The Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds invites proposals to be a speaker, presenter, or performer at the workshop to be held on March 6-7, 2015. While lecture style presentations are acceptable, we highly encourage proposals that are interactive in nature, involve the audience in hands-on learning experiences, or otherwise showcase and take advantage of the immersive nature of the OpenSimulator platform. In addition, though we will provide an auditorium-style venue for breakout sessions, we encourage presenters to consider constructing or sharing a build, region, or other audio-visual aids beyond a PowerPoint slide presentation to accompany their presentation. OAR and IAR uploads can be coordinated with workshop organizers if your proposal is accepted.

http://consortium.militarymetaverse.org/call-for-proposals/

Metacognition Track Leaders:
Tonietta Walters –  NoumenArt & Broward College
Aimee Weber – Aimee Weber Studio

Broadly defined as “thinking about thinking” or an awareness of one’s own thought processes, metacognition in learning involves self-monitoring and self-regulation such as recognizing a learning task, strategizing an approach, evaluating comprehension, and monitoring progress towards completion of the learning task.  How do we facilitate and, importantly, measure this kind of metacognition? The Metacognition Track invites proposals that showcase the use of virtual worlds for training and education in ways that learners are aware of training objectives in real time and/or illustrate any methods for facilitating and measuring learner autonomy and metacognition. Proposals that are interactive, immersive and make use of the collaborative, shared experience of virtual worlds are encouraged and highly preferable to PowerPoint presentations.

Topics of interest include:

• Design & Content Considerations
• Incorporating Information Resources
• Instructional Guidance & Learning Objectives
• Progress Tracking & Learner Evaluation
• Learner Clues & Managing Learner Strategy
• HCI & Neurofeedback
• Role-Playing & Cultural Sensitivity
• Collaboration – Group Learning vs Individual Learning
• Immersive Environment – Real vs Effective

Deadline: November 30, 2014

Submit your proposal using the form at the bottom of the following page: http://consortium.militarymetaverse.org/call-for-proposals/

On the rocks where we meet for MOSES Office Hours

From my classroom.  I’ll now be able to make MOSES Office Hours meetings in between classes. Thanks to the Broward College Help Desk!

Saw this somewhere on Facebook today and it struck me – hard, like an open handed bitch slap from Michael Clark Duncan.

Yes, I do remember. Now I do, but it was/is hard work – like the emotional and spiritual version of reverse pull ups, one handed push ups or doing a marathon. I had to work at it every day. I had to join Mensa. I had to verify and test my memories – make sure I wasn’t imagining the way I grew up – drove my mother crazy. I had to contact the Ministry of Education in Jamaica. I needed to make sure I was not really THAT nigger – to believe I was who I was, not who they treated me like.

I still have the Rocky look on my face practically every day or inside my head. You know the one. After he has been beat down to the ground where no on should be able to get up from and you see the look in his eyes right before he.. gets up.

The struggle has lessened but remains… especially because I have not made the same kind of effort to get over the anger and especially if I make the mistake of paying attention to the news.

Here this is needed again…

On the day that I can genuinely feel like I am not fighting to get up from a battering – I won’t be angry any more.

Right now. It sustains me… enables me to keep getting up.

That clarity, a kind of rebirth, is part of why I love the rain.

If I’m lucky it’s a storm. If I’m really lucky – , I’m outside with my arms wide, head thrown back and eyes closed – the intense crackling of lightning brightening the backs of my eyelids.

The answering thunder loud enough to scatter my cells – rearranging then into the proper vibrational waves. The thunder awakens me, reversing the entropy of continued living. My smile is wide; my spirit is alive and being cleansed. My inner child jumps and skips because she is grateful – happy to share in these moments of joy.

The rain beats away at the dirt that mingles with the air we are supposed to breathe, beats it to the ground where it belongs and each breathe becomes a renewed communion with living. As the thunder quiets down; the rumbles becoming more distant.

My smile wavers… “Come back tomorrow and stay a while,” is my whispered plea to the Spirit of the Storm.

For I know that tomorrow the sun’s intense rays will bring presentiment of the fires of hell and illuminate air that will again be rank with the stench of humanity.

It was Daddy’s birthday on Monday. It has been 28 years since he died and I don’t miss him any less. The feeling of loss has been exacerbated as I am trying to recover from losing Uncle Tyrone on April 1st. I mean… really? I comfortably believed my family had a sick sense of humour for a bit rather than face reality.

Mummy was in the hospital on Tuesday. She is home now and fine but I am… tired.

This week I have been feeling like my life has become a Depeche Mode song so God and I had a heated discussion. I won. I always win those discussions because I accepted God’s existence and that means… Yeah, I can clean house and change my iconography. Time to give credit where credit is due. I’ve always believed more in Jesus Christ and my mother  than the big Kahuna anyway… and that is about nothing more the power of belief. Doesn’t matter in what.

Don’t get me wrong. I am still full of belief, still faithful. If there is anything integral to my character, it is faith… in faith. However, I believe it is about time to stop using what has been simply a token since I was a child and realized what I was reading amounted to a really good collection of writing that ended with a made for the movie theatre extended hallucination. It was worth reading several times but the Tao Te Ching has always been clearer to me.

It is time I came up with a more representative token and refine my iconography.

Although it has been easier to use the language I’ve grown up with it is time to change the conversation and use a more representative language. Free up processing space in my brain that I have been using for translation.

Change.

Cometh.

Well, heck if I didn’t already come up with it years ago.

NaNU. NaNU. [Just a note to take a look at this article again: http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2006/03/our-non-arbitrary-universe.html]

For good measure, the other Depeche Mode song:

My heart hurts.

Another time… Those words are making me cry.

I kept telling myself I needed to try to visit her (never been to her house since I saw her almost every day at the studio) or make some time to meet her somewhere, but…

There won’t be another time.

At this time, all I can do is make a record (now while I feel like crap) in my memory repository – The least I can do is not put this off for another time.

Margaret (Maggie) Soltis,

Even though I thought I missed you, obviously I didn’t really know what that meant because I sure understand now. I will never be able to hear your voice or little giggle again, smile at how tiny your feet are, be in awe of the things you make or feel happy just because you are around and we are trying to figure out how to get something made.

I love you… so much and I’m sorry that you probably didn’t even know just how important you were to me.

I’ll remember you always.

The bigger turnout is great because we are truly at the point of digging in to get the Broken Tablet Newsletter and rework of the Linda Kellie Lake House Sim from Zadaroo into the finished EMC Sim completed and published by the end of summer.

Woot!

Using the first of the additions we roasted marshmallows. We most certainly do have a more relaxed environment to share work and brainstorm collaborative projects. What a good looking bunch of Virtual Reality adventurers 

The Dugout Miami

Commissioned work for The Dugout bar in Midtown, Miami approved by client review and almost complete.

(No post-processing on image.)

I don’t know if I would go full out Persian though. I try for the Middle Path.

Still, you know what they say.

When the Zen ends the a$$ kicking begins

300: Rise of an Empire

Believe me… See it in IMAX and Real 3D

Euphoria | XG 2010

The past few hours somehow erased that rested from vacation feeling of riding my own personal beam of light. However, I just witnessed a wonderful (for me) moment of honesty when returning the rental. One of the rental people was heading toward another car and (I just would never believe it if I was told but I saw it with my own eyes) saw me, altered his course in my direction and these words came out, “What a beautiful woman.”

I saw him realize he said it out loud, kind of shake his head and repeat it again. As he got to my window I asked, “Are you talking about me?” To which he replied, “Of course, you’re an incredibly beautiful woman.”

Stunned I mouthed an extended and breathy “Thank you” worthy of Marilyn Monroe and gave him that special brilliant smile reserved for the group of one that made me feel beautiful enough to again feel like I’ve got my own personal beam of light.