Conferences in 2010

Keynotes Speakers at DIGITEL 2010 will be:  Mary Flanagan, Catherine Beavis and Gwo-Dong Chen.  More information is at the Conference website http://digitel2010.cl.ncu.edu.tw/

DIGITEL 2010 - IEEE 3rd International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning. April 12-16, 2010. Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Hosted by National Central University

 

The 2nd Thai Simulation Conference, 2010. ‘Learning from Experience through games and simulations’ 21-24 March 2010. More information is here: http://thaisim.rmutsv.ac.th/index.html

 

Event

Computer games, access, disability

London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education
London Games Research Group
London Games Fringe

Monday 27^th October at the London Knowledge Lab, from 4 till 6 pm.

RSVP to Monica Chan (m.chan@ioe.ac.uk)
Questions? email the convener, Diane (d.carr@ioe.ac.uk)

Focus: Access and design issues in relation to games, gaming and online cultures. Presentations will be informal, and time allocated for discussion.

Contributors:

Martin Wright (GameLab London at London Metropolitan University)
Nick Weldin (www.rixcentre.org), and Tinker it! (www.tinker.it)
Siobhan Thomas, Inclusive New Media Project at University of East London 
David Squire (DESQ Ltd)
Diane Carr, link to project stuff (IOE, University of London)

More information is online here.

London Knowledge Lab
23-29 Emerald Street
London WC1N 3QS
Website

 

Project – final event notes

Andy Powell’s live notes from the project’s final event are online here – (‘Second Life v. World of Warcraft’, Friday 13th of June 2008 at the London Knowledge Lab).

 

AERA 2009 call

This is copied from the SL Researchers List (SLRL)…

 

The American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Annual Meeting will be held Monday, April 13 – Friday, April 17, 2009 in San Diego. The call for proposals opened on June 1 and closes on August 1, 2008. Please refer to the AERA website for details:

http://www.aera.net/meetings/Default.aspx?menu_id=386&id=5316 .

 

The Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning Special Interest Group (ARVEL SIG), http://www.arvelsig.com, invites you to submit proposals for presentation at the conference. This year we are accepting papers that align with the following theme: “Defining ‘virtual worlds’ from an interdisciplinary perspective: Framing an educational research agenda.” We are taking our first year as a new SIG to create some operational definitions of what we study in order to support a collective research agenda. Despite the fact that these digital environments are diverse milieu with different user interfaces, affordances, designs, and are rapidly multiplying and evolving, the need for the educational research community to delimit the range of study to a set of common characteristics that define the field is pressing. Without a definition of what “is” a virtual world and what “is not”, there will be potential conflict, confusion, and effort spent on definition of terms – where focused use of healthy methods to determine the efficacy of these environments for learning would be better spent.

 

We are currently working with a journal editor to select the top 6-7 papers as rated by our membership for publication in a special issue next fall. More details to follow soon!

 

Finally, we need your help:

 

1. Please help us recruit new members. Feel free to forward this email.

2. We plan to have a keynote speaker this year at our business meeting, so please email the SIG Chair with suggestions: jrichter@uoregon.edu

3. We need reviewers and discussants. Please help us keep up the high standard of papers that are presented through our SIG, by volunteering to review proposals through your AERA membership portal.

Thank you , and we look forward to seeing you in San Diego next spring!

Lisa Dawley

ARVEL SIG Program Chair, 2009 Annual Meeting

 

 

Project final event

Andy Powell’s live notes from the day are online here .

SECOND LIFE v. WORLD OF WARCRAFT
Friday 13th of June 2008
London Knowledge Lab
11 AM to 4 PM

Invited speakers: Aleks Krotoski and Tanya Krzywinska
Event convenors: Diane Carr, Martin Oliver and Andrew Burn

This will be an informal discussion with digital game theorists, educators and social world researchers to celebrate the close of our research project ‘Learning from Online Worlds; Teaching in Second Life’ The project was supported by the Eduserv Foundation. Participant numbers will be limited so RSVP directly if you would like to take part (d.carr@ioe.ac.uk) and note that we are not really expecting you to fight about the relative merits of World of Warcraft and Second Life.

Schedule
11 – 12.30
Session 1: Learning from Online Words, Teaching in Second Life
Diane Carr, Martin Oliver, Andrew Burn.

1.30 – 2.00 Lunch provided

2 – 4 pm: Tag team events
Each session will begin with a 20 min presentation from an invited speaker.

2 pm – 3 pm
Session 2: Virtual Worlds, Subjectivity and Methodology
How do we conceptualise the participating/learning/playing subject, and how does this relate to the questions that we ask as researchers, and the methodologies that we employ? How will we know learning (or meaning or pleasure) when we see it?
Invited speaker: Tanya Krzywinska

3 pm – 4 pm
Session 3: Putting the Social into Social World Research
How should we define or study the social in Second Life? What of the intersections between agency, community, code, terms of service, and various in-world currencies (such as reputation, stats or credibility for instance)? How might these things relate to learning and teaching practices? What do newbie educators and students need to know about SL culture and etiquette?
Invited speaker: Aleks Krotoski

Speaker biographies
Tanya Krzywinska is Professor in Screen Studies at Brunel University. She is the author of several books and many articles on different aspects of videogames, horror and fantasy and is particularly interested in occult fiction and fantasy worlds. She is the co-author of Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogames Forms and Meanings (IB Tauris, 2006), Sex and the Cinema (Wallflower, 2006), A Skin For Dancing In: Witchcraft, Possession and Voodoo in film (2001), and co-editor of ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces (Wallflower Press, 2002) and videogame/player/text (MUP, 2007). She convenes a Masters programme in Digital Games: Theory and Design at Brunel University, London, and is President of the Digital Games Research Association.

Aleks Krotoski is a columnist for The Guardian’s Technology section and for Guardian Unlimited, where she writes about the social dimensions of interactive entertainment, emerging community experiences in virtual worlds and other aspects of social software. She is currently working towards a PhD in social psychology examining the social networks of Second Life. In particular, she is interested in understanding online social influence, and how information diffuses through online populations.

 

Ed Wood machinima festival

Ed Wood machinima festival in Second Life, 31st of October.
More information here.

 

Games studies/Film Theory Event

Computer Games, Film Theory and the Future of Screen Studies
November 9th 2007
10 am – 4 pm Elvin Hall
Institute Of Education,
University of London
London WC1H 0AL, UK

At this one-day seminar speakers will address the relationship between computer games, film and film theory for a post-graduate Film Studies/Media Studies/Game Studies audience. This is a London University Screen Studies Group event hosted by the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, IOE, University of London, convened by Diane Carr.

Programme

Welcome: Laura Mulvey
Games and Media Studies: David Buckingham

Session 1: Games, Play and Players
Diane Carr, Helen Kennedy David Surman
Chair: Esther MacCallum Stewart

Session 2: The Horror Session
Ewan Kirkland, Natasha Whiteman, Tanya Krzywinska
Chair: Greg Singh

Session 3: The Question of Adaptation
Barry Atkins, Alex Sulman
Chair: Andrew Burn

To book a place and register for this event please go to:

http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/conference/conf_vidgames1.htm

£10.00 full fare, £0.00 students. Places are limited.

For more information, abstracts and presenter details please go here.

The University of London Screen Studies Group is composed of film and media scholars from various institutions within the University of London, including Birkbeck, Goldsmiths, Institute of Education, King’s College, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway, School of Oriental and African Studies, University College, and the School of Advanced Study.

 

SLCC ‘07 Education Workshop schedule

Friday August 24th through Sunday August 26th, 2007
Information on the conference in Chicago is here
and the schedule is here
Events will be streamed into SL and details are forthcoming according to a recent post by Jeremy Kemp to sledpicayune, which is here.

 

Learning and Teaching with Technology

University of the Arts London
IT Research & Development Unit (ITRDU)
The second Designs on E-Learning international conference in the use of technology for teaching and learning in art, design and communication will be hosted by the University of the Arts, London on the 12th – 14th September 2007

 

Eduserv CETIS Education in SL event

20 Sep 2007
Joint Eduserv/JISC CETIS Second Life in Education Meeting
at the London Knowledge Lab
Details here.

 

New Media Consortium Symposium on Creativity in SL

The schedule for this event (which starts on 12th of August) is online, and the conveners have included a time-zone conversion chart. Yeah!

 

Machinima Festival Europe 07

Machinima Festival Europe 07

12-14 October 2007
De Montford University, Leicester, UK
More information

http://www.dmu.ac.uk/machinima/

 

Virtual Worlds Forum Europe

Worth a look at the site, programme and the speakers (don’t get fond of them though, tickets are £700…)

 

Simulation and Second Life event

A workshop on: Simulation and Second Life
(loosely in conjunction with ESSA 2007)
7th September 2007 (14:00-18:00 GMT) IN Second Life
Co-Chaired by Bruce Edmonds and Aleks Krotoski
More information here

 

OU Seminar, November 23rd

We have been invited to give a seminar at the OU on the 23rd of November 2007 as part of a series organised by CALRG and Anne Jelfs (more information is at the CALRG website).

In this seminar, the project team will adopt a work-in-progress stance, to report on various aspects of learning in Second Life, and in the online multiplayer game, World of Warcraft. We will describe our experiences in each of these social, virtual worlds, and discuss how these experiences inform our research. We will focus on particular themes, including drama, role-play and pedagogy, and the performance and the perceptions of in-world expertise. We will also discuss the rhetorics that surround both Second Life and World of Warcraft, in relation to our work as teachers, and as manifest in the expectation of new users.

 

New Media Consortium Symposium on Creativity in SL

From the symposium website
In August 2007 (12-18th) the “NMC is planning a very special, one-of-a-kind event — a week-long online symposium on the topic of creativity to be called the Symposium on Creativity in Second Life. The first in a series of conferences and events exploring virtual worlds of all kinds, the symposium is intended to redefine the way we think about online conferences.”
The symposium will involve
“hands-on workshops led by master craftspeople in Second Life that offer an opportunity to develop your skills in a particular area under the guidance of an expert mentor. Participants can choose from Machinima, Fashion, Sculpture and Modeling, Virtual Photography, or Teaching Environments. Each studio session will last the duration of the week long symposium, beginning on August 12 and culminating in a series of showcases on August 17.”

 

Web 2.0 and Beyond (conf in SL)

From the SLresearchers list

Web 2.0 and Beyond:
The Sociological Significance of Virtual Worlds Supplanting Cyberspace
Event: CITASA 3rd Mini-Conference to be held in the Metaverse ? Second Life
Date of Event: Sunday, August 12th, 2007
Time: 5:00-8:30pm EDT / 2:00?5:30 pm PDT /SLT Location Details: The GNWC
Virtual Centre for Digital Media in Second Life University Project (150, 84,
23)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20Project/150/84/23

For the third year in a row the Communication and Information Technology
Section (CITASA) of the American Sociological Association (ASA) will hold a
Mini-Conference as part of the ASA?s annual meeting. This year?s ASA meeting
will be held in New York City, while the primary venue for CITASA?s MC3.0
will be held in Second Life. (www.secondlife.com). Second Life is a 3d
virtual world with nearly 8 million residents, who?s lifelike avatars
participate in a wide range of economic, social, educational and
recreational activities. The virtual location for MC3.0 will be the Virtual
Centre for Digital Media created by the Masters of Digital Media Program at
Great Northern Way Campus (Vancouver, BC). The physical location of the
conference will be wherever the participants find themselves?in New York and
elsewhere?at the time.

MC3.0 will focus on three broad areas:
? Social Networking Sites (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc) ? Videogames &
Gaming (World Of Warcraft, Console games etc) ? Virtual Worlds (Second Life,
Active Worlds etc)

Key Questions that will be addressed 1) What is the sociological
significance of the Web2.0 (and beyond) mediated form of social interaction?
2) How can these forms of online interaction serve as bases for sociological
research? 3) Specifically, what is the pedagogical value of the virtual
world experience?

See the CITASA website after July 13, 2007 for more information or join the
CITASA group on Facebook. Individuals interested in presenting or serving as
discussants should contact one of the MC organizers listed below. CITASA
sponsored Second Life orientation sessions will be available prior to the
event for those new to the virtual world.

CITASA MC3.0 organizers
Tracy Kennedy tkennedy@netwomen.ca
Anabel Quan-Haase aquan@uwo.ca
Joanna Robinson joanna@gnwc.ca
Jim Witte jwitte@clemson.edu

MC 3.0 Update:
To follow up on the previous announcement about the CITASA
Mini-Conference 3.0 on August 12, 2007 in SecondLife (University Project sim).
1) Anyone interested in participating as a presenter or discussant (see
topics below) should contact one of the MC3.0 organizers by July 23, 2007.
2) Anyone may attend the MC3.0 SecondLife session that wil be held
August 12, 5:00 ? 8:30 pm (EDT) during the ASA meetings. There will be no central
physical location for MC3.0, but there will be an opportunity for informal,
face-to-face discussion during the CITASA joint reception with the section
on Teaching and Learning in Sociology on August 13th (6:30-8:30 pm) in the
Hilton.
3) To attend MC3.0 you should have an active SecondLife account and be
familiar with the basics of SecondLife navigation and communication.
Opportunities for discussion in SecondLife will follow each of the three
main presentations.
4) CITASA will provide personalized SecondLife orientation assistance
and telephone support July 24 through July 27 between 5 and 9 pm (EDT). To
arrange a session send email to jwitte@clemson.edu

 

UCA/London College of Fashion Graduate Show in SL

Julia Gaimster at UCA and the London College of Fashion is working with students in Second Life, developing an island and running projects such as tonight’s Second Life Graduate Showcase exhibition. The SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/London College of Fashion/139/196/24/?title=London. Julia is hosting a launch event in world at 8:oopm (UK time, Tuesday 10th of July) including a guided tour but the exhibition itself will be on for a while.

 

MATERIAL SPACES, Camberwell College of Arts

MATERIAL SPACES: THE CITY AND SECOND LIFE
Wednesday 20 June 6.30pm
Lecture Hall, Peckham Road, Camberwell College of Arts
Free
Second Life is one of the leading Web 2.0 projects to have emerged over past 5 years. It is a virtual world initially inspired by cyberpunk literature, but imagined, created and owned by its inhabitants. A public talk with award winning writer Iain Sinclair will look at how our real world engagement with the cityscape is developing in similar fashion to our online engagement with a virtual city.
In addition during the Camberwell Arts Festival MA Digital Arts students will run a series of events to explore the possibilities of Second Life.
Part of Architecture Week and Camberwell Arts Festival
Supported by CRAFT (Camberwell Residential Academic & Fellowship Trust)

 

Ethics and Internet Research, LGRG Meeting

June meeting, London Games Research Group
Time and place: 12.30 pm UK time, Monday June 18th in Second Life.
(note change in time)
RSVP to Diane or Siobhan as usual.

Thank you all for your recent suggestions for a June meeting, most of which involved trying to meet in Second Life for some kind of tour.

For our June meeting, Aleks Krotoski will lead a discussion on the theme of ‘Ethics in Online/Social World research’. We are meeting at Aleks’ place in Second Life. Please dust off your SL avatar, and put that date in your diary. You can get there directly (if you’ve got an SL account) here:

http://tinyurl.com/y3wlat


We thought that this paper might be a good place to begin the discussion

http://aoir.org/reports/ethics.pdf

Ethical decision-making and Internet research
Recommendations from the aoir ethics working committee1
Copyright (c) 2002 by Charles Ess and the Association of Internet
Researchers

Our apologies to our colleagues who cannot access Second Life. We plan to arrange some kind of vicarious tour in the seminar room at the Knowledge Lab ASAP for those who are interested.

dc

 

LABworkshops

From the gamesnetwork mailing list…Second Life workshop info is halfway down…

LABworkshops
Modding, Reversing and Intervening in Today’s Gaming Worlds
02.07.07 – 27.07.07

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
In July LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries is organising four workshops exploring the intersections between videogames, art and reality today. A different side of videogames will be revealed by creators who can uncover their codes, subvert the standards imposed by the industry and can even address social and political issues through them.
Game hardware and software will be used for performances, activism and critique and participants will have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the language of videogames and create new meanings and results.

MODDING
An intense workshop tackling the basic notions about modding and editing of Quake III Arena levels with the aid of open source code elements. In order to create fully redistributable games, participants will learn to generate interactive 3D contents for Quake III and to engineer new game features in the game engine’s source code.

Workshop led by:
JULIAN OLIVER (NZ) is an artist, educator and media theorist specialising in the development of free software. In 1998 he set up Select Parks, an artistic game development collective.
Dates: 02. – 07. 07.2007
Hours: 10 am – 2 pm & 4 – 7 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CV and motivation letter in English
Registration fee: 100 €
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org
Deadline: 15.06.2007
Working language: English
Prior experience in programming and 3D modelling will be valued

BORDERGAMES
The Fiambrera Obrera team will work with digital cameras and image editing, teaching basic levels of 3D modelling as well as some “tricks” and activities related with their software: narrative design and characters, modelling and remodelling of scripts and characters. Participants will be involved in field work in the area of Gijon.
Workshop led by:
LA FIAMBRERA OBRERA (ES) is an open group that works in areas charged with a high degree of political and social conflict. Their methods are primarily direct action and intervention.

Dates: 09. – 13.07.2007
Workshop limited to members of Asociación Mar de Niebla
Hours: 12 am – 2 pm & 4 – 8 pm
Working language: Spanish

ENTERING THE TERRITORIES OF SECOND LIFE
Second Life (SL) is an online virtual world currently inhabited by over six million “residents”. This workshop explores SL as a platform for art expression, activism and critique. It will be led by a machinima professional, two media artists and a programmer who work on SL on a practical and theoretical level using it as an ideal platform to share ideas and to perform. Participants will learn through collaborative work how to make machinimas, how to write basic scripts and how to use SL as a platform for social action and artistic expression.
Workshop led by:
RICARD GRAS (ESP) is an artist, producer and director of machinima Europe Board. He explores new creative uses for technologies and relationships between art and the media. In 2003, he founded LA-INTERACTIvA, one of the companies that are officially in charge of the development of SL.
KRISTIAN LUKIC (SERBIA) is a writer, artist and a cultural and game researcher. He is a program manager in New Media Center – kuda.org and the founder of Eastwood – Real Time Strategy Group and also of Napon – Institute for flexible culture and technologies.
ILIAS MARMARAS (GR) is a new media artist and a leading member of the international group Personal Cinema. He has been working in gaming environments and game art since 1999.
YANNIS SCOULIDAS (GR) is a technical director, administrator and programmer of Personal Cinema and specialist in software and hardware.

Dates: 17. – 21.07.2007
Hours: 10 am – 2 pm & 4 – 8 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CV and motivation letter in English
Registration fee: 100 €
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org
Deadline: 03.07.2007
Working language: English
Experience in on-line game environments and especially familiarisation with SL will be valued

CHIPTUNES – 8BIt MUSIC
8bit sound and music is a distinctive feature of early videogames, and has become a seminal contemporary music style utilized by artists and DJs in engaging live audiovisual performances and remixes. This workshop will bring together creators from US and Spain who will work with young people to create music using Gameboys. The workshop will close with an evening of Chiptunes performances with sounds by the artists, the workshop participants and visuals by media artists Entter.

Workshop led by:
HAEYOUNG KIM (BUBBLYFISH) (KO) is a sound artist and composer who explores the textures of sounds and their cultural representation. Her work has been presented in art venues, clubs and new media festivals around the world.
CHRIS BURKE (GLOMAG) (USA) has been making 8bit music since 2001. He has performed in many countries and his music has played in films, on television and on the Internet. The machinima series “This Spartan Life”, features his music as well as other 8bit artists and is featured in Gameworld.
RABATO(ESP) composes music with the famous software Littlesounddj created by Johan Kotlinski for a Nintendo Gameboy consoles. He is the co-founder of microBCN and has participated in festivals and concerts in various cities.
YES, ROBOT (ESP) mix Gameboy sounds with other instruments like synthesizes, samples and toys modified by themselves. They are founding members of the 8bit collective microBCN.
ENTTER(ESP) is formed by Raúl Berrueco and Raquel Meyers. Entter was formed to create a collective space for the expression of the common restlessness felt by many creative people in the interactive media art field. Their fields of research include AVperformance, installations, non-linear narrative, videogames, interfaces, experimental music, VJing and net.art.

Dates: 26. – 27.07.2007
Hours: 11 am – 2 pm & 4 – 7 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CVand motivation letter
Registration fee: 50 €
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org
Deadline: 16.07.2007
Working language: English and Spanish
Prior basic programming experience and music ability will be valued

Concept and Coordination of workshops:
Daphne Dragona, independent new media arts curator, Athens
Carl Goodman, Deputy Director and Director of Digital Media,Museum of the Moving Image, New York

Activities will take place at the labs and workshops of the LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries

LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries is a space for artistic exchange. It is set up with the purpose of establishing an effective alliance between art, design, culture, industry and economic progress and the goal of becoming a space for interaction and dialogue between art, new technologies and industrial creation. It throws a special spotlight in production, creation and research into art concepts still being defined.

LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries
Director: Rosina Gómez-Baeza
Universidad Laboral s/n, 33394 Gijón, Asturias – Spain
T. +34 985 185 577 F. +34 985 337 355
labworkshops @laboralcentrodearte.org
www.laboralcentrodearte.org

 

Virtual worlds, real learning, revisited

FROM http://sledpicayune.blogspot.com/

Virtual worlds, real learning, revisited
by Art Fossett
Virtual worlds, real learning, revisited
Tuesday 19th June 2007, 16.00 – 17.30pm (UK time)
Virtual Congress Centre, Eduserv Island

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/154/31/30

Following on from our recent and successful Eduserv Foundation Symposium 2007, “Virtual worlds, real learning?” we are very pleased to announce an in-world discussion session with the speakers from the symposium. This session will be an opportunity to ask questions of the symposium speakers and to discuss the current state of Second Life more generally, with a particular emphasis on how Second Life can and should be used in practice to deliver and support learning and research.

The panel session will take an open, free format, approach although we will chair the meeting to try and ensure that only one person is speaking at a time. There will be no presentations as such, though you are strongly encouraged to view the symposium presentations before the event to help inform the discussion – they are all available in the viewing booths alongside the Virtual Congress Centre on Eduserv Island.

Registration is not required but attendance on the day will be limited to about 40 avatars. Bring your questions, thoughts and comments with you. We look forward to seeing you in-world.
Further information about the symposium (including the presentations and streaming) is available from our Web site:

http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2007