The First Annual Immersive Education Day: Kansas/Missouri
Welcome to the first annual Immersive Education Day (iED) Kansas/Missouri. iED Kansas/Missouri is sponsored by the Southeast Kansas Education Service Center at Greenbush and the Immersive Education Initiative. The event is intended primarily for K-12 virtual world educators. The goal of this conference is to:
- Showcase virtual world technology for education (Opensim, Wonderland, Open Cobalt, ActiveWorlds, Secondlife, and others)
- Share best practices
- Share taxonomies and pedagogies
- Share resources
- Connect with like minded educators
We aim to keep this event open, non-formal, and conversational. If at any time through the day you have questions or comments, please do not hesitate to ask any of the presenters or Greenbush staff in attendance. The flexible itinerary of the day:
- 9:00-9:50 - Aaron Walsh: Welcome and Introduction
- 10:00 - 10:50 - Rich White: Greenbush, Virtual Worlds & Immersive Education Platforms
- 11:00 - 11:50 - Elizabeth Wellman & Cathy Arreguin: Real Teaching in Virtual Worlds
- 12:00-1:00 - Lunch & Geodome Tours
- 1:00 - 1:50 - Jeff Lowe: Collaboration Tools for OpenSim and Second Life: A Tour and Assessment
- 1:00 - 1:50 - Daniel Green: Education with Alice and Project Wonderland
- 3:00 - 3:50 - Greenbush IDL Team: CSI Development Team Tours CSI on Opensim
- 4:00 - 5:00 - Tour the Geodome
Presenters:Aaron Walsh: Aaron Walsh is Director of the Media Grid and Immersive Education Initiative, an international best-selling author, and a Boston College faculty member. In 2006 Walsh received the Teaching with New Media award for his work on Immersive Education. In 2007 Computerworld named him one of the forty most innovative people in the technology industry. He received this prestigious national award for his pioneering work on Immersive Education, which was recognized as “…innovative, promising technology which holds the potential to significantly affect society in the near future.” After more than a decade of research and development in the field, Walsh began using his prototype technologies to teach Boston College courses from a distance. At that time he coined the term “Immersive Education” to describe learning platforms that combine interactive 3D graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat, Web cameras, and rich digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms
Rich White: Rich is the Immersive Ed. and Collaborative Media Designer, Developer, & Researcher for the Greenbush Education Service Center in Southeast Kansas. Rich is the designer of the Edusim classroom project, a member of the OpenCobalt development team, and an educational liaison for the Immersive Education Initiative. Rich has focused his work on classroom collaboration and immersive visualization software and hardware solutions and is currently working on the “Mobile Immersive Learning Lab” concept - a low cost immersive hardware solution for group based learning that uses open source 3D virtual world software for rapid environment development. Rich also manages and writes the Greenbush Labs blog which focuses on emerging and innovative classroom and learning technologies.
Beth Wellman: Beth investigates learning using evolving technology environments. This has led her to explore immersive learning and virtual worlds, first as content/learning expert on Science in Second Life with Global Kids where students explored a variety of ecological scenarios. Most recently in her own high school science classroom she developed virtual world curriculum for learning human body systems and creating habitats and biomes. She started investigating immersive learning and the use of simulation (SimCity) in the classroom as a professor at Bard College (NY). She has worked with K-2 students on peer to peer learning with computers across cultural and language differences (Apple Education Grant) and led teachers in designing, developing and researching technology use for their own classrooms (AT&T Learning Networks Initiative) both at UCLA. She has also taught online classes in graphics in the classroom for Framingham State College, MA. She has an Ed.D Ed Psych, UCLA, in technology for learning and instruction, and a M.A. from the UMass Math, Science, Technology Education Project.
Cathy Arreguin: Cathy develops instruction and supports educators in the uses of emerging educational technologies for both K-12 and higher education. She currently provides professional development training and support for San Diego State University faculty and administrators in their use of Second Life and other virtual worlds. She also teaches EDTEC700 3D-MULEs (Multiuser Learning Environments) and provides support for other Educational Technology courses.
Recent projects include virtual world curriculum design and development for Science in Second Life, a standards-based 9th grade science curriculum with Global Kids, Inc. She also consults with Santa Barbara Community College and The Sloan Consortium, developing instruction and training educators to effectively use virtual worlds with both K-12 and adult learners. Her ongoing interests include technology related professional development and the development of comprehensive systems that provide educators and trainers the support they need to both design and implement innovative and effective learning experiences for their students.She holds an M.A. in Education (Educational Technology from SDSU and a B.A. in Psychology from UCLA.
Jeff Lowe: Jeff is a project manager for the University of Oklahoma Center for Public Management, Jeff orchestrates a wide variety of client projects such as employee trainings, documentary/training/broadcast video productions, web video solutions, event management, and public awareness campaigns. He also consults on collaborative technologies and effective utilization of social media. As an independant consultant, developer, and avid technologist, his goal is to help public and private organizations accomplish difficult tasks within immersive environments. His specialization is collaboration within Second Life and Open Sim. He utilizies existing and develops new immersive tools to conduct strategic planning sessions, brainstorming meetings, and trainings. His most recent challenge was translating survey results into a series of tour displays within Second Life, allowing participants to explore, interact with, and experience the results.
Daniel Green: Daniel is a systems engineer with Sun Microsystems, specializing in Java and Software Systems Solutions. Daniel volunteers in local schools and universities teaching computer programming using tools such as Scratch, Alice, Greenfoot and BlueJ. Daniel is active in the Sun Microsystems partnership with Carnegie Mellon University for Alice 3 and with Sun Microsystems Laboratories for Project Wonderland.
Greenbush IDL Team: Lisa Pride, Sharon Wilson, and Carol Woolbright created the instructional concept for the Virtual World lesson, Crime Scene Investigation. Lisa and Sharon are distance learning teachers and curriculum developers. Carol is the director of distance learning at The Greenbush Education Service Center in Southeast Kansas.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Date of event? Will you have conference proceedings? M
July 25th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Event details are here: http://vweducation.ning.com/