Larry Johnson, New Media Consortium CEO, Public Lecture @ UTS 26 November 2009, 4.00pm: Down the Rabbit Hole … …or how the NMC took the red pill, got a Second Life, and found love on the 3D web

[Aleteia Infinity]

Dear Colleagues

I would like to invite you to Larry Johnson's lecture Down the Rabbit Hole … …or how the NMC took the red pill, got a Second Life, and found love on the 3D web, on 26 November 2009 at 4.00pm at UTS. (I apologise I do not have a lecture theatre number as yet, but I will post an update).

The lecture is part of a grant project I have been carrying out with colleagues from the School of Software in IT, Nursing and the Institute for Interactive Media Learning at UTS to find out if we could create a community of practices in and around Second Life (we do not have an answer yet). I will post more on the project in December.

This is the abstract:

Laurence F. Johnson, Ph.D.
The New Media Consortium
Dr. Larry Johnson is Chief Executive Officer of the New
Media Consortium (NMC), an international consortium of
colleges, universities, museums, research centers, and
other learning-focused organizations dedicated to using
new technologies to inspire, energize, stimulate, and
support learning and creative expression. He is an
acknowledged expert on the effective application of
information technology in higher education, and has
authored a number of books, monographs, and articles on
that topic. Dr. Johnson has over 25 years of experience in
the higher education arena, having served in roles from
faculty to dean, CIO, provost, and president.

Down the Rabbit Hole …
…or how the NMC took the red pill, got a Second Life, and found love on the 3D web

For more than four years, the New Media Consortium (NMC) has led the largest
educational project of its kind in any virtual world — the NMC Campus Project — in
which hundreds of institutions and over 15,000 educators and students from over 50
countries share ideas, work, and learn every day in the virtual world of Second Life®.
The international project is widely recognized as the preeminent example of how to
maximize the potential of virtual worlds for education.

In April 2008, Dr. Larry Johnson, CEO of the NMC and director of NMC Virtual Worlds,
was invited to testify before the US Congress, along with Philip Rosedale, the inventor
of Second Life, on the nature and state of virtual worlds, and where they might be
going. The project has been recognized with a variety of prestigious awards, including
the Palm D’Or from the World Intraverse Association, Europe’s largest virtual world
forum, for its many contributions to the understanding of virtual worlds.

Join Johnson to learn what is driving interest in the emerging landscape of virtual
worlds, the game-changing ways they are being used, where they are heading, and
why he believes the emerging 3D web represents as profound an opportunity, as
profound a driver of changes in the ways we think, learn, and work, as any technology
that has ever preceded it.