Thank You.

Saturday June 18, 2009

Finally getting somewhat back on course after the tsunami that was NECC09, I received my nicely printed, frameable, official thank-you from ISTE for my small part in co-facilitating the Second Life Playground in the snail-mailbox yesterday. That of course reminded me how slack I have been in getting out my own thanks to everyone involved in the project. It's true, I'm a slacker. I've never been very good at writing thank you notes, either. I'm going to try here.

First, thanks goes to Lisa Linn, my co-facilitator. Lisa's a 6th grade teacher in Oceanside, California, She's smart, outspoken, and driven to learn and to share. Without Lisa's careful presence nothing would have happened in the Playground (I wish we could change the nomenclature next year, since although play is certainly an element of what goes on there, it may be more of a Hive, or a Factory, or a Tribal Village than a Playground). Whatever we call it, thanks to Jennifer Ragan-Fore and Anita and Laurie and Terra and everyone else at NECC09 for providing the organization, the support, and the encouragement to make it work.

I have two large groups of folks to thank, beginning with Susan Toth-Cohen and her co-Inworld Supreme Poobah Jeff Agamenoni, who completely took over making inworld things happen and assuring that all the things that could go wrong did not go wrong. Onsite in DC, in the glaringly brightly sunlit Playground, dozens of volunteers, each with two names as is our way, gave countless hours simply being there and helping the initially inquisitive satisify their budding curiosities. Thanks then to the onsite Supreme Poobahs and their minions for their dedication and their gentleness...Thanks to the tech folks at the Washington Convention Center, though I would have them lobby for a complete reworking of their NATted network and wireless infrastructure, which failed on many levels as soon as 18,000 laptops fired up and tried to get work done over them. To their credit, they seemed to recover at least acceptably, if not robustly.

Next year I wish for just a few things:

• That the Second Life areas are more public
• That the setup allows for maximal functionality 100% of the time (lighting is optimal, audio is optimal, and streaming into Second Life is optimized and easy)
• That everyone who came to NECC09 comes to ISTE Conference 2010 with the same love of tribe and outreach attitudes--that one's a given!

I can't thank everyone personally, at least not until I see them inworld or in world next. But at the sure-thing risk of leaving out someone important, and apologizing for that in advance, I do want to call up just a few more names, and I'll use whichever one (SL or rw) that comes to mind first:

Knowclue Kidd--Marianne, you are a glowing charm on the face of the earth. I felt that your contributions to our presentations (the ones that may have been underattended in quantity but which were loaded with quality in the attendees as well as the teams up front) rendered each and every one of them magical. I will always recall the resigned sigh when you capitulated and helped make the Second Life Birds of a Feather the charming session that it turned out to be. That's all I can say without getting teardrops on my laptop, and you know what kind of damage that can do.

Kevin Jarrett--You are the bomb. Kindred K-4 Tech Coordinator burning your innovation flame boldly in spite of all the efforts that circumstances might make to dampen them, you are an inspiration to me. I cherish your friendship and your kindness in all things.

Cathy Walker and John Miller--You had no official roles in the Playgrounds, but you were there. You both share such intelligence and vision, coupled with a shared and transparent intolerance for bullhockey, that I am consistently awed and blessed to know you and to work with you. My role in MUVErs is about as unclear as my roles in other life arenas are, I'm a cloud guy, I think, unavailable for pigeon-holing, unwilling to settle down or to grow up excepting for in my parenting and my writing. You're stuck with me, at least for now, and likely for always. As it's always been, business is only part of it. We persevere. You thrive toward global appreciation of your work, as witnessed by John's recent appearance in an article about innovation in Second Life distance education.

Louise Borgnine--You were there, all over our area, supporting and smiling and helping and sharing. The little ways you showed that ISTE cared really touched home. Thank you so much.

Mark Dunk--Dude, did you ever sleep? Did you ever see any of NECC09 besides the Second Life Playground? No, well neither did I, really. But you where there every waking moment, excepting perhaps for the occasional bio-break. Your help and presence helped define the overall ambience in ways for which we are all grateful.

Malinda McCormick--Thank you for bringing your charm and your Frontline Digital Nation friends into our space. Thank you for the charm and gentle spirit you shared with us.

Claudia Linden--You didn't bring your gentle and spiritually awe-inspiring physical self to us, but you did spend significant time with us inworld (and onsite via projected SL) chatting and consulting, most specifically on the topics of education case studies and grant collaboration. This was some real, down-to-earth/metaverse roll-up-sleeves work, and we appreciate you for it. I have to say that I personally value your friendship and I feel confident that we will continue to build upon our foundations for a long time to come.

Lindy Mckeown--What a pleasure to meet someone who in my heart and mind I now cluster in with that tiny group of fierce and friendly fighters for innovation. Your help in sessions and your presence all along was a key enhancer to every moment I had the pleasure of sharing with you.

Peggy Sheehy--What can I say that sufficiently describes the joy of your just being there. You supercharge every place you grace with vibrant insistence upon excellence and truth. It must feel scary to hold that much sway over a group of human beings (or avatars).

Larry Klugman--Physically overlording a concurrent conference in Austin, Texas, you set up your streaming server with every potential for success so that we could stream into Second Life for all the VirtualNECCers who could be in SL but couldn't be in DC. You spent hours working with me to make it work, only to be thwarted by the Convention Center's NAT. Not for want of effort, man, not for want of effort.

Christie Thomas--You jumped in to facilitate when I was limping over from my presentation during Claudia's first scheduled appearance and you did so just because you saw a need. That's the way you are. I don't regret that my two bags of cables and hardware were whisked off to Eugene on "The Pallet" while we quaffed a couple beers after the closing keynote. I would do it again, and may well in Denver!

Bernajean Porter--You do, milady, rock. It's no wonder that you and Peggy are often invoked in the same sentence, since your energy levels and degrees of intensity do so align. You are very different people in many other ways, and it is my eternal good fortune to have met you and to look forward to many future collaborations.

Lor Frederickson--A sweet and gentle presence there to help, your efforts during the three days will reap benefits for years to come as those you helped into our tribe contribute their own insight and efffort.

Lee Ann Merrick--You let me go, then after it was all done and said, you welcomed me back home. When I try to envision the significant others implied for all the names above and below, I can only hope that they are to any degree as supportive of their loved ones as you are of me. You may not "get it," but you Get It.

Lyr Lobo, Tegan Jenvieve, Laela Laval, Komputer Merlin, Norma Underwood, Bronwyn Stuckey, Victoria Gloucester, Spiff Whitfield, and everyone on the schedules below (some are repeated, or their "other names" repeat them, but I'm out of breath here). Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Edith Halderman, Esparanza Freese, Tuxedo Ninetails, Blu Heron, Corla Kanik, Penelope Drucker, Lori Galli, Mari Asturias, Laural McCallen, Faythe Fouroux, Mari Asturias, Cynthia Deere, Ella Bebb, Cyrus Hush, Pmat Pinion, KarenKate Sands, Rurik Bellingshausen, Ludovica Muhindra, Valibrarian Gregg, Lori Galli, Jackie Rexen, Eliza Vanalten, Emilia Cornwall, SeeThe Wobbit, Jackie Rexen, Roshana Rives, Jackie Rexen, Pmat Pinion, KarenKate Sands, Fred Delventhal, Louise Maine, Andrew Wheelock, Lisa Thumann, Ken Shelton, Lori Abrahams, Julie LaChance, Rosie and Bob Vojtek, Nancy Sharoff, Jackie Gerstein, Cindy Burton, and Philipe Santiago

I have a set of all my pics from NECC09 , many of them from the SL Playground, at Flickr.

There's a little movie from the roving co-fac onine at the NECC Ning

Lots of ongoing stuff at http://scottsecondlife.blogspot.com

One more thing: I love you all,

Scott

--
It's all at http://scottmerrick.net

NECC09 SL Playground video!

Just posted a four minute video at the NECC09 Ning. Check out this quick roving grab of the activity in the Washington, DC Convention Center during the National Educational Computing Conference, Summer 2009.


Find more videos like this on NECC Ning

Why Jeff Went to NECC09

An amazing animoto that will hopefully be shared far and wide, from my good friend Jeff Agamenoni, Great Falls, Montana teacher and family guy supreme. I'm proud to be a part of Jeff's extended family!

Blog-o-the-Month for August! PESD Island!

I'm pleased to announce, a bit belatedly due to the frenzy of NECC09, that PESD Island, from our dear colleague Norma Underwood (Noreen Strehlow IRL), has been chosen Blog-o-the-Month at ISTE Island's Blogger's Hut for the month of August!

The past two months saw the largest voting turnout in Blogger's Hut history, and PESD Island won hands down, demonstrating its popularity amongst eduavatars and its value for teaching and learning in virtual worlds. Congratulations Noreen/Norma! You've been

For August, we're voting on the following stellar blogs, all ones created and maintained by folks I either talked with, learned about, or hugged--or all three--at NECC09 in Washington, D.C. Nominees feel free to snag the image here for use on your own beautiful blogs, because your blog has been

Edtechapalooza -- Judi Epcke

http://edtechapalooza.wordpress.com/

Dangerously Irrelevant -- Scott Meech

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

Learning and Technology --Lee Kraus

http://leekraus.blogspot.com/

The Strength of Weak Ties -- David Jakes

http://strengthofweakties.org/

Monday at NECC09, Second Life Playground and More!

I'm SORRRRRRY! I've soooo neglected this blog lately, so caught up have I been preparing for NECC09 in Washington, DC. I'm here now, sitting at my hotel restaurant in Van Ness awaiting my rib-eye steak, with the minute hand sneaking up to the top of the hour of 10 pm. That's how it's been, friends.

I have been blogging rather profusely at scottmerrick.net, and I think that since most of my effort here is in behalf of teaching and learning in Second Life, I should report out here tonight.

It was a fun day. I got up at 5, took my shower, and ate cold cuts I'd purchased earlier, a sad but sustaining breakfast. Off I walked, the two blocks to the Metro, then took the trip up to the Convention Center, setting up for the Second Life Playground day. Lisa Linn and I, working over the past several months via Skype over the expanse between our homes in Tennessee and California, put together two crack teams of volunteers, one here in DC and one in Second Life, as Supreme Poobahs in the onsite world and Inworld Docent Volunteers in the 3D one. These folks, to whom I'm will remain eternally grateful, make sure things run as smoothly as they can in both worlds.

Lots of the preparations have involved enlisting these teams, but we have also focused on providing a rough schedule for onsite events/presentations. Today, the site itself reared its head to toss a monkey wrench in the best laid plans. In the end, our planning and preparations prevailed, though it was a stretchl

The room we're in is on the northeast outside wall of the Washington Convention Center, and as I later discovered, there are entire rooms on that side of the building that are unusable due to the architects' failure to consider the morning sun's effects on a room whose east wall is mostly glass. Our Promethean Board and our monitor displays were forced into faintness until around noon, when Olde Sol finally exited over the roof of our building.

In addition, wi-fi issues were the order of the day. I've been in DC at pre-conferences since Friday, including Edubloggercon and the Computer Science Teachers Association's annual symposium, plus the ISTE Leadership Symposium all day Sunday. The Convention Center's wi-fi worked great. Not so Monday morning, as an estimated 18,000 teachers, technologists, and administrators decended on the Center and opened their laptops and personal devices looking for the internet.

Volunteers handled things well under fire, and by the end of the day we had settled in to a profile that looked like past years' Playgrounds. Talented, experienced users of 3D internet guided curious first time users through the first stages of the processes to get their avatar name registered, land in Second Life at the ISTE Island Orientation, and begin learning by walking through the nicely designed (by Blu Heron) orientation schema out back of the Headquarters Building in SL. There were stellar presentations, beginning with the one by my partners John Miller and Cathy Walker of MUVErs LLC, and that one is archived at ustream.tv . Give it a watch (sorry about the sound quality--we're working on that for today's sessions). They demo'd the new MUVErs User Interface, a groundbreaking set of programmed objects designed for onlind distance learning nursing education but modifiable for virtually any instructional purpose. If you can grab Cathy or John during the conference, they are, I understand, willing to share. :)

The official day ended with our Birds of a Feather session on Quest Atlantis. Flanked by Bronwyn Stuckey, Fil Santiago, Marianne Malmstrom, Jeff Agamenoni, and Marianne's colleague Sharon (last name coming), I opened by sharing the confession that perhaps the thing I do best is to surround myself with talented and competent people who really know what they are doing. The next hour and a half proved that statement true. At the end of the session I left the room with Bron madly scrambling to get the students and their teachers signed up for QA. It was a memorable moment, and I'd have it to share here but for the fact that our Ustreamer, dear friend Jeff, forgot to hit the Record button. I promised I would stop teasing him about that. Should I?

Here's the place to note that at 12:30 today several of the crop's cream, including superstar Peggy Sheehy and MUVErs Cathy Walker and John Miller, will help n00bs for three hours at the ticketed workshop n00bs Unite! across the hall from the SL Playground in room 143a. YOU MUST REGISTER for this workshop to attend. Visit the registration desk for more information, and join us if you can.

Also note that this workshop will end by breaking from the room to see a presentation from Second Life in the Playground, one which will feature Linden Lab's Claudia Linden, Education Community. Here's the session description:

Claudia L'Amoreaux, a long-time education innovation leader and education community developer for Linden Lab, chats with Playgrounders from her location in Second Life! Claudia will share new and as-yet unreleased Case Studies compiled by her staff and will solicit suggestions from those present about what case studies educators need to see pursued in order to further their teaching and learning in Second Life

PBS's Frontline Digital Nation will be in the house at the playground today around 11:00 a.m. with cameras, so drop by for the fun!

I'm also very much looking forward to attending a special reception at the Library of Congress this evening right after my Second Life Birds of a Feather gathering. This means I'll need to be sort of dressed up for the Birds session, which will be an unusual thing for usually casually dressed me. I have to run hail a cab and get down to the L of C directly when we finish! I'm not sure what garnered me an invitation to this event, but I am sure I'm excited about going.

This week has been one after another social event, and it's been fun running into good friends I relate with online year-round but whom I don't get to hug very often. I'm still offering free hugs, all conference long.

Pictures coming as soon as I get them up on Flickr!

ISTE Metaverse Talks is LIVE

Hey, it's not up at the Eduverse Talks site yet but right now, live at the treet.tv archives, you can see the ISTE Eduverse Talks show from last Tuesday night. Pull up an easy chair, pop some popcorn, and settle in for stellar discussions from my three esteemed fellow guest panelists and a couple nice contributions from moi.

Thanks to all who made this possible, especially to my pal, KJ Hax!

More later!

NECC09 Here We Come!

I'm quite buzzed about NECC09, where you'll be able to identify me as the one running around like the proverbial chicken with it's head cut off. Lisa Lynn and I are co-facilitating the Second Life Playground (that's the place to be if you want to help folks sign up for SL and/or mini-present or catch a mini->presentation either onsite or inworld), and I'll be co-presenting two three hour workshops centered around Second Life skills, one for absolute n00bies and one for more experienced Second Lifer educators looking for an excuse to explore educational tools in the company of likely even more experienced Second Life educators.

I'll be wrangling the Second Life as a PLN Birds of a Feather session again this year, again with excellent co-help, and co-leading a new one on Quest Atlantis. Lastly, I've been working with a colleague on a modest build for the Second Life 6th BirthdayPortal, which will be opening officially on June 23rd and running through NECC, a happy koinkidink. That's about it, and if you'd like to put any of that on

your schedule, see http://tinyurl.com/c2x95z ,

Please note the "co-" in all of the above. That's what SL helps bring to the table, and I'm constantly grateful for all of the "co-ing" that goes on in Second

Life. I am certain we'll break the 5,000 mark in ISTE SL membership this year, and if

you cannot get to NECC, join the Virtual NECCers group at the ISTE NECC ning (now 108 strong) and the group by the same name in SL, and monitor both for activity, because, as always, we are making it up as we go!

Planning session for inworld docent volunteers
Cheers, and see me for free hugs at the Second Life Playground. If you're volunteering for SL activities at NECC, don't forget Terra's invitation to a real world get-together!

Scott