Location: Microsoft Word
How do you capture the coolness of working with virtual worlds while using the most boring piece of software imaginable?
For the past four years, that has been my challenge, just in time for my 1 July deadline.
This year, the Usher Project in Jokaydia Grid has some of the same committee members excited about the grant and the potentials for literary study.
I'd be curious to see how other faculty with annual evaluations, rather than tenure, report their work in virtual worlds. I hope that all of my evaluators will take time to look at a simple wiki with Viv Trafalgar's video of the Usher project that existed in Second Life, to give some sense of what will happen in a different virtual world where I'll have more creative freedom.
Without incentives and rewards, this work will never move forward in academia. It has long been that way for other technologies that are easier to master.
One day, we'll have smart paper with working videos embedded, or my committee will read e-texts on tablets. That's one day, not today.
1 comment:
The same way we, as techies, try to minimize the boring work of HTML, Flash and Wiki software and just show people what is possible with the tools.
I don't think anyone but a craftsman is impressed with the design of a hammer; they are impressed with what can be built with a hammer. Only the craftsman or other craftsmen want to discuss the handling, aerodynamics or kinesthetic appeal of certain hammers.
That said, I understand the Budgetary Committee wants to know about hammers (although really they don't; it's boring to anyone but a craftsman).
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