Thanks to a former student in my games class (and now current explorer and builder), Marshall, I’ve received and invitation to participate in beta testing of Metaplace, described on the home page as follows:

Metaplace gives you the power to create, share, and live in your own unique virtual world. Hang out with friends, build your space, grow your community, and have fun. It’s not just for techies anymore — it’s for everyone who uses the Web today.

I find this a very opportune invitation as we’re getting very comfortable with the potential uses of virtual worlds in class and sense that we’re ready to design both prototypes and research agendas. I’ve only had a couple minutes in world, but am pleased by the style and layout of the site. Although I don’t think I can spare too much time right now building a place in Metaplace, I will certainly put it on my To Do list and hopefully get back to it in early May to give it due attention.

Once it’s out of beta, I’ll share screen capture of my initial foray into Metaplace.

Dr. Jimmie Ivory in Communications here on campus has been working extremely hard to initiate a gamer/virtual worlds colloquium series on campus. His hard work has paid off as the first speak in the series will be Dr. Dmitri Williams from the Annenberg School at USC. More on his talk follows:

2009 VT G.A.M.E.R. Lab Virtual Guest Scholar
(via videoconference)

Dr. Dmitri Williams
Annenberg School for Communication,
University of Southern California

“The mapping principle and other oddities:
Recent findings from the Virtual Worlds Exploratorium”

Thursday, 26 February 2009
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.    
123A Burruss Hall

• Open to all Virginia Tech faculty, staff, and students.
• Scholar’s presentation will be followed by Q&A and discussion.

Dmitri Williams is an Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School for
Communication at the University of Southern California. His research
interests lie in the social impacts of newcommunication technologies and
online communities, with a special interest in games and virtual worlds.

More on the series and upcoming talks can be found on the series flyer.

Critically Engaging the 21st Century Learner in Visual Worlds and Virtual Environments
41st Annual Conference
International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA)
www.ivla.org

CALL for PROPOSALS
Proposals due: March 21st 2009

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois- USA
October 6-9, 2009

You are cordially invited to submit a proposal for the 41st Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), October 6-9, 2009, in Chicago, Illinois.  IVLA’s annual conference provides scholars and researchers, teachers and students, artists, and other professionals with interests and activities relating to the multi-disciplinary field of Visual Literacy, an opportunity to present their work, and constructively interact with peers. The conference facilitates exchange of best and innovative practices, presentation of research results, discussion of work in progress, and showcase of art installations. Paper presentations, symposia and panel sessions, roundtable discussions, workshops and demonstrations, poster sessions, and visual exhibits are invited.

Game On! Blacksburg, VA

NEW! Teacher Session: This year, IVLA is organizing a special half-day session for K-12 educators who can also earn CPDUs through their attendance. This half-day session will be filled with useful and practical information about visual literacy. Teachers will have the opportunity to learn more about visual literacy and how it can be integrated into the curriculum, as well as receive practical advice and suggestions for projects. For this session, we are looking for lively, captivating topics, hands-on activities, instructional and learning strategies, standards-based projects, quality resources, and clear evaluation rubrics that teachers can put to immediate use with their students. Topics need to be short, creative, and directly related to K-12 education. If you feel that you have a topic that will fit into this special session, please submit your proposal as a teacher session. NB SIGTE members please identify yourselves in your proposal submission!

IVLA 2009 CfP - Full details

We’ve managed to wrestle together playtesting teams for the spring 2009 semester…the titles being destroyed are these:

• Civilization IV
• Spore
• Second Life

The Second Life team may be at a slight disadvantage seeing that Spore and Civilization IV are slighlty more compact…nevertheless, I don’t think it’s fair to say that they’ve been given too big a handicap ;^)…