UberNoggin

Appalachian State faculty (Stephen Bronack and Richard Riedl) presented along with James Witte from Clemson about their joint project called “Carolina Virtual World Consortium” in which the two schools have joined forces to explore many different virtual world spaces for use in education both at Clemson and at Appalachian State.

Qwaq was demonstrated (it’s based on Croquet) which has features like importing Sketchup designs, live web site viewing on objects in world, as well as combining video feeds onto avatars. It looks very useful and may overcome some of the issues that folks might have with Second Life on campus (lower bandwidth and hardware requirements, flatter learning curve).

Witte then went on to discuss the research potential of virtual worlds and the consortium’s hope to begin researching pedagogical, social science research perspective to the project. Keep an eye on Witte and Clemson. Looks like they’ll be doing some great research via an Efficacy Trials and Implementation Studies approach. They intend to stay platform neutral which is awesome!

Factors they’ll consider in designing researchto measure efficacy trials and implementation studies:

• specification of research questions
• comparison groups
• sampling
• measures of mediating and moderating variables
• dependent measures
• data analysis

The audience asked questions about the perception and reaction of using “game-like” spaces on campus. Both speakers reflected that they’d had more hesitance from students than faculty or administration.

This morning Adrian Sanner from Arizona State gave the keynote talk. Sanner is funny and brilliant. He spent the first 30 minutes or so sympathizing with the current state of technology in higher education. It felt a little long and I was eager to get on to his solutions, the plans that he was suggesting folks could follow today.
When he did get to his solutions they were good. Maybe not implementable today, but good. I think I’ve missed some ideas here so feel free to comment and fill in some of my notes:
- Outsource to others what they can do better than you: For example, use Gmail for email. They can scale better at a better price and are more stable with less effort.
- Be a concierge, not a cop: Rather than spend your time telling students what they can’t do, spend your time helping students find what they need (which should be easier to do on campus networks)

Sanner certainly served as a rallying cry but I really wish that there had been time for QandA because I would have loved to ask him what folks could go do today to start these kinds of movement on their own campuses;.

Testing iPhone wp app

Not everyone is into social media. Most folks don’t blog or IM or Twitter. In the grand scheme of things, those of us who choose to express ourselves via technology, those of us who choose to develop networks of friends whom we may never meet, are a very small segment of the population.  There are many critics who can’t see the value of these technologies but lately my sense of the their value has been renewed in a pretty powerful way.

About six weeks ago I was diagnosed with extremely high blood pressure. A pretty rare thing for someone in her early 30s. As it turned out, my doc gave me a pretty stern talking-to. Stroke, heart attack…lots of very scary consequences were mentioned. Not only did I have to start taking medicine to reduce my BP, I also had to make significant lifestyle changes including getting up from my desk for some exercise, and hardest of all, I had to give up my pack-a-day smoking habit. It was time. It had been time for a long time. I was ready. But I knew it wouldn’t be easy.

My family, my husband, and my friends were all supportive and encouraging but I knew myself. I knew that at some time I would be away from them either traveling or just home alone. I knew I’d be tempted and need support even when my support system was away. I turned to Twitter.

Five weeks ago today I posted that I was quitting smoking. Dozens of responses came pouring in. Some included tips (suckers, coffee, long walks, yoga). Others were just warm verbal hugs with loads of “atta girl” encouragement. Over the next few weeks, when I was tempted for “just one!” I twittered and got loads of encouragement from my community.

Meanwhile, I’ve been doing a bit of yoga, taking lots of walks, and replaced my smoking compulsion with a golf compulsion. Yep, I actually managed to lose weight while giving up smoking. I know! I’m shocked too.
Not only did social media give me a support system, it also gave me someone to answer to. Once I had declared that I was quitting I knew that sneaking a smoke outside at a conference wasn’t going to work. One of my Twitter buddies was bound to see me. Even having a cigarette while driving around town here in Bloomington could result in a “I saw Intellagirl smoking!!” Twitter before I was even back at my desk (Bloomington is a small town).

It’s been five weeks since I had a cigarette. Five weeks since I turned to my family and friends (both near and wide, both in the flesh and in the digital) for help and got it!

Thanks

New technologies can be scary but for businesses the risk of being passed by is too high to be scared off. The best example of late is Mattel’s steamrollering by Scrabulous. Mattel didn’t jump on the opportunity to create an application for Facebook when they could have and Scrabulous did it first with amazing adoption rates. Now Matel has finally created an app but no one plays it because they’re already using Scrabulous.

Say what you want about the copyright infringement issues, Mattel still missed the boat. Think about your own business. Are there tech communities in which your product/service could do well but you’re hesitating because you’re unsure or uptight? Could someone else compete with you in those spaces if you wait too long? How much will the damage to your reputation cost if you allow someone else to deliver your product better?

Think about it while you jam to this ditty.

Scrabulous