First post, so we’ve got some background to cover and some catching up to do.

I started using ’social networking’ in 1995 when I got my first personal computer and logged into AOL. I was immediately amazed and thrilled at the idea that I could sit in my living room and meet and connect with people from all over. My best friend then started her own BBS and encouraged me to join. I did, and was soon playing L.O.R.D. with people from my local area and loving every minute of it. Then it happened – our little town got a real, actual, honest-t0-goodness internet service provider. I was hooked. My ‘hangout’ was the dal.net network on IRC. The people I met in those chatrooms quickly became incredibly close friends and over the course of several years I met many of them offline and developed very close personal relationships. I completely understood the power of networking and making connections. I met my current husband online, and after chatting with him for several years and becoming close friends, he sold his truck and all his belongings, quit his job and moved here to live with me. My kids fell in love with him immediately and it was as though I’d known him forever. It’s the best relationship I’ve ever been in and I’m so thankful every day that I was able to make that connection. Online connections are real, important and life-changing.

I started working at Penn State in the Materials Science and Engineering department in the spring of 2000. I actually worked there as a ‘temp’ placed by a temp agency in State College. I worked for one professor specifically in the “Center for Electrochemical Science and Technology”. Just me and him. Great guy – dull job.

One day the department head came into my office and said they were going to move me into the Undergraduate Administrative office in the department and move the girl that was in that job up to my job. He said it was a ‘better fit’. I was fairly psyched to change and do something different (and by different I really just mean SOMETHING) so I said that would be great.

I worked in the Undergraduate Studies office in MATSE until October of 2002 at which point I took a job with Penn State Undergraduate Admissions as an Admissions Counselor. I worked there for almost exactly five years evaluating applications, giving presentations about Penn State to prospective students and their parents, and I really enjoyed my job. The only problem was that there was no room for creativity or advancement and I kind of needed that.

I joined World Campus full-time in January of 2008 and I’m excited to be here, and really looking forward to the opportunities this position presents me. Penn State Outreach is an amazing, passionate, creative place to work and I feel incredibly thankful to be here and to have this position.

My job here consists of using social networking technologies to bring together students, faculty and staff. Using tools like Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, YouTube, twitter, Flickr, etc. we can connect students with Penn State, and with each other – and I think that’s “where the magic happens”.

I am also doing a small bit of academic advising with our veteran military students. My work in admissions had me working extensively with military students and adult learners, so this role is a good fit and gives me new experience as well.

Warning: Bit of a rant to follow 

I went into Day 2 with high hopes that we’d get into some new things or some real ‘plan’ of where we go from here. I left Day 2 feeling frustrated and a bit .. irritated, I guess.  Now, let me say right up front that I sure as heck don’t want to come across like I have all the answers, and I sure as heck don’t know even a smidge as much as some of the other people at this summit.  That being said, I think that sometimes (and not just at this summit, I’m talking in general here) people get so focused on their own objectives and what they think should happen that they don’t take a second to look at the big picture and really sort of think of *everything* instead of their one specific agenda.

We’re spending so much time talking about Immersive Education and the Education grid, and this whole Immersive Education initiative.. and I think that’s fantastic, I really do. I love anything that makes learning new, and exciting and gives students the opportunity to learn about THEMSELVES as well as whatever material is required.  The platforms being discussed: Second Life, Croquet, and Wonderland are all amazing tools and fantastic ways to engage learners and revitalize an educational system that’s lacking in so many ways.

We spent a lot of time today talking about what needs to happen and the barriers to those things. Lack of money, lack of time, lack of bandwidth, lack of teachers with the skillsets to make these things happen.  People keep talking about ‘games’ in the classroom, but I think that perhaps we should think of them as “Participatory Learning Experiences” instead of games.  I think taking a class into Second Life to explore pyramids isn’t really a game, but an experience.

A lot of the discussion focused on the K-12 students and the lack of support and all of those things I mentioned previously.  Virtual worlds take a lot of bandwidth and some fairly powerful computers that most K-12 classrooms don’t have. So we spend hours talking about how that makes things difficult and how we need to lobby our congressmen and women to provide these things, and how we need a ’sputnik’ revelation for education now to really ’shake things up’ and get the ball rolling. Now, the sorts of things they’re talking about doing here.. *might* succeed.. maybe.. for some students, some school districts.. some areas.. but for everyone? I’m highly doubting it, and even if some miracle occurred and it DID happen for every school in the country giving access to all of these students, how long do you think that might take? Yeah. A very long time.

So, if we’re talking about video games and how much students play them and how successful they are, then wouldn’t it maybe make sense to think about using *those* platforms to reach students.  To piggyback on my post from yesterday, what if.. instead of Second Life, Croquet, and Wonderland, we focused on Wii, XBox, and Playstation.  What if, instead of lobbying congress, changing laws, developing virtual world modules for education we just got together with some game makers and built these modules for use on the game consoles.  A classroom could certainly afford a Wii more easily than they could afford laptops for every student that would be capable of running Second Life.  Most game consoles also allow for 2-4 players at one time, so on top of everything else, we give students the opportunity to learn about teamwork, and cooperation and problem-solving in groups.  We’re not teaching material, we’re teaching learning skills.

Immersive education is not solely giving students access to virtual worlds and teaching them there.  Immersive education is showing students differences, giving them experiences, and opening their minds to different ways of thinking.  I hope we get there, as a country.. but I’m not convinced that there’s only one path to make that happen.