VWGUS About Us 2011

This page will be letting you know more about the Symposiarchs and Symposiasts

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. They organized it and held it last year on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday October 22-24, 2010.

Marianne Malmstrom
Blog: Knowclue
twitter: @knowclue
SL: Knowclue Kidd
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Alliance: Knowclue/Cognitive Dissonance

Marianne Malmstrom has 30 years experience as a classroom teacher and administrator. Fascinated by emerging technology, she believes that we must critically select and pair promising technology with sound pedagogy if we are to keep education relevant. As an early adopter of virtual worlds and machinima, she has been working with elementary and middle school students to explore and construct effective learning environments using these new tools.

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.

Rurik Nackerud
Blog: Ed Thought – Thoughts on education; ideas, lessons and policies
twitter: @ruriknackerud
SL: Rurik Bellingshausen
Jokaydiagrid: Rurik Nackerud
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Horde: Vygotsky/Inevitable Betrayal
WoW Sisters of Elune Realm Alliance: Vargsdropi/Cognitive Dissonance

Rurik has a background as an experiential educator and American Sign Language interpreter. He has been working with educational organizations in Second Life and MMORPGs as a designer and educational technologist. He was the 2012 Communications Chair for VWBPE.  He has collaborated with the group of educators at the Center 4 EduPunx. As part of his student teaching this year, he used virtual worlds, blended learning and developed an ARG ( alternate reality game) for his science students. Rurik recently ( June 2011) graduated from Concordia University in Oregon with a Master of Teaching Art and has language arts and science endorsements. He currently teaches at the Oregon Virtual Academy.

Kate Hagerty
Blog: center4edupunx
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.