AECT Grand Opening in Second Life

The new AECT virtual world headquarters was opened in Second Life in conjunction with the 2009 conference in Louisville. I was not able to attend, but I was able to participate. And I did the video which is posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl-kn6Vihz4

MTALN has come and gone

The Montana Thai Active Learning Network 2009 group has come and gone. They are in Thailand now working on their action research projects. One of this year's highlights; I was flipping channels in the evening and there were our visitors being interviewed in the state capitol by some legislators. And this year, I got to go trick or treating with the Thai folks on Halloween, which really was a treat. More details at http://mtaln.blogspot.com/.

ISTE in Second Life

Always willing to try something new in the field, I agreed to run security for a virtual world extension of a professional conference. The peaceful setting produced little in the way of incidents, and I spent three days assisting a great bunch of volunteers. Full details and photos in both real and virtual settings can be found here on flickr.

Windows Vista on our Macs

I spent Easter in the lab putting Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 on one of the Macs using Apple Boot Camp. Plan is to do all of them. Everything worked except that every time I shut Vista down it goes to a blue screen and a memory dump. Then when I log in, it tells me it crashed last time and would I like Vista to look for a solution. I say yes, and the message goes away. Period.

Two or Three Kinds of People

There are two kinds of people in this world, people trying to make a living off the Internet, and people trying to get everything for free on the Internet. Often people are in one category during the day and switch to the other after work.

Well, there is a third kind of person, the person who makes things available for free on the Internet. Boy, do we very love/hate those folks.

Apture

Bumped into a Greek fellow in Second Life today, Nikos Elcano. He is interested in use of interlinking Internet media in health education, viewing the entire Web as one big Wiki. He introduced me to Apture, the service that makes all these little multimedia pop-up links work. Soon, all the world will be a mindmap.

EDSD 453 at MSU visits Second Life

A methods of teaching art class at Montana State University got a short trip into Second Life to explore the possibilities of art instruction in a 3D virtual learning environment. Students were sent to jacksonpollock.org and instructed to spend one minute creating a work that was uniquely their own using that tool which imitates another artist's technique. They cropped with Jing and uploaded into Second Life, where a group evaulation was held in text chat before we all took a tour of some of that virtual world's many art galleries. The gallery they created can be seen in a Flickr photoset.