Mijito shaved his head to be Mace Windu!

Darth Vader seen at NMSU!

Dancing Dudes

So one of my favorite video series is of Matt from the "Where in the Hell is Matt?" series. Please forgive my French, but this is important stuff :) Anyways, thanks to one of my students, I came across an article about the interoperability of virtual worlds and cool stuff like that, but what REALLY caught my attention was the video for "Where in SL is Artilect?" Enjoy the videos! Where in the Hell is Matt? Where in SL is Artilect

Too Lijit to quit...

I don't know why, but Holly and I both LOVE Lijit. You can see my Lijit in the middle column of this blog. So we are now, "Too Lijit to quit" which means a song/video is in order...

ISTE in Second Life

Thanks to my friend Larry Jeffryes for the following notice:

ISTE's Second Life social occurs on Thursdays at 6 PM (Pacific Time). The
ISTE SL docents are very helpful.

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its Residents.
Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today
is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe. Read more
at http://secondlife.com/whatis/

To explore ISTE's Second Life headquarters, visit
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/93/83/30
If you don't have an account and avatar in Second Life, you'll be
prompted to create one (they're free!). If you already have an account,
you'll need to log in first. The above link will display a map to
ISTE's Island just select "teleport" and you'll be transported
directly there. (You'll need to download and install SecondLife
software.)

I found SecondLife to have a much bigger world than just ISTE. As I
explored the SecondLife world, I teleported to some very interesting
and some very strange virtual worlds. I'm still learning the interface
and a bit confused by this and that at times.

Larry Jeffryes
Los Alamos, NM

USDLA Launches National Distance Learning Week to Increase the Awareness of Distance Learning

Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) September 19, 2007 -- The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) will hold the 2007 National Distance Learning Week (NDLW), November 12 -16, 2007. Read all about it!

And of course, we plan to have some fun activities for you all! :) ~julz

Aww, coolest thing ever!

Well at least the coolest thing for today. Thanks to Rebecca for this bit o' news: If mail it you must, cool stamp of Master Yoda you will have...
Yoda chosen as postage favorite

A Vision of Students Today...

My friends Holly and Bethany shared the following VERY cool video with me...

Is it wrong?

Is it wrong to be excited when you see yourself referred to on someone else's blog? If it's wrong, then I don't want to be right...sing it for us Luther: Anyways, thanks to Duncan from Abcol for posting nice things about me! Oh yeah, I might just be way behind the times, but did you know that you can now log in to youtube with your gmail account? Happy Day my Internet Friends! ~julz

Pepperdine students, faculty honor firefighters

I am a doctoral student at Pepperdine University and grateful to those who kept the people and the campus safe. Here's the story - http://www.yahoo.com/s/716989 A personal thanks to the students and faculty who kept those of us who are not there informed. ~julz

Did You Know 2.0? Join the Conversation!

For when you have time... 8 minutes on the case for web 2.0 education.

Twitter + Second Life = Spontaneous Web Meetspace

Tech Crunch provides an article about using Twitter and SecondLife to conduct web meetings...
Read the article at
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/11/twitter-second-life-spontaneous-web-meetspace/
:)
~julz

Musicals @ NMSU directed by Mark Medoff

Memo from Mark... Dear Friends, I have the good fortune to direct Bob Diven's new musical, EXTINCTION: A LOVE STORY. Bob's is the first of two musicals that will premier at NMSU this academic year. WE ARE ENRON will follow in February, 2008. EXTINCTION: A LOVE STORY runs Thursday, October 25 through Sunday, October 28. EXTINCTION features as fine a cast of singer/actors as I've worked with in forty years in Las Cruces and includes three former NMSU students who are now working professionals. Musical Director is NMSU grad Shanelle Jernigan. Choreography is by Debra Knapp, NMSU Director of Dance. The spectacular Set and Costumes are by Theatre Arts resident designer Deb Brunson. Lighting is by DALO resident designer Gerald Kottman. Recent NMSU Music grad Shaun Robinson will conduct the orchestra. Please come! Mark Mark Medoff Artistic Director Creative Media Institute for Film & Digital Arts New Mexico State University

What Are We Saying to Each Other? - Phillip Dodds Passes

Again, thanks to Elliot Masie for the information...

"What are we saying to each other?"

That was a single line, spoken by the sound engineer at the end of Close Encounters of a Third Kind, as he played chords and a friendly alien spaceship played music back.

The role was played by a young sound engineer who was spotted by Steven Spielberg and given the on-screen role to be the interface between these two worlds. That man, Phillip Dodds, was still young and inventing, as he passed this Saturday morning.

Phillip Dodds was the Chief Architect of SCORM and the force behind sharable and reusable content. He was deeply involved in the evolution of interactive multimedia and expanding the possibilities for learning via technology.

If you use a Learning Management System, author an interactive learning module or talk about the future of Web 2.0, take a moment to thank a man who you probably never met. Phillip's work was KEY and CRITICAL to the exciting world of learning, knowledge management and collaboration that we take for granted.

Philip's dreams were to create a global set of standards and specifications that would allow content to be searchable, reusable and expandable.

Philip, we thank you for all that you have done and we'll keep asking that question: "What are we saying to each other?"

With respect and sadness,

Elliott Masie

P.S. wikipedia referecnce at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Dodds

Also see: Phil Dodds Background

Co Moblogging with Holly @ NMTIE

NM TIE Podcasting Workshop

I'm helping Bethany today at the NM TIE conference with her podcasting workshop. We started by investigating iTunes and EPN - http://epnweb.org.

Right away, some folks found a couple of very cool things:

• Tamara found Willow Web, an elementary podcast show at EPN and she said she listened to elementary students expressing their knowledge about the constitution in authentic way to an audience of their peers (and a global audience).
• Jim noted that the second language podcasts, specifically the French ones, at EPN were just like taking a class.
• Gail noted that in the general topics of EPN, there were 137 podcasts for English and 9 for math...

Then they came up with some great ideas for uses of podcasts!

• Have students record and edit movies and broadcast via podcast - moviecasting!
• Creating tech instructional podcast on how to do various tasks like email
• Opportunities for training on district-wide systems
• Have students do podcast presentations, thereby addressing the issues of time where you can't get everyone up in front of the class. An immediate win is that students don't often get the opportunity to hear themselves and self-critique until college.
• Virtual campus/school tours
• Audio quiz/audio answers
• Library could do weekly/monthly podcast on new or featured books, bibliographic or library use
• Enhancement to lessons
• Students in the hospital never gets the full class experience, could get more of an experience with a vodcast
• This workshop could have been podcast
• Coaches created podcasts of the team plays and the team listened and learned on the bus

Some advantages were brought up:

• Focused, what you want when you want, just-in-time learning, segmenting, smaller files
• Addressing different learners
• Reaching more students
• Achieving hard to achieve educational goals
• 21st Century Skills addressed

Next everyone is going to use the following to create podcasts right here, right now.

• Gcast - http://www.gcast.com/
• PodcastPeople - http://www.podcastpeople.com/

Lots of fun was had. Wish you'd been here ;)
~julz

My Voki for NM TIE