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.

VWBPE.org Conference 2009

Friday at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference was excellent. I must confess to some cognitive overload due to attending Pathfinder Linden's keynote at the VWBPE and the New Media Consortium's TCC Worldwide Online Conference special event on their Horizon Report 2009. *eyes spin in her head*

Both sessions were excellent and no one noticed a momentary delay in my responses in the various chat logs. *grins* Yes, the storytelling, creativity and Vogon poetry sessions were fantastic, too. In fact, I may have to weave some comic books into my future lessons. Won't that be fun? *laughs*

Throughout the day, I found myself racing to gather the chat logs, links, take photos, click on content givers, and study the presenter's content to digest it all. The remaining sessions, such as Dr. David Gibson's session on game assessment, kept me so busy that I am still digesting the content.

Some ask what attendees get out of an online conference. Aside from attending vicariously in your jammies, you can share ideas, collect information, photos, notes, research for additional content on the web, meet old friends, make new friends and twitter about the session to your colleagues.

Not a Twit?

You don't use Twitter? I did not for the longest time until I saw the value in it at an NMC conference session two years ago. While listening to unfamiliar content in the presenter's research, I surreptitiously glanced at my neighbor's twitter and was fascinated with the purposeful, condensed content.

He posted several links and some insider information about the presenter's research that made me feel as if I had assumed a spirit form and stepped into the lab to witness it firsthand.

Want to know more? Visit the sessions and papers that are being published in the Journal of Virtual Studies after the conference. Many thanks to the organizers of the VWBPE 2009 and their commitment to great educational experiences in virtual worlds.