Here’s an informative video that showcases the International Society for Technology in Education and how they are creating a network of educators in Second Life. This is a large, and growing, group of teachers and universities who are very excited about the educational possibilities of virtual worlds. Visit ISTE Island for more information.

Mashup Your Creative Tools

Last week the New Media Consortium hosted a Symposium on Mashups. They featured all sorts of interesting ways that people are combining digital tools, data, and ideas. Topics included copyright issues, educational uses, Web 2.0 tools, and meditations on the implications of this new ability to sample and combine all sorts of info.

Larry Pixel invited me to host a session that dealt with art in Second Life. My presentation was entitled: Mashup Your Creative Tools: Art in Second Life. I talked about some of the tools that are available in SL and how they’ve combined to create a new artistic media. My session was a bit less technical and more personal than some of the other presentations. I think it was well received and I hope that I offered a bit of inspiration and opened a few doors in peoples minds about what is possible for artists in SL.

The sessions were also simulcast on the Web via the nifty Adobe Connect system. You can see the recording of my session, as well as all of the other presentations that were made at the Symposium. I especially enjoyed the “Confessions of a Mashup Artist” which featured a fantastic audio/video mashup dealing with the ethics and ideas of the mashup. I also like this presentation that featured some amazing live, data-driven maps in SL and also a demonstration of the Info-Fez.

Thanks to Larry Pixel and the NMC for the opportunity to spread the SL art gospel and for bringing all of this great stuff together!