The UnSymposium is a grassroot community event, so we are looking for educators who are great at outreach and organizing but also great at communicating about everything with all of the organizing team.
Kae Novak
Blog: center4edupunx.com
twitter: @kzenovka
SL: Kavon Zenovka
Jokaydiagrid: Kavon Zenovka
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Horde: Maskirovka/Inevitable Betrayal
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Alliance: Tashidelek/Cognitive Dissonance
Kae is an instructional designer for online learning at a community college. Her interests are online collaboration, immersion, role-play, virtual environments and games. Social network knowledge interests her because she sees so much learning that is happening outside of formal learning environments. She believes that ignoring learning from distributed social and professional networks limits our students and our instructors’ futures. She’s the Chief Immersion Officer and Coordinator of Unrealistic Expectations at the Center 4 EduPunx.(Oh, and has a tendency to be a bit intense about education!)
So the group of educators she plays around with in virtual worlds decided they’d like to have a very small and discussion driven symposium as kind of a counterweight to the extremely large virtual worlds conference (VWBPE) that they are all involved in each spring. So Virtual Worlds Graduate UnSymposium was developed in 2010.
Tanya Martin
Blog: gridjumper.net
Twitter: @gridjumper
SL: Tanya Smedley (Gridjumper)
Opensim Grids: Gridjumper
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Horde: Gridjumper/Inevitable Betrayal
WoW Sisters of Elune Alliance: Gridmage/Cognitive Dissonance
Tanya is the Coordinator of Professional Development Support for Broward County Schools in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A former middle school computer teacher with a Masters in Computer Science Education, Tanya has a fascination with using emerging technologies to enhance teaching and learning. She documents her learning and random thoughts in a blog, http://gridjumper.net/ and is currently working on ways to make online professional development a more engaging experience, with the belief that it will ultimately have a positive impact on student achievement. Tanya feels very lucky to have met like-minded educators online and collaborates with various individuals with ISTE SIGVE in-world events, the VWBPE online conference, MOOC facilitation, machinima production, social/professional networking, and productive game playing.
Chris Luchs
Blog: center4edupunx
twitter: @vwroi
SL: Abacus Capalini
Jokaydiagrid: Abacus Capalini
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Alliance: Biggersby/Cognitive Dissonance
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Horde: Kuwapi/Inevitable Betrayal
Chris Luchs is the Associate Dean of CTE for a statewide online community college consortium. He has taught accounting, agribusiness, business, management, marketing, computer science and multi-graphic design. He is a geek and spends his free time investigating new technologies and collaborating with other educators on evaluating and exploring virtual worlds and games based educational applications. At VWBPE, he is the official prim auditor and carefully keeps count of all land usage. His current happy place is analytics and data visualization tools. He is the Chief Chasm Crossing Officer at the Center 4 EduPunx.
Kate Hagerty
Blog: center4edupunx
twitter @leedaleshepherd
SL: LeeDale Shepherd
WoW – Sisters of Elune Realm Alliance: Linya/Cognitive Dissonance
WoW – Sisters of Elune Realm Horde: Nikii/Inevitable Betrayal
Leedale Shepherd in Second Life and Jokaydiagrid
Kate is a Multimedia instructor, web designer, and virtual worlds/gaming enthusiast. She is the CIS Program Lead at CCCOnline. She has a BFA in Multimedia. She is interested in finding methods of education that are Not Possible In Real Life (NPIRL). Kate is also unhealthily fascinated with technology and all things shiny. She has used Second Life, World of Warcraft, the now-defunct Metaplace, and Runescape as part of her curriculum. She is the Mistress of Prims and sometime-webmaster for the Center 4 EduPunx.
Vasili A. Giannoutsos
SL: Bluebarker Lowtide
Vasili is a designer doing 2D/3D Graphic Design work and Instructional Design on the side. Vasili has worked in the Industry Design trifecta of print, mobile and web. His current work includes mobile development apps with military application. He has also done some video production work that includes educational tutorials, lesson plans and machinimas. When not working, writing or building in Second Life, Vasili can be quite the gamer. He has recently been playing League of Legends and Tera. He has a B.S. in Computer Animation specializing in shading and lighting and a Masters in Education of Media, Design and Technology.