NMC New Media Blogs

The School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California just announced a collaboration with the National Science Foundation to launch the Creative Science Studio in fall 2010. The Studio is designed to unite NSF-funded research projects with the expertise of cinematic arts faculty and students to create visualizations of science in order to better communicate findings to the public. The Studio's projects will include videos, interactive games, animations and examples of information visualizaiton, with a larger research project designed to interrogate "information" itself. SCA's Institute for Multimedia Literacy produced a five- minute video describing the Studio. See it here .

********** 2nd CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS **********

Proposal Submission Deadline: February 28, 2010

*** Virtual Worlds, Second Life and Metaverse Platforms: New Communication
and Identity Paradigms ***

A book edited by:Nelson Zagalo, University of MinhoLeonel Morgado, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, and Ana Boa-Ventura, The University of Texas at Austin

To be published by IGI
Global: http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=794

***Introduction***

The metaverse is emerging, through the increasing use of virtual world
technologies that act as platforms for end-users to create, develop, and
interact, expanding the realm of human communication, and collaboration.

Google Buzz

No big surprise here that Google has rolled out another service. Sort of like a weekly thing with them now. BUT, this time its a little different. Google Buzz was released yesterday and to say that it is the buzz of the web right now is a bit of an understatement. If Google Wave did not impress, Buzz just might.

John Kuiphoff
Adjunct Professor, The College of New Jersey

As an educator, instructional designer, web developer, and a member of the NMC, I am always excited by the release of the annual Horizon Report. This year’s report featured “Open Content” as one of the emerging technologies to watch.

For the past year, I have been working on a project called Social Syllabus, a teaching platform that promotes the democratization of course content through the use of social media. It enables instructors to create dynamic course websites, collaborative learning spaces and professional networks.

It’s not a traditional learning management system, adopted by a university. Instead, it thrives on the motivations of individual instructors regardless of their academic affiliations. It’s more like signing up for a Facebook or Twitter account (meaning that it’s all yours).

Whew!

Michael Wright aka. Mrags Writer
Professor Digital Media
Virtual World Project 2009
Otis College of Art and Design

The Project: Anarchy City

The goal of the project was to go into second life and create content based on a
Class-developed theme. Three Concepts and Issues Classes consisting of 66 digital media sophomore students participated in this project. The project required team building, out of the box creative thinking, introducing students to working with 3d & 2d virtual tools in real time, working with a budget, working with a deadline and working with a limited amount of building blocks (primitives). All three classes worked on a common theme, an apocalyptic city. Three hours of in-class time and 10 hours of outside of class time were devoted to this project. The project can be viewed in Second Life at IBE AM
(239, 211, 26) through March 2010.

The project summery:

Building on from the European Year of Creativity and Innovation , NUI Galway is making preparations for the 2010 Galway Symposium on Higher Education. The theme for the even is "Creativity, Imagination and Innovation in HE" and it will be held on our Galway campus on June 10th and 11th 2010. More information about the event including keynotes, workshops etc, will be posted in the early new year, but you might like to pencil in the dates anyway!  

However, this isn't just advertising (after all we hate the fact that our dates clash with the NMC summer conference!!!!), what we're also interested in doing is trying to capture examples of really creative initiatives in higher education settings whether these are innovative new curricular designs/programmes or approaches to teaching and learning which really promote more active, engaged learning and nurture students' creative skills.

A little over a year ago I was introduced to an interesting photography device called a GigaPan - the result of a project between Carnegie Mellon University and NASA to develop a tool for creating large detailed photo scenes.

The spinoff of this is not a commercial product, and today GigaPan Systems have announced the GigaPan Education and Research Incentive:

If you are planning to use GigaPan equipment as part of a research or educational program, we would like to hear from you! You may be eligible to purchase GigaPan equipment at a special rate through the GigaPan Education and Research Incentive.

photo: www.gizmodo.com

Let's all hope the rumors of Apple's tablet computer are true or else there will be a lot of tech writers who will have to eat their lunch. The much rumored and speculated "iTablet" may make a debut sometime early next year, possibly in January. If such a device exists it will be one product launch that may out do all the others in recent memory, including the iPhone. Let's hope Apple does not disappoint.