SLEDcc Games: Royalty

knife edge, this is braverfox, come in knife edge……

The days were swallowed by the furious masses constantly surrounding game control. Their vicious frenzy to achieve, to dominate, to succeed encompassed my days. The opportunity realized itself in the form of a simple social game, Royalty.

More than half of the entire convention participants played ‘Royalty’. The players exceeded that of the registered participants for the education strand alone. You may ask what this game did that was so special, why so many were engaged and persisted. It seemed plain to me. The convention happens in the hallways is what I had heard. I planned accordingly.

The goal was to level up. How you level up was the ingenious part, talk to someone. Most people are afraid to talk to someone they don’t know, especially if they have no topic of conversation or motivation to drive their impending contact. Royalty provided that motivation. Social interaction sparked in the wake of a simple identifying question that initiated game play. How did one win, you might ask. You’d level up if you had the higher card (each person had one playing card that symbolized their level).

Needless to say, there was a good balance of fizzled out noobs, casual game players and hard core gamers. A fascinating aspect of this was the connections that were made that may not have been made otherwise. The people that had now been forever connected through a simple game of ‘one-up-manship’. I also found it interesting how scant few defined themselves as the antithesis of gaming. “I don’t play games” the patriarchally portrayed professor pontificated (hehe, sorry, couldn’t resist the alliteration temptation). I assumed that ‘Johnny’ was a dull boy.

All this to say that people play games and they play at their level. No matter their level, the feedback was synonymous, fun. Now if I can only convince someone that their content needs to be and can be infused into such games, I might actually make a difference.

Oh well, next SLCC!

braverfox out!!!

Thanks to Catherine Linden for sending this along.

Announcement
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Call for Papers/Abstracts and Invited Sessions Proposals for The 2nd International Symposium on Academic Globalization: AG 2009 . It will take place in Orlando, Florida, USA, on July 10th – 13th, 2009.

Deadlines:
Papers/Abstracts Submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals: October 28th, 2008
Authors Notifications: December 18th, 2008
Camera-ready, full papers: February 11th, 2009
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All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal.

Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions.

Awards will be granted to the best paper of those presented at each session. From these session’s best papers, the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics.
Also, we would like to invite you to organize an invited session related to a topic of your research interest. If you are interested in organizing an invited session, please, fill out the respective form provided in the conference web page. We will send you a password, so you can include and modify papers in your invited session.

Organizing Committee

Popping this in directly from Cathy Walker’s (padlurowncanoe Dibou’s) post in the SLED listserv. I think it deserves broader attention, since it is generating frisky dialog over at SLED. Enjoy:

If you are interested in SL medical builds and education or in orientation spaces for students, educators, and corporations continue to monitor this list [this blog] for updates or send an email to muversllc@gmail.com and we will notify you when we are finished and ready to open it up to the SLED community.

MUVErs, LLC -John Miller (JS Vavoom, Tacoma Community College), Cathy Walker(padlurowncanoe Dibou), and Scott Merrick (ScottMerrick Oh), Braver Consulting – Jeremy Koester (Jeremy Braver), University of Wisconsin OshKosh Accelerated BSN Program, and Todd Tevlin (Esch Snoats) will soon release a very innovative SL medical simulation project in addition to John’s SL interactive nursing education games/activities AND a new approach to SL orientation designed by MUVErs, Chris Crawford (Silver Tomorrow, U of N Dakota), Braver Consulting, and Todd Tevlin.

All of us involved are long time participants in SL, ISTE and the SLED community.  You are a big part of our inspiration and knowledge base that helped us to put together such an aggressive endeavor.  We look forward to sharing it with you soon.

Collaboration is good!

Hugs to All -
Cathy Walker
aka padlurowncanoe Dibou
Project Mgr.

Crossposted from scottmerrick.net and Oh!VirtualLearning:

Here’s an email I sent out to my colleagues at University School of Nashville Just a minute ago. Think it’ll work? If you wish, feel free to copy it to send to your own school’s teachers (substitute your own example, of course, and delete the reference to helping with the resource room. Oh, heck, edit it any way you want!).

If you’re not in the “oh, god, how silly” camp in conversations about 3Dinternet virtual environments, and you want to investigate Second Life beginning at a safe and informative entry point, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), an 85,000 member organization with well over 3,000 of them using SL, has created a new way to enter the environment, accessible at the webpage at http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/education . I helped a very little bit with the design of the resources room and I’m very proud of the work ISTE’s doing.

Just visit the site, follow the directions, and feel free to Search “Scottmerrick Oh” and offer him (me friendship.

EXAMPLE:
I dropped into ISTE island for a bit just last night and made a new friend, a teacher from New York, who has used two relatively new computer programming tools (Scratch and Storytelling Alice) with her students for years, and I’ll be picking her brain as I move toward helping introduce those tools for our K12 students at USN. Whatever your professional interests, SL is a way to extend your learning about them in collaboration with teachers on a global scale.

Here’s a screengrab:
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”–Kurt Vonnegut, from “Cold Turkey”

http://scottmerrick.net

“Stepping into Health” becomes Third in Popular “Stepping into Virtual Worlds” Series

Using virtual worlds to promote health and healthcare is the topic of the next installment of the popular “Stepping into Virtual Worlds” conference series, to be offered October 7^th, 2008 in Second Life.  Hundreds of people have attended this series, which began with “Stepping into History” in June and continued with “Stepping into Literature” in August.  The series is sponsored by Alliance Library System and LearningTimes.  The day-long conference is open to the public, with more information available at http://www.steppingintovirtualworlds.org.  It will take place entirely in the virtual world of Second Life.

During this conference, participants will make virtual “field trips” to some of the best and most creative locations that are using virtual worlds to promote health.  During these field trips, they will be able to speak with those responsible for creating the simulations, and have time to explore them on their own.  Among the field trips for this conference are Healthinfo Island, a health education simulation where visitors can test their knowledge of strokes by walking through a giant artery and destroying clots by correctly answering questions, and ToxTown, a typical American town where potentially dangerous chemicals can easily be seen.

In addition to the field trips, the conference includes:

·         Keynote presentations by Randy Hinrichs, founder of 2B3D and developer of the “Medipelago,” a group of health related simulations in Second Life; and Ramesh Ramloll, creator of Play2Train, a virtual world simulator used to prepare healthcare professionals and others for crisis situations

·         Table Talks on subjects such as “Healthcare Education and Advocacy in Virtual Worlds,” “Virtual World Health Librarianship” and “Using Virtual World for Training Medical Personnel.”

·         A panel discussion, allowing participants to question and interact with a variety of experts in the use of virtual worlds in health and healthcare.

Alliance Library System, co-sponsor of the “Stepping Into” series, is a multi-type library system headquartered in East Peoria, Illinois.  Alliance has been a leader in developing ways for libraries to expand their missions and serve patrons in virtual worlds.  Alliance is on the web at www.alliancelibrarysystem.com.

 LearningTimes, the second co-sponsor, is the leading producer of online communities and online conferences for education and training.  Their clients and partners include educational and cultural institutions, non-profit organizations, associations and membership groups. LearningTimes provides the training, platforms, applications and  expertise these organizations need to make their conferences a success.  More information about LearningTimes can be found at www.learningtimes.net.

The cost for this day-long conference is $79, and participants may register for the conference at www.steppingintovirtualworlds.org

Um, two things, pilgrims:

The Global Kids Second Life Curriculum (three nine handy freely downloadable .pdf files–see Chimera’s comment) may be picked up at RezEd now and I’m tickled to be about to open up my copies right after I hit the “Publish” button on this post. Go get yours.

Secondly, you can be downloading those documents at the same time you’re listening to Sarah (Intellagirl Tulley) Robbins’ marvelous interview at the RezEd podcast number 14. I’m roflmao at her clearing up some general misconceptions about Second Life’s demographic. “About time,” says your resident oldie. Ditto about her chiding corporations who plowed money into SL without critical thought about their investment or the most effective use of the platform for best return on implementation. “That’s not Second Life’s fault: It’s your fault! ‘Cause you didn’t do it right!” Heheheheeee.

Kudos to Intellagirl and to the GK folks for all their hard work!

Cheerio!

Organizations are standing shoulder to shoulder around the global talent pool, trying to hook their share of Gen X and Gen Y keepers. But despite their youth, these new recruits are as wary and tight-lipped as a wily old bass. If you don’t find just the right way to attract them, they won’t give you a nibble.

[From Using the virtual world of Second Life to snag young IT talent ]

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Frequently we forget that the students we teach are going to need jobs. As various IT skills move into the virtual realm, will environments like Second Life become richer recruiting environments? Can we use this to diffuse some of the creepy treehouse of second life?

Barry Joseph delivered a WONDERFUL and engaging 50 minutes to us at SLEDcc2008 in Tampa. In addition to the several hundred on-location attendees, at any given time we had 30-40 or so people at a distance enjoying his talk from the feeds and at one of the three locations in Second Life there were approximately 25 avatars, also from all over the world. Didn’t see it? No problem. Sit back and enjoy. And hey, share it with at least one dubious colleague :

PHOTOS!!!

Thanks to Hewie for all the Picasa photos!! Link here.

And everyone else who has taken photos at theSLEDcc08 Group Flickr Pool

VIDEOS!!!

(Thank you ScottMerrick!! Look for Scott’s archived videos (click the archived videos tab in Ustream.tv or videos on demand tab on Veodia)

veodia feed
ustream.tv feed
Joyce’s aik.com feed (will be broadcasting intermittently as she can, from other sessions)

The entire schedule of inworld events is at the SLEDcc wiki, but the quick list of streaming locations is this:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/128/124/25
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rockcliffe%20I/206/134/40
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Muse%20Isle/171/146/30

NOTES AND BLOGS!!!

AJ’s CoverItLive on blogger.

Anthony Fontana’s CoverItLive with Mogulus.