Center4Edupunx
Bootstrapping Our Way Across the Curriculum

SAVE the DATES! November 2 & 3 3rd Annual Virtual Worlds & Games UnSymposium http://vw.unsymposium.org/ More information to come...  Read More

  EDUPunxers have been working hard and working in collaboration with the SITE Second Life Task Force.  For the past two months, we have been building and planning events for the virtual portion of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education conference. For the very first time, SITE http://site.aace.org/conf/… Read More

January 20 & 21st EduPunxers will be attending the Virtual Pioneer Conference Look for us at the VWBPE display http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduIsland%209/19/75/22 It all starts… Read More

A number of our EduPunxers are involved in the Virtual Worlds Unsymposium www.vw.unsymposium.org We're helping organize and facillitating some discussions. So far we are looking at..... Discussion of World of Warcraft, Cognitive Surplus and Theorycraft.  We're going into WoW almost every day and while there have been discussion on how to use it for your class - we really want to get into a discussion that really details the math, statistics and management strategy involved in participating in WoW on a raid level. A rousing game of "Burning Questions/Taboo Topics" - what's… Read More

CALL FOR PROPOSALS The UnSymposium 2011: Games, Play and Community www.vw.unsymposium.org Friday, Saturday and Sunday, November 4-6, 2011. Virtual Worlds Graduate UnSymposium is a community building event that provides opportunities for graduate students, alumni, and educators to share innovative practices, network with colleagues, and explore opportunities for professional development, enhancing research, teaching, and learning. This UnSymposium is particularly interested in works in progress, sessions that provide ample opportunity for symposiast participation, and cutting edge uses of technology… Read More

Ready for An UnSymposium Let's get started..... We are  planning for the in-depth discussion and collegiality inherent in symposiums, mashing that up with an unconference format, and still allowing  for thoughtful presentations on research and works in progress?   There will be a structured CFP that will be announced on September 1st. This CFP will provide the initial scope of the Unsymposium. Some initial topics being considered are Virtual Worlds, MMORPG(s), Machinima, augmented reality, alternate reality games and a little bit of sub-creation studies. Also during September: Group on Quest Line during… Read More

Another theme was PD for Administrators, especially in the area of new technology and delivery platforms. There was a big discussion about this at the EduBloggerCon (http://www.edubloggercon.com/) and about how educators and educational technologists need to make sure that their administrators are keep up to date on the new tools and techniques. This also popped up throughout many sessions. Speaking from experience, most administrators focus their professional development (if they have time and the budget) on efficiencies, policies, regulations, and managing the talent. :D A lot of administrators will… Read More

Digital Games Based Learning (DGBL) was everywhere. There were tons of presentations on various games and game development. My favorites were Peg Steffen and Hilarie Davis’s Educational Gaming Opportunities for Classroom Engagement and Dr.Lisa Dawley’s Quest-Based Inquiry Across Immersive Learning Environments. Peg’s presentation focused on her experiences running a project on the games NOAA developed with the help of a local community college. The college used computer science classes to work with the NOAA team and pilot several games (http://games.noaa.gov/) with students creating the coding and digital… Read More

As I reflect on last week’s EduBloggerCon (http://www.edubloggercon.com/) and ISTE conference (http://www.isteconference.org/ISTE/2011/), I’m struck by the persistence of several themes throughout the conference. For me the themes were: 1.       Digital Games Based Learning 2.       Professional Development for Administrators 3.       Faculty Adoption of Technology I’ll be expanding on these themes in the coming days, but I just wanted to post while they were still top of mind. The hit technologies this year were iPads, Mobile… Read More

For Educators, DIYers, EduPunks, Leading and Bleeding Edge Teachers - the next two weeks on the twitterverse will be an all you can eat buffet! On June 15, the Games, Learning and Society  7.0 conference will kick off. Look for hashtags - #gls7  and #gbl. If you aren't already following them - you may want to follow two of our fave gbl ( game based learning) educators Marianne Malmstrom @knowcluekidd on twitter and John Carter Mc Knight SL: Kaseido Quandry @ john_carter on twitter.  Knowclue will be on a panel discussing Lego Universe… Read More