UberNoggin

Well, it’s been over a month since I’ve written on my own blog thanks to all the other projects I’m happily working on. The mass of students have finally cleared out of town leaving Bloomington a pleasant place with shorter lines for the fancy coffee. I’ve cut back on hours at my job to give me more time to crank on my dissertation which is going well. More about that later in the post.

Meanwhile, just a few updates…

Summer Travel and Talks

• Mark and I have decided to get hitched in Vegas in June when we’re there for Educomm. We’ve known we wanted to get married for a while but didn’t want a big ceremony and all that hooha. No, we’re not going to be married by Elvis or anything but we are looking for something a bit different. Maybe we’ll webcast it, Twitter our vows or something else equally geek-tastic. More updates as we get it figured out! If you have any recommendations be sure to leave a comment.
• Along the lines of crazy travel plans, we’re also off to Brazil in June where Mark will be speaking at The Institute of Economic and International Studies in Sao Paulo. We’re in the midst of applying for travel visas and checking into vaccinations etc. I’ve never been to South America so I’m pretty excited. There’s a rumor of a boat trip down the Amazon to visit solar powered computer labs which would be amazing! We’ll be sure to post lots of pics and video.
• Tomorrow we’re off to the Sloan-C International Symposium Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning in Carefree, AZ. I’ll be delivering my first multi-world talk. It’s sure to be a pretty crazy experience. If you want to attend in Second Life be sure to check out the site for details about the virtual sessions.
• On May 22 I’ll be at Tufts University giving a talk about virtual worlds and education at the Summer Institute.
• I’ll be facilitating the discussion over at Global Kid’s new project, RezEd in the first week of June. We’ve not nailed down a topic yet but it should be a fun week of buzzing ideas. If you’re interested in virtual worlds and education go check out the site. GK is posting great content including podcasts, interviews, and lively discussions.

Summer Writing

• Dissertation!!!! I just want the darn thing done! With all my travel, though, and moving from desktop to laptop on a constant basis the drafts were getting a little lost. My solution was to move the whole thing onto a wiki that I can edit and my committee can hop into to leave comments/suggestions. I’m still in the process of melding old drafts and new ones but if you want to watch the car-crash-like mess that is my writing process feel free to check it out.
  
• I’m also writing a piece for the Educause Review about teaching and learning in virtual worlds where I’ll be focusing on the need to focus on pedagogy not on technology.
• Last, but not least, I’m writing an article for a really cool new journal called FutureBox. More on that later.
• I’m also editing the Second Life Education Blog for Linden Lab. Pop over and check it out!

Phew! That’s a lot to do. Meanwhile, the kids are doing awesome and have almost wrapped up their first year of school. Go kindergarten!

Lots to do and not a lot of time to do it all. What are you working on this summer? Got a cool trip planned?

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