Puentedura of Hippasus in which a highly intriguing idea bout Second Life evolved: Would Second Life be more engaging if your presence or lack thereof effected the environment in sustained projects? I can’t wait to find a way to put this concept into action this year.
* Doug Engelbart: Inventor of the mouse! I couldn’t possibly think of a better candidate for this year’s Fellows Award.
* Bryan Alexander’s (NITLE) session on Gaming on the Liberal Arts Campus. I’ll admit it, I attended mostly for personal reasons as an active gamer, but the concepts and ideas thrown discussed were not so far removed from things that we experience everyday in virtual worlds development. For instance, the methods of assessments being based not on how well one plays the game (interacts with the world), but based on the critical analysis of the experience within. While we’ve been saying for years now that “Second Life is not a game” (the argument even arose in this session!), I am ready to throw up a white flag and continue absorbing all the information I can in anticipation of a truce on the horizon once the two are less mistaken for each other. Another bonus to this session: I added a few new books for the summer including Bryan Alexander’s “Gaming in Education”, “Videogames and Education” by Harry J. Brown, and “Understanding Comics” by Scott Mcleod.

As soon as we have a chance to catch our barings, I’ll be posting more information on NMC Virtual World’s session, “How to do an Educational Build in Second Life”. For now, I’m happy to be back home to the good old virtual world!

Originally published at NMC Virtual Worlds

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