Virtual Worlds & Games UnSymposium

At last years UnSymposium I was big into presenters sharing through methods that take advantage of the virtual 3D experience. This year I will continue to share my enthusiasm for dynamic and interesting presentations. As part of that I have been researching easy to use tools that spice up presentations. At ISTE 2011 I chatted with the people from Fablevision for almost an hour about Animation-ish – a simple product that tiers up for kids from early elementary to high school possibly, depending on the students and their creativity. For my live presentations I plan to use these tools – hopefully others will follow.

http://vw.unsymposium.org/wp-content/uploads/vw.unsymposium.org/2011/07/blog-rurik.swf

Link to the presentation: blog-rurik

ISTE SIGVE Special Interest Group: Virtual Worlds  http://sigve.iste.wikispaces.net

VWBPE: Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education  http://www.vwbpe.org/”>http://www.vwbpe.org

SITE: Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education  http://site.aace.org/conf

AECT: Association for Educational Communication and Technology  http://www.aect.org/default.asp

iNACOL: The International Association for K-12 Online Learning  http://www.inacol.org

1. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

2. Social Knowledge Construction: Emerging Virtual Worlds Pedagogy <a http://edtech.boisestate.edu/ldawley/SNKC_pdf.pdf”

3. Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation http://www.astd.org/LC/2005/1105_seimens.htm

4. Half-life of Knowledge http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Connectivism

5. Weaving a Personal Web http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=52376

On Monday, June 27th at ISTE SIG Virtual Environments we had the opportunity to talk about more than just logging in to virtual worlds.

For some of us, our PLN (personal learning network)  is our personal learning community and provides us with professional development. (For more about PLN replacing PD go to the ISTE Point/Counterpoint Article written by Scott Merrick and Rurik Nackerud.) We really do look at virtual environments as a way creation of social knowledge in our teaching profession. Virtual worlds and games have been a means to extend our PLN (personal learning network) beyond blogs, listservs and email and truly make it international.

Last year at the UnSymposium, we had talks on personal learning, learner analytics, blended learning, collaboration and World of Warcraft. We toured Jokaygrid, SIGARVEL and OpenSim.

So we are asking you – the community what do you want to see in a professional development experience? The UnSymposium is in October. Do you want to present, lead a discussion or do some sort of debate? Do you have suggestions for others to present?

This year we would like to continue with Machinima, Data Visualization and more games.

To get more of an idea, take a look at the schedule from last year.

Please leave us your comments here or email vw.symposium@gmail.com

The ISTE Special Interest Group Virtual Environments (SIGVE) is holding a People’s Choice Award for its student category. This Machinima Fest is truly international with submissions from Great Britain, Indonesia, Australia and the United States.

Whether you can attend F2F or in SL, to celebrate the work of our students, ISTE SIGVE is asking that you watch the student Machinima and vote for the People’s Choice at
http://bit.ly/ivhdo3

Voting is open until 645 pm EST on Tuesday June 28th

People’s Choice will be announced between 645 pm- 7pm EST

Room 126A at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and in Second Life

hashtag #sigve #edtech597

Do you know what a MOOC is? It’s a Massively Open Online Course. It’s kind of a play on a MMORPG ( Massively Online Role-Playing Game). I participated or played PLENK2010 (Personal Learning Environments and Network Knowledge) and LAK11 (Learning and Knowledge Analytics). MOOCs are extreme PLN (personal learning network) events. Imagine 200, 500 or over  1000 educators in one place on the Internet whether in an LMS or in a google group all sharing ideas, posing questions and suggesting resources. It’s like the best F2F conference you’ve ever been to only you can revisit it. Like any F2F conference, you have some very active participants and then people who just sit in the back of the room. But really think about the PLN possibilities when you participate in an 8 week event with that amount of engaged educators.

So how do you sign up? Funny that you should ask – there is a MOOC  about to open up on June 27, 2011. Online Learning Today….and Tomorrow being facilitated by The Center for Online Learning, Research and Service The Center for Online Learning, Research at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Look for tweets and blogs with #edumooc

Are VWBPE (Virtual Worlds Best Practices) people part of your PLN (personal learning network)? They should be. And over the next two weeks, there’s a couple of places to follow them, meet them and attend events inworld.

For Participants and Presenters from VWBPE – there’s some things to follow in the twitterverse and some things to participate in Second Life and Real Life!

On June 15, the Games, Learning and Society  7.0 conference will kick off. Look for hashtags – #gls7 and #gbl. If you aren’t already following them – you may want to follow two of our VWBPE presenters and fave gbl ( game based learning) educators Marianne Malmstrom @knowcluekidd on twitter and John Carter Mc Knight SL: Kaseido Quandry @ john_carter on twitter.  Knowclue will be on a panel discussing Lego Universe and Kas will be presenting on World of Warcraft, online communities  and the game generation.

http://www.glsconference.org/2011/

Then as soon as that is over – it’s time for ISTE. The ISTE frenzy has already started on twitter with the main hashtag being #iste11.

The big blogverse and twitterverse event will be on June 25th – EDUBLOGGER CON. http://www.edubloggercon.com/EduBloggerCon+2011  #ebc11

It is 7- 8 hours of Social Media maven educators who are so collaborative that they spend their free time blogging and tweeting about education. This is where the real edugeeks live and meet. But it is an extremely welcoming environment with lots of love for newbies and lurkers.

But for virtual worlds types, you can get ready by reading  ISTE SIGVE’s Virtual Education Journal written, edited and published by SL Roxie Neiro and BJ Gearbox. http://issuu.com/edovation/docs/1st_vej_may_2011?viewMode=magazine&mode=embed

The SIGVE ( Special Interest Group – Virtual Environments) will have a two day playground ( June 27 & 28th) full of presentation both on site and in virtual worlds. If you check the schedule you will see new presenters and members of your PLN from VWBPE.

http://sigve.iste.wikispaces.net/ISTE2011+SIGVE+Playground+Schedule

as well as ISTE SIGVE Machinima Fest 2011 organized by Knowclue Kidd on Tuesday June 28th

http://sigve.iste.wikispaces.net/Machinima+Fest+2011

If you do have an educational Machinima, there is still time to enter until June 20th!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dE16RDJHRHBCbE1hWGVzb0Q3WlFUa3c6MQ

These are the additional hashtags I’ve seen so far for iste! There will be more! As always feel free to follow  VWBPE tweets and tweeps:

@vwbpe @vwgus @machinimania @selbyevans @pcorrimal @lmockford @ruriknackerud @center4edupunx @vwroi

#iste11 – main

#EBC11 – EduBloggerCon

#techiste – Techsmith meetup

#ETK11 – Edtech Karaoke Tweetup

#sigml    ISTE mobile sig

#sigve   Special Interest Group Virtual Environments

This blog is a way to inform and crowdsource the Virtual Worlds Graduate UnSymposium to be held October 21- 23, 2011 in a variety of virtual worlds.

The UnSymposium’s objective is to promote innovation and sharing among the community of educators. So to encourage that the UnSymposium focuses on the following at its event:

1) Expertise and Knowledge sharing Across Worlds -What are you researching and what are you learning? How are you linking ideas and people?

 2)  Capabilities and Possibilities – Tell us what is out there. What opportunities, networks, tools and techniques are available? The focus is on the discovery of those opportunities, research, practices and products your colleagues should know.

3)  Social Networking with Virtual Worlds for Professional Development – Tell us about your networks and nodes.

More information and crowdsourcing to come!