Futurist Larry Johnson visits CS855

In February 2011, we were fortunate to have Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, join us in Second Life just prior to the launch of the NMC's Horizon Report on innovation and the future of technology in education.

A Human Barometer for the Future

In a lively game show style, Larry asked the students to vote for the next five year's top technologies. During our human barometer exercise, the class and guests from CTU's emerging media doctoral program, via their avatars in Second Life, took a stand and voted with their feet as they stood by the areas that represented each of the technologies.

Visit the Horizon Report Wiki

This was my first opportunity to narrate and simulcast to an Adobe Connect session. I was repeating Larry's wonderful narrative style like a United Nations translator, and let me tell you, I have a great respect for them. *cheers* It is not easy to listen and repeat the content while participating during the session as an avatar.

QR codes are hot and are part of the augmented reality technology featured in the Horizon Report. To the right is a QR code from the Horizon Report wiki - scroll down their page to see the QR code on the bottom left!

Many thanks to Larry Johnson, CS855 and the emerging media students who shared their ideas and participated in this lively session!

NMC Future Symposium video

The New Media Consortium's Symposium for the Future was a delighted experience and highlights from it are depicted in my Animoto video. During some sessions, I was so engrossed in the content that I forgot to snap a shot, so I recommend using the search tag #nmcfuture to view the rest of the sessions.

NMC Symposium for the Future

The amazing series of New Media Consortium (NMC) Symposium for the Future sessions and discussions demonstrated the creativity of the presenters and the NMC design team.

Hakone, the NMC Virtual Worlds Conference Server

It was held on the Hakone Server, a stand alone version of the Second Life virtual world server developed by Linden Lab. Many thanks to Beth Sachtjen and Chris Holden for their excellent virtual world designs!

Be sure to visit the NMC Symposium for the Future conference program for a list of the audio recordings, slides, PDFs and urls from each session. Click on the image to enlarge them.

NMC Symposium for the Future - Keynote Addresses

Featured to the left is Beth Kanter's inspiring session on The Networked Nonprofit. She dazzled the audience by arriving as a Jetson, flying inside a spaceship with her dog Astro nearby!

She built on the metaphor offered by Robert Frost's The Wall to show how walls that are intended to protect can also be barriers when it comes to the non-profit use of social media and social networks.

Larry Johnson, in his closing address, noted that her insights into the use of social media and social networks may "offer the greatest impact on solving the challenges of our time."

Gardner Campbell in his Two Painters, One Poet, and Some Sweet Soul Music keynote address took us on a journey through sight and sound, worthy of Rod Serling, and as we toured the twilight zone of the future, he reminded us of the cautions from the past.

One illustration included the M5, the Ultimate Computer from the Star Trek series. Far be it for me to let an opportunity pass to interact with some of my favorite Star Trek content! *chuckles*

The film clip from the Portrait of Jennie was especially moving, as I agree with Ethel Barrymore's character when she scans the artwork, noting that there was not an ounce of love anywhere in them.

The references to ethical and safety concerns as well as the passion that fires the creative genius is especially important as we gaze into the future.

NMC Symposium for the Future - Day One!

Bryan Alexander dazzled us with the responsibilities of futuring and highlighted the Horizon Report, a five-year look into the future published by the NMC in his Catching the Future Before it Catches You session.

Between sessions, Bryan Alexander and Peter Shoemaker discussed Peter's session near his image of an urban horizon that reminded us that we are Separate, Equal, Powerful.

National Geographic offered a visual feast in the form of our planet, with the speakers seated on a rotating platform.

Their moving presentation on Media for Inspiring People to Understand and Care about the Planet encouraged a love for life on earth and its sustainability. Many thanks to Ford Cochran and Anne Heywood at the National Geographic for drawing us into this wonder of life!

Stay tuned for more highlights from Day One as we tour the future, NMC style! @nmcfuture

Preparing for Graduation - Second Life Style!

In our CS 855 Futuring and Innovation class, we discussed the Animoto class activity and took a field trip to the NMC Orientation island's Educator Freebie Center to check out the tools, toys and avatar content.

We used the Game Design group voice channel so we could hear everyone even while traveling around Second Life.

Animoto is a fun, easy to use tool that takes your images, sets them to music and animates them. The free account allows you to create 30-second videos out of 8-15 slides.

While animated slides set to music may be foreign to some of us, the class found the Animoto videos stimulating and interesting.

At the end of class, one student modeled the NMC's regalia, and looked fine in his graduation cap and gown. This is our class's last doctoral course and we are looking forward to graduation. *cheers*

Our next class features a discussion of the final projects and observations from Technology's Promise by Dr. William Halal.

During our Second Life skills session, we will discuss presentation styles and tips for hosting conferences and seminars in Second Life.

You're a SlideShare RockStar!

Wow, many thanks to the SlideShare Team and the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2009 (VWBPE09) for hosting my presentation on Teaching in Virtual Worlds: Identity and Culture!

Punk'd, doh! *laughs*

Well, despite the grand April Fool's joke, the session was full and we had a grand time playing a trivia game while exploring identity and culture during the conference session.

During the session, an enthusiastic group of educators answered trivia questions while the presentation viewer tracked their responses and provided feedback in whispers. I created the game using Sendao Goodman's 2007 trivia viewer for several presentations this month, including the Game Simulation Kit presentation for the New Media Consortium Symposium on New Media and Learning.

Visit Lyr Lobo's SlideShare area to see my other presentations and visit the SlideShare Education page to enjoy more educational content. I have also embedded a Slideshare viewer on my site for easy access to the Game Simulation Kit content and notes below from the Teaching in Virtual Worlds: Identity and Culture session.

Identity and Culture in Virtual Worlds

View more slideshows from Cynthia Calongne.

Slideshow Notes

Slide 1 An avatar dances with a robot that looks like her avatar on the first two slides, representing the freedom of the curious mind.

Slide 5 depicts Eric McLuhan on his first day in a virtual world, presenting his research on hieroglyphics as an early form of animation. He presented it in context, dressed as a pharaoh. Eric McLuhan in Second Life - Playing Media Ecology.

Slides 8 and 10 depict Sarah Robbins-Bell (Intellagirl Tully), AJ Brooks, and the Linden Lab educational representatives, Claudia Linden (teen grid) and Pathfinder Linden (main grid, SLED).

While anonymity offers great potential for roleplay and self expression, students and educators need to recognize each other, especially when recognizing accomplishments via end of term grades.

Slide 11 sets the scene for situated learning, diversity and how we articulate and share our thoughts and opinions during knowledge construction in a virtual world.

Through audience interaction, we learned that a sophisticated virtual world avatar is not required to implement change in a virtual world.

Slide 12 adds Seifert Surface, famous for his Crooked House and mathematics sculptures, and Peggy Sheehy (Maggie Marat of Ramapo), known for pioneering the first middle school in a virtual world (Suffern Middle School in NY).

The human barometer activity featured on slide 13 was adapted from the GlobalKids demonstration of it on slide 12.

Slide 14 refers to how simple avatars can influence growth in a virtual world. Pictured is the former CEO of Linden Lab Philip Rosedale and his avatar.

Slide 15 notes that virtual worlds are on the rise, and with it is avatar creation, identity and self-expression in virtual worlds.

Slide 17 looks inside two avatars to the wireframe view, noting that we meet minds in a virtual space. Avatar development, movement and gesture can be quite sophisticated, as noted on Slide 18.

Slide 19 Alan Levine (CDB Barkley) of the New Media Consortium and formerly with the Maricopa Learning eXchange is featured in his furry avatar amid a community of librarians, educators, administrators and instructional designers.

Slide 20 Only one avatar is seen, but three of the robots could be worn as an avatar. The name over an avatar is how we distinguish real people from objects, as evidenced by Slide 21 at the Life20.net conference sponsored by Dr. Dobbs Journal, Sun and IBM.

Slide 23 refers to the fantasy subculture (Middle Earth).

On slide 24, the lady on the right by Daden Limited is not real. She is a bot and can interact with avatars via a text-based conversation.

Slide 25 Howard Rheingold is a well-known educator and author on social media. This session is his first Second Life session at the New Media Consortium (NMC) in October 2006.

Slide 26 A Colorado Technical University (CTU) class interacts with content and creates 3D objects. On the right, the book that is floating in front of Lyr holds course content and moves with her avatar as she interacts with the class. Not all of the class members look human, noted by the charming box bot on the left.

We can experience life from the perspective of others, as noted during the usability tests conducted in class in Slide 27.

NOAA's Eric Hackathorn has dressed his avatar, Hackshaven Harford, as Grace Hopper in Slide 28 for a presentation to the NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning, March 25, 2009. He also disguised his voice using a voice changer, and then demonstrated the difference to the delight of the session's participants.

Slide 29 in Lyr Lobo on the far left and Slide 30 features Virtual Worlds designer Stella Costello of the NMC on the far right.

Slide 31 shows how graduate students set their appearance at the start of an MBA class in Second Life.

Slide 32 CTU students meet for the first time to roleplay as CEOs in a case study and problem-based learning activity.

Slide 34 offers links to additional content.

I'm off to work on the next project!

#bestofslideshare
April Fool's!

Last day of the VWBPE 09 Conference

Due to the phenomenal efforts of the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Committee, this year's conference was a great experience.

I was delighted with this year's conference. The huge turnout resulted in full sims and great conversation.
Lag happens, and still people connect, meet minds, share ideas and establish strong social networks. Highlights for me were Kim Pasturnak's session on Process Drama and my trivia game session on Identity and Culture.

See the Selkie in the photo on the left? Kim blends storytelling with generative drama to evoke strong opinions from each participant.

Both Kim Flintoff's slides and my Identity and Culture game slides are available on Slideshare. I'd like to say that I took a host of lovely photos, but I was preoccupied while chatting with the game participants. I had as much fun as they did! *grins*

Zana Kohime's tireless efforts during the conference were recognized at the Closing Ceremonies. A limited number of residents are seen on screen to increase performance, so you cannot tell from the photo that the sims were full.

Afterwards, we attended the closing ceremonies and a party. Again, thanks to LoriVonne, Phelan, Pooky and Marty as well as the many other conference staff who made this year a success. See you next year at Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education 2010! *cheers*

More information on my conference session follows in the next post.

NMC Rock the Academy Fall Symposium

If you missed out on the NMC's Rock the Academy Fall Symposium, check out the latest tools, techniques and strategies at the NMC website. The conference program includes chat transcripts and content from the sessions.

Here is the new Tardis by the NMC, where visitors can enter and be swept away as they navigate to other NMC research sites in Second Life.

For you Dr. Who fans, the room is much larger inside the Tardis (depicted on the right). A large wall map on the wall opposite the door shows the growing archipelago of the NMC's education grid.

Our imaginations were stimulated by novel techniques and tools, including Voice Threads, Open Access courses and Gardner Campbell's session on using the BBC and new media, as well as the later sessions on using wikis and YouTube effectively. Some of the presentations were larger than life (pictured on the right).

My Back to the Backchannel presentation (available on Slideshare) included how to weave cell phone podcasts and back channel microblogging tools, like Twitter, into our course designs.


Beth's wonderful Open Access strategies are seen flowing around the edges of my exhibit booth at the NMC. If you get a chance, check out the Literature Alive! booth with its wonderful Pete the spider.

The program ended with a fun demonstration of survivalist performance art. The scene was set by glasses that when worn, allowed the attendees to see zombies lurch after the crowd. Fortunately, the presenters came prepared to thwart the threat and to demonstrate their point in a most picturesque manner.

Want to know more about it? Visit the NMC Rock the Academy content and the NMC!

Socio-technical Diversity

Tonight's CTU class discussion focused on how companies strategize, evaluate new endeavors and plan for the future. These socio-technical systems included Media Bars at Starbucks and third-party partnerships at Amazon.

Some of the Media Bars are gone now, yet a handful remain scattered around the country. My family and I visited one in San Antonio during the recent ISTE NECC conference and remarked at how cool it was to browse and enjoy tunes while socializing over a favorite beverage. We proudly brought home a souvenir CD that included our favorite tunes.

Now, we have iPODs and iTunes, but the convenience, coupled with browsing while socializing, was fun. The lack of widespread adoption was attributed to iPODs and competing technologies. I was surprised and gratified to visit one, as there are only four remaining sites (according to a Starbucks' employee).

Tonight's Second Life skills included avatar customization and shopping. Prior to touring, several students demonstrated their diversity by changing into Batman, Mr. KoolAid, different genders and robots.

Some were new to setting up a folder for our avatar's normal shape, skin, hair, eyes and clothing. Two students lost their hair, skin and shapes, but after searching for a few moments, were restored.

IF you misplaced your body or hair, do not despair! We will find them. *grins*

One class took a field trip to the NMC Orientation site. After moving through the tutorials and past the trolley car, we flew over to the southeast corner to visit the Educational Center. We picked up a set of academic robes, thanks to the New Media Consortium (NMC) and Stella Costella.

What a great place! Inside, we were able to buy for $0 a host of great educator free items, including educational tools, builder's toolkits, clothing, books and custom looks. We even picked up academic robes in preparation for graduation.

We used the game design group's instant message window to communicate while touring. While voice was successful, mine disconnected for a few minutes, while I continued to chatter. *grins* Note to self: Make sure the Talk Button is lit when traveling.

The second class wove Desire2Learn's conflict with Blackboard and a recent decision by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

We discussed OpenGrid architecture and OpenSim, then speculated on the barriers to operating a virtual world server on a home PC and connecting it to a worldwide grid. The ensuing discussion ranged from system requirements to the issues associated with digital rights for virtual world content.

We ended the night by rezzing some of the NMC Games, then set up a mahjong table to discuss rezzable game pieces in preparation for next week's class.

We will meet again next week to continue reviewing the class content, play with rezzers, and distribute a guide to exploring Second Life.

Think Tanks and Second Life Gestures

In Tuesday's CS 855 Futuring and Innovation classes, we explored the similarities between our think tank activities and the innovations predicted in Technology's Promise. After reflecting on the technique that we used to identify likely innovations, we asked how our results differed from other think tanks?

For Second Life skills, we activated a set of speech gestures and inserted slides into a preloading slide viewer for giving presentations in Second Life.

In both CTU classes, we discussed the podcast assignment, noting that some students used their podcasts to talk about predictions while others evaluated the podcast technology. For using open source or custom-created mp3 content, embed it with a photo into a video and upload it to your blog.

Congratulations go out to the one-month-old birthday of our newest class member and his proud papa (depicted in this photo).

Both class sessions stated that the use of Second Life helped them to connect, share ideas and learn virtual world concepts in a relaxed setting. Students who are graduating this term asked us to hold a virtual graduation in Second Life as many of them will not be attending the next residency. I'll contact Stella Costello from the NMC Virtual Worlds team to see if we can use the NMC cap and gowns. *grins*

Next week, we'll continue our discussions on futuring and innovation, and take our first virtual field trip.