Tag Archives: presentations
Creativity in Second Life: Educator’s Panel
The final panel session for the NMC’s Symposium on Creativity in Second Life was wonderful! Chaired by Alan Levine (CDB Barkley), it involved a diverse range of educators involved in Second Life, reflecting about the week’s sessions and creativity in SL in general. Educators included:
- Lori Bell (aka Lorelei Junot), Alliance Library System
- Jo Kay (aka Jokay Wollongong), Illawarra Institute TAFE, New South Wales
- Hilary Mason (aka Ann Enigma), Johnson & Wales University
- Troy McConaghy (aka Troy McLuhan), ISM Corporation
- Nick Noakes (aka Corwin Carillon), Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
- Beth Ritter-Guth (aka Desideria Stockton), Lehigh Carbon Community College
- Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney
Despite issues with sound, we managed to combine both text and sound to do this reflection. Alan blogged details of the session here, including a podcast and a chat transcript. I had to do my bit by text instead of voice (luckily I was last so I hastily converted the speaking notes I had into close to proper sentences while other people were talking). Some of the comments seem to have been truncated in the transcript though, so, for anybody interested, I am including my notes (and they’re a bit messy!) under the fold.
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NMC Session: Creative Identity Play
Yesterday I presented my session about avatars and identity play in Second Life. It was more of a workshop than a presentation, and there were some wonderfully fascinating stories people shared about their avatars: why they created them and crafted them the way they did; what decisions they made about identity markers to include; how other people perceived their avatars; and any identity experiments (gender, fashion, race and so on) that they had explored. I really enjoyed hearing people’s stories, and wish I had had the foresight to log a transcript of the chat!! I managed to crash out 5 times during the session :/ This meant I didn’t have time in the end to really recap some of the central points I wanted to make!! Here are some shots from the session of people sharing and participating:
… and a few resources, links, landmarks, copies of slides, free clothes and avatars and so on were given out at the end. If you didn’t get to go to the session (or you missed out because you had to leave early) and would like a gift bag, just send me an im in world!
(My thanks to CDB Barkley, Joanna Trailblazer, Jokay Wollongong, Heidi Trotta, Nick Noakes, Stephanie Misfit, Tasrill Sieyes, Desideria Stockton, Thinkerer Melville, Anne Enigma, Larry Pixel and many many others who contributed in various ways to the session – by sharing stories, posing for photos, letting me use their photos, contributing avatars and giving me freebies to add to the resources kit!)
My NMC Symposium on “Creativity in Second Life” Presentations Next Week
Next week the NMC is running an entire weeks symposium on “Creativity in Second Life” There are a number of strands: Machinima, Fashion, Sculpture and Modeling, Virtual Photography, and Teaching Environments, social / arts events, and lots of practical and interactive sessions. I am involved in three sessions, all at (sort of) Australian friendly times. Here are the details of these sessions (in Second Life time):
Fri Aug 17 7pm – Fri Aug 17 8pm
Teaching On the Second Life Stage: Playful Educational Strategies for Serious Purposes
Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Conference%20Center/64/193/22
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney
Kim Flintoff (Kim Pasternak), Edith Cowan University
Theatrical spaces have historically been places used to teach, purge and shape culture. For over a decade, virtual reality has offered a new kind of theatrical space; now, with the rise of social networking spaces, many more people are using the potential of the web to perform, critique and comment on cultural issues. Second Life provides a new and exciting space where students can explore issues that are both personal and global in significance. Teaching strategies which incorporate dramatic and theatrical components are perfectly suited in the Second Life environment for engaging students in playful but meaningful reflection on such issues. This session will involve participants in role-playing, reflection and discussion. Participants will also be encouraged to brainstorm the possibilities of incorporating such strategies into their own educational programs.
Sat Aug 18 4pm – Sat Aug 18 5pm
No More Business Suits Please: Creative Identity Play in SL
Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Conference%20Center/185/136/43
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney, Australia
Second Life offers a unique opportunity to refashion one’s self and to play with fictional identities. Yet many of us who work inside Second Life feel trapped in our offline identity roles and conform to traditional discourses of femininity, masculinity, appearance, beauty and fashion. Professionals wear business suits, educators cry out for more modest clothing, and artists wear funky coloured skins. In some contexts, people who resist these discourses are discriminated against. This session explores how we might be able to leverage one of the greatest affordances of Second Life—the avatar—for personal, community and professional agendas.
Sat Aug 18 5pm – Sat Aug 18 6pm
Panel Session: Reflections on Creativity in Second Life
Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Conference%20Center/214/18/51
Moderator: Alan Levine (aka CDB Barkley), The New Media Consortium
Lori Bell (aka Lorelei Junot), Alliance Library System
Jo Kay (aka Jokay Wollongong), Illawarra Institute TAFE, New South Wales
Hilary Mason (aka Ann Enigma), Johnson & Wales University
Troy McConaghy (aka Troy McLuhan), ISM Corporation
Nick Noakes (aka Corwin Carillon), Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Beth Ritter-Guth (aka Desideria Stockton), Lehigh Carbon Community College
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney
Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: the audio to my conference talk
Thanks to the wonderful Alan Levine, I now have the audio recording to go with my NMC talk, here:
Alan’s write-up of my talk is on the NMC blog here – thanks so much!
NMC Conference – Hello Indianapolis!
I haven’t seen much outside the hotel room yet but I’ve made it safe and (relatively) sound to Indianapolis for the NMC conference! I was allocated the Vice Presidential Suite which is just breathtaking and I am being treated like I am famous 
I’ve finally met Heidi, Nick and Alan -Heidi and Nick are exactly like I expected (delightful!), but since Alan cavorts around Second Life in a slightly scary looking dog avatar I had no concept that he would actually be soft and friendly (hehe).
I am enjoying complimentary broadband access from the comfort of my suite which is fantastic because I am now working on last minute edits to my talk for tomorrow. If anybody wants to listen to my talk the audio is being streamed into Second Life. I will be speaking at 2:45 – 4:00 pm Thursday June 7th Indiana time, and the streaming will be into the NMC campus (just look for Corwin Carillon or CDB Barkley in SL and ask them for a landmark as they will be live in the session and in SL simultaneously.)
Otherwise my slides I already blogged below, so feel free to leave comments or questions here.
I’m Heading Off for June to Speak, Research, Speak, Plan more Research etc etc…
The major speaking event I have is the featured session at the NMC Summer Conference. I was specifically invited to speak about a “bit of everything” related to my research, so here’s the slides that accompany the talk. I hope I can arrange an audio stream to support the slides for the near future.
And here is the line-up for our panel session at the ECAR conference:
Machinima as Multimodal Digital Storytelling
Finally, the wordpress.com management have enabled the embedding of slideshare slideshows!! Yay!!! I’ve been hanging out for this. So here is *drum roll* the slideshow from my talk about machinima. If you attended my keynote last year or came along to the seminar presentation earlier this week, then the slides will hopefully make sense I never make slideshows that stand alone as I like to waffle on and ad lib a lot and hate having too much text on the slides. So without the audio, you’ll just have to wait til the book chapter based on this talk is published.
