Friday, May 25, 2007

NMC Campus Updates

by Alan Levine
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June 6-9 Live form Indianapolis
Second Life Events at NMC Summer Conference
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The annual NMC conference is being hosted by IUPUI and will feature a significant number of sessions related to Second Life and Virtual Worlds. We are right now planning a number of these to have counter parts in SL, including live video streams of the opening and closing keynote sessions, and a live audio stream from a session where we will hold a RL+SL NMC Campus Teachers Buzz Meeting.
Also, at the conference reception on Wednesday, we are going to ask our remote participants to show up at NMC Campus on the beta grid, so we can do a live audio session to and from the conference. I have to let you know the last demo I did for this at a presentation from University of Mary Washington had a HUGE impact on the audience.
We are also exploring some spontaneous audio streams and interviews from Indy.
Look for details sometime next week on the NMC Campus Observer http://sl.nmc.org//
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Educators in SL Survey
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Thanks to the 180+ who have already responded to our survey. There are a few days left before we close it, and we'd really like to push the numbers higher. Please share the survey link widely:
The information is already shaping our thinking for the future, and you can expect to see the results publicly shared in mid to late June.
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NMC Orientation Island In the Works
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Things are moving nicely along with the development of an Orientation Island to assist educators and students entering SL for the first time. They will use a special account registration form on our site, and rather than being sent to the wild public Orientation, where newbies have been known to get chased by large body parts not normally displayed in public, they will experience the basic orientation of walking, flying etc, but also end at a location full of educational resources and teleports to destinations. Ultimately, this will be also a place where SL educators may return to for refreshers on how to do these things.
We are interested in anyone that wants to share any education resources (thanks to those who already volunteered) or might be interested in participating or help shaping some sort of mentor program.
There are a lot of improvements in the works for the account creation / orientation process from the main SL site as well.
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Howto Event in August
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We are in some early stages for a in world conference in mid August aimed at provided practical lessons, tutorials in building, scripting, machinima, avatar customization, and more of the key things worth knowing. Stay tuned, but we will have a call for presenters ready by mid to late June.

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