AI Art and GenAI for Prompt Engineering and Education

Joyce Bettencourt and I presented on AI art, creativity, and GenAI use for prompt engineering at the Museum of Contemporary Art at CDS in Second Life. The attendees were wonderful and shared perspectives that will help shape the future.

Since the talk featured collected thoughts, I foreshadowed a future talk that I am planning on GenAI for course design, deliver, and assessment as inspired by Cengage's Empowered Educator Conference February 14-15, 2024 and AI use cases most notably from the AI-Summary.com site.

Below are our slides and a reference for Cengage's GenAI in Higher Education.

Cengage Learning, Inc. (2024, February 14-15). Exploring GenAI in higher education [Videos]. Cengage Empowered Educator Conference. https://www.cengage.com/empowered-educator/spring2024/

Have a great Spring! *cheers* -- Lyr, aka Dr C

Working on the Moon, an Animoto video example

Here is an example of how to create an Animoto video. My title is Working on the Moon. Click on my image to see the process. follow the steps for creating your video, and watch my Working on the Moon video below. The process took me 10 minutes to plan and a couple of minutes to produce the video. Enjoy!

1. Visit https://animoto.com 
2. Create a free account. 
3. Create a video.
4. Select a style. 
5. I clicked All and selected The Arena 2, a basic style. 
6. Click on Change Song above your image slots to find a song you like. 
7. I tested a few in the collection and found Before the Silence by Justin Dodge. 
8. Upload 6-7 images to showcase in your video. 
9. Create a new slide and click on T for Text. Add 1-4 words to your Text slide. 
10. Drag your images and text to the desired locations. I added a caption on most slides.
11. In The Arena 2 style displays captions on the left in my video. 
12. Preview your video and either edit it or Produce it. 
13. Share your video, either with the Animoto link or by embedding it on your blog. 
14. Select embed and click Copy to copy the code. 
15. On your blog, add a new post and click on the Compose or pencil icon on the left to select the HTML view.
16. Type an opening statement and then paste your embed code. 
17. Save your post, load your blog, and watch your video. 
18. If you need changes, visit Animoto to edit a copy of your video.
19. Produce it when you finish your edits and embed a new copy of it into your blog post. 

Have fun!

Celebrating at Virtual Harmony

We celebrated a birthday in the Jack's World, a 3D virtual world dinosaur park created by Spinoza Quinnell and 8-year-old Jack. They created a dozen dinosaurs and an immersive learning experience during a two-week visit at Virtual Harmony. 

We are in the water, looking for dragon eggs as part of a multi-grid treasure hunt! I created this Animoto.com video during a 10-minute demo for my students.

Virtual Harmony 3D Archaeology Simulation by Spinoza Quinnell

My Virtual Harmony research team is amazing! Here is my Animoto video with images from one of our Virtual Harmony educational projects set in an archaeological dig designed by Spinoza Quinnell.

It is amazing how fast he creates these simulations in 3D mesh and captures the excitement and fascination of a historical site. Many thanks to Spinoza Quinnell, Francisca Yonekura, Algernon Loire, JJ, Drinkwater, Ubit Umarov! 

-- Lyr Lobo

Remembering Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and His Flow Model

 

It is not often that I post these days, but a giant is honored by a Google Doodle that touched my heart, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I use his Flow Model to guide how I teach, speak at conferences, design games, and in general, how I think about life. *grins*

The deep immersion and satisfying challenges that he described share defines how I feel about teaching in the Metaverse and about the happiness that I feel knowing that our work and research matters.

Using his model, educators provide quests or challenges for students challenges that slightly exceed their capabilities, but not the challenge is not so far advanced that students become worried or experience high anxiety. 

We share a love of the field and deep immersion in it, which is for me the secret to living a happy and joyful life.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi gave permission years ago for my doctoral students to use his Flow Model in their research, and he most graciously permitted the publication of it. I treasure the researchers who support student research and applaud their efforts.

I had not realized that he passed until I saw today's Google Doodle celebrating his birthday. 

His light burns brightly inside me. 

He will be missed.

Dr. C

The importance of story in our lives

 I'm writing a book chapter on Education in the Metaverse with a hurt arm and shoulder. Working through the pain reminds me of how important it is that we tell our stories, often and well!

For my class discussion responses, I wish to feature an image from Saturday's virtual world class where I shared my screen in Zoom.. The image is from March 11, 2023. Sharing it here, a place where my students frequent from the past, present & future.

Dr.  Cynthia Calongne, Lyr Lobo

Many thanks for the great futuring and innovation sessions and for striving for excellence! *cheers*

Have a great future & dream big! *waves*

Dr. C

A tool for writers that uses humor

My video at the bottom of the post features the Writer's Diet Test, a web tool, app, and book by Helen Sword (2016) at https://writersdiet.com/writing-test/

If you like a humorous analysis of your word choices that uses a diet and health motif, this is the tool for you. It analyzes 100-1000 words and color codes them by be-verbs, zombie nouns, prepositions, ad-words, and it, this, that, there.

Writer's Diet Test by Helen Sword

 

 

 

 Click on the color-coded words for the rule.

I love it and use it for my academic and fiction writing. While my nouns are rarely fit and trim as it seems to be an occupational hazard to be fond of them.

Enjoy!

 Reference

Sword, H. (2016). The writer's diet: A guide to fit prose (Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing), 2nd Ed. University of Chicago Press. https://writersdiet.com/buy-the-writers-diet-book/

CTU Doctoral Projects in a Virtual World

 My Animoto video honors 22 CTU students who joined me in a virtual world to create their first 3D simulations. 

They featured creating a safe space for human trafficking victims, an aquarium where people are the exhibits inside it, how to study physics on the Moon, Mars, and Earth, how to play golf using Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi's Flow Model. 

The last half of the video features the Save the Mantee project at Margaritaville, the Martian Worlds Faire featuring AI and Bucky Domes, a virtual tour of the Mall in DC, creating virtual pets, designing classrooms of the future, and a cybersecurity museum.

Jane McGonigal (2007) described the collaboration superpowers that gamers and virtual world enthusiasts embody. Building on her research, I created a roleplay game for doctoral students to give them strength during their dissertation research journey (Calongne, 2014). 

Here is an excerpt from a presentation of my game that illustrations these collaboration superpowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 References

Calongne, C. (2014, January 17). The game of research. https://www.slideshare.net/lyrlobo/the-game-of-research

McGonigal, J. (2007, December 29). 10 collaboration superpowers. https://www.slideshare.net/avantgame/10-collaboration-superpowers

Dancing with Barbara at VWBPE 2021

 A video honoring Dr. Barbaa Truman.

Virtual Harmony 3D Archaeology Simulation by Spinoza Quinnell

 This is one of my Animoto videos documenting one of our Virtual Harmony educational projects set in an archaeological dig by Spinoza Quinnell.