Workshop 2, 2008
July 21 - 23, Virginia Commonwealth University - Engineering East - Room E1232 (Mattauch)
The WITS workshop participants.
Schedule | Participants |
About the Participants
The goal of the CYFair Participant Workshop was to unite educators from multiple backgrounds and instruct them in using virutal worlds and information science tools that will be employed through WITS.
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Schedule of Events
| Monday, July 21 | Videos | |
| 9:00am | Introductions (Corbit/Wofford and VCU Hosts) | |
| 9:30 | Cornell CYFair Site Report and Curriculum Review (Andrew Loewer) | |
| 10:00 | Inworld Ice Breaker (WITS Student Team) | |
| 10:30 | Beginning and Advanced Building Training (WITS Student Team) | |
| 12:00pm | Lunch | |
| 1:30 | Penn State Site Report (Jan Mahar and Valerie Werth) | |
| 2:30 | Open Building (WITS Student Team), Usability Test (Sara Liu) | |
| 3:30 | MediaGrid Immersive Education Initiative (Barbara) | |
| 4:30 | WITS Curriculum Review, Syllabus Distribution and Brief Intro (Margaret Corbit and Jen Wofford) | |
| Evening | No planned dinner | |
| Tuesday, July 22 | ||
| 9:30am | VCU Site Report and Showcase (David Primeaux, Grace Olsen, Steve Beckett, et al.) | |
| 11:30 | Lunch | |
| 1:00pm | Beginning and Advanced Building Training / Open Building (WITS Student Team) | |
| 1:45 | WITS Curriculum - Feedback and Discussion (Corbit and Wofford) | |
| 2:00 | BPC Alliance Planning (Group Discussion) | |
| 3:00 | Evaluation Update - Chat Log Analysis (Wofford) | |
| 4:00 | Workshop Teams Showcase (WITS Student Team) | |
| Evening | Group Dinner | |
| Wednesday, July 23 | ||
| 9:00am | Many-Eyes User Study and Discussion (Sara Liu, REU Student) | |
| 10:45 | How to Make a Custom Avatar (Brian Taylor, REU Student) | |
| 11:30 | SDSC Site Report | |
| 12:30pm | Lunch | |
| 2:00 | Dissemination Planning (Corbit and Wofford) | |
| 3:00 | Adjourn | |
| * Individuals associated with a session are its coordinators and may or may not be its presenters. | ||
List of Participants
| Cornell University | ||
| Margaret Corbit | Scicentr.org | mdc7 at cornell.edu |
| Dan Grigoryev | Scicentr.org | dag73 at cornell.edu |
| Sara Liu | SciCentr.org | sl485 at cornell.edu |
| Andrew Loewer | SciCentr.org | asl57 at cornell.edu |
| Ivan Mintchev | SciCentr.org | inm2 at cornell.edu |
| Brian Taylor | SciCentr.org | TripleBT21 at gmail.com |
| Jennifer Wofford, Ph.D | Faculty of Computing and Information Science | wofford at cs.cornell.edu |
| Penn State University | ||
| Jan Mahar | College of Information Sciences and Technology | jmahar at ist.psu.edu |
| Valerie Werth | College of Information Sciences and Technology | vrw104 at psu.edu |
| Jeff Seamans | Park Forest Middle School | jds11 at scasd.org |
| Auburn University | ||
| Andrea E. Johnson | Human Centered Computing Lab, Department of CS and Software Engineering | willia2 at auburn.edu |
| Boston College | ||
| Barbara J. Mikolajczak | MediaGrid | barbara.miko at gridinstitute.com |
| Virginia Commonwealth University | ||
| David Primeaux, Ph.D. | Computer Science Department | dprimeau at vcu.edu |
| Grace Olsen | Computer Science Department | olsengf at vcu.edu |
| Steve Beckett | Richmond Public Schools | sbeckett at richmond.k12.va.us |
| Catherine W. Howard, Ph. D. | Division of Community Engagement | choward at vcu.edu |
| Raynard Townsel | Richmond Public Schools, Office of Grants Management | rtownsel at richmond.k12.va.us |
| Lorraine M. Parker, Ph. D. | Computer Science Department | lmparker at vcu.edu |
| San Diego Supercomputer Center / UC San Diego | ||
| Veverly Anderson | San Diego Community Housing Corporation | veverlylc at yahoo.com |
| Camille Campion | UC San Diego | ccampion at weber.ucsd.edu |
| Rachel Cody | UC San Diego | rcody at ucsd.edu |
| Tommy Douglas | Town & Country Village Learning Center | |
About the Participants
Penn State University
The Penn State WITS initiative held its first workshop this past January for four Saturdays from 10AM to 4PM. Six undergrad females from the College of Information Sciences and Technology designed and lead twelve non-tech middle school girls through the Virtual Worlds using the theme of a vitrual mall. The three main discoveries were that (1) that the title (Virtual Mall) did not attract the middle school girls to apply until we had their tech teacher explain they would be working in a virtual world. (2) only 33% of the middle school girls selected a store type that would be construed as 'feminine' and (3) that the undergrad girls really loved helping younger girls learn more about how technology can be exciting.
We are looking forward to this FA08 semester's workshop and will be using the theme of the next summer Olympics, doing research on this year's summer Olympics and visiting the university's sports museum which currently is featuring PSU alum who were Olympians. Two further alterations are (1) we will be inviting the previous middle school girls to return as 'assistants' for this workshop and (2) our undergrad girls will be teaching through Virtual Worlds' "chat" feature as opposed to 'sage on the stage'.
More up soon...