cclark2's blog

The island of Sophia in Second Life now features an immersive depiction of the flight deck of the NASA Space Shuttle (actually, it's the high fidelity mockup at Johnson Space center in Houston). This is a visual representation only - the controls don't work - but it is a compelling effect. The display uses a Virtual Reality Room (VRR), an immersive, photo-realistic environment developed through a partnership between the New Media Consortium (NMC), the Info Island Archipelago, the Commonwealth Islands for not-for-profits, and Stephane Desnault (aka Stephane Zugzwang in SL).

Attached is a very brief overview of a project to be presented in a poster session at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting. If you would like more information after listening, please see the poster session page, visit the home page of Notre Dame's faculty learning community on virtual worlds. or go to the island of Sophia in Second Lfe.

The third Learnitology Podcast of the year is out. Episode 203 asks a "burning question," about Wikipedia, There are also technology updates on Second Life, Apple TV, and XMAS. Follow-up links are at the accompanying blog.

The Learnitology Podcast is in its second year and there are two new programs. Episode 201 asks a "burning question," about blogs, summarizes an article on gaming, reviews a PhotoShop tutorial web site, and reports on news of clicker use. In Episode 202, there are reviews of two handy recording devices, an introduction into Yahoo! Pipes, and a review of a website for engineering education. We plan to release a third new episode around March 2. There are follow-up links at the accompanying blog.

Kim Mooney and Sondra Smith from St. Lawrence University in the north country of New York State talk about "Building Community Among Faculty: Best Practices Online." Recorded during their poster sessions at the ELI Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

Attached is an unedited recording of Robert Wright's poster session,"Interactive PowerPoint for Collaboration and Engagement" from the ELI 2007 Annual Meeting. Many of the major sessions are being podcast, so I thought it might be interesting to share a poster session, and Robert agreed. There's a lot of background noise, but that adds to the realism, and his message comes through clearly.

The Snitecasts are student-produced programs about works in the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. In one of five required projects for my course "Applied Multimedia Technology," students were assigned an artwork and received a printed description. They then had to come up with a personal commentary and podsafe background music. Students captured the voice segments on high quality digital recorders, transferred the recordings to a computer, and used "Audacity" software to mix the material together. There's more on a web page or you can listen at iTunes.

The ninth Learnitology Podcast from Notre Dame is part five of a series on the 2006 Horizon Report. "Augmented Reality" displays visual information over a view of the real world. Use "Enhanced Visualization" to create a 3-D virtual space or fabricate an object from complex data. Examples are provided from MIT, Purdue, Florida, and the UK. Future applications are also  suggested. You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes.

The eighth Learnitology Podcast is a special treat that features short stories about effective uses of technology in college teaching. The storytellers are faculty from all over the country who participated in the Wakonse Conference on College Teaching. Wakonse is an annual "professor camp" on Lake Michigan, near Muskegon. Eddy Cuisinier teaches French at Western Kentucky University, where they have created podcasts to reinforce language learning. Scott LaJoie is in the Health Knowledge & Cognitive Science department at the University of Louisville. He helped create disaster training for mental health professionals, which was delivered via teleconferencing. Paul McDowell, a French professor at the University of Notre Dame videotapes his students in "French through Acting." Leona Rubin teaches anatomy in the vet school at the University of Missouri, where she makes digital images of students' lab slides as part of self-learning modules. Steve Keller, a Chemistry prof at the University of Missouri, uses WebCT chat rooms to conduct "virtual office hours." Sree Nilakanta is in Information Systems at Iowa State.

The seventh Learnitology Podcast is from a recent workshop at Notre Dame. This segment introduced faculty to podcasting.  You can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes.