NMC Press Releases

NMC welcomes the following new members who joined in April 2008!

• Ningxia Polytechnic and TV University (China)
  http://www.nxtvu.edu.cn/
• Savannah College of Art and Design
  http://www.nmc.org/organization/savannah-college-art-and-design
• University of Maryland
  http://www.nmc.org/organization/university-maryland

Founded in 1993, this year marks the 15th anniversary of The New Media Consortium! Celebration activities are already taking place as we prepare for the 2008 NMC Summer Conference and we are asking you to contribute any photos or images of the number 15 to our Flickr group!

Registration is now open for the 2008 NMC Summer Conference, hosted by Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey!

Follow this link to register now!
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/registration

Keynote Presenters
Keynote presenters include Diana Oblinger, President, EDUCAUSE; Henry Jenkins, Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities; and Wole Soboyejo, Director of the U.S./Africa Materials Institute, and the Director of the Undergraduate Research Program at The Princeton Institute of Science and Technology Materials.
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/keynotes

Conference Program
The program includes over 80 breakout sessions, 20 poster sessions, 11 Five Minutes of Fame presentations, and new to the conference this year 11 Interactive sessions.
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/program

Special Preconference Workshops
Ruben Puentedura is presenting a special two-day Immersive Studio Workshop on " Digital Stories from Comics to Film: A Hands-on Production Workshop ", that will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday prior the the NMC Summer Conference.

There are also 7 other preconference workshops to chose from that will be held on Wednesday prior to the conference! These Preconference Workshops require an additional fee and ticket for admission. For a pdf of the complete Immersive Studio and Preconference Workshop descriptions, see http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Preconference-Workshops.pdf

Hands-on Session Tickets
Hands-on sessions are a central focus of NMC conferences and attendees will have the opportunity to learn a wide range of new skills and software in theses special sessions. Seating for hands-on sessions is limited and as in the past, admittance requires pre-registration and a ticket. NOTE: Unlike in past years, hands-on session seats are available now -- but just like in past years, seating is very limited! Please register early for the best selection.
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/handsonsessions

Hotel Accommodations and Travel
NMC has secured a block of sleeping rooms at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Princeton. Special room rates of $159 for single/double occupancy have been secured for meeting attendees. When making your hotel reservation please be sure to mention that you are with the "NMC" or "New Media Consortium" group to receive the special rates. To ensure the special rates and room availability, please make your hotel reservation no later than Thursday, May 15., although we suggest making your reservations right away!

Princeton is about an hour away from most of the nearby airports, but very easy to reach by train. Please review the following link for additional information on getting to Princeton, as well as airlines, rental cars, and the New Jersey rail system.
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/travel

We are especially excited about this year's conference as the 2008 Summer conference marks the fifteenth anniversary for us! We are celebrating this in sort of a fun way by asking you to contribute any photos or images related to the concept of "15-edness" to our NMC@15 group on Flickr.
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/nmc15

More fun web 2.0 tools for the conference include:

Tag This Conference!
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/tag

Google Attendee Map!
http://www.nmc.org/2008-summer-conference/attendr

NMC CEO Larry Johnson was asked to present testimony on the nature and state of virtual worlds on Tuesday, April 1, before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Also presenting at the same hearing was Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab and the inventor of Second Life.

Members of the NMC community are invited to comment on the text of Johnson’s remarks in a special CommentPress version of the report that can be reached at http://wp.nmc.org/mrpixel/

The hearing was webcast live, and an archive is available:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/cmte_mtgs/110-ti-hrg.040108.VirtualWorld...

For more, including a pdf of Johnson's comments, please see the Committee on Energy and Commerce website:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/

NMC would like to welcome the following institutions who have joined the NMC in March 2008!

• Hitachi Information Academy, Co., Ltd. (Japan)
  http://www.hitachi-ia.co.jp/
• Laramie County Community College
  http://www.lccc.cc.wy.us/
• University of Ottawa
  http://www.saea.uottawa.ca/
• University of Calgary
  http://www.ucalgary.ca/
• Brigham Young University
  www.byu.edu

Registration is open for the 2008 NMC Symposium on Mashups, a special 3-day, live online event to be held April 1 - 3, 2008 in the virtual world of Second Life and the web environment of Adobe Connect.

For full details, see
http://www.nmc.org/
2008-spring-symposium

To register now, see
http://www.nmc.org/
2008-spring-symposium/registration

Join keynote speakers Wayne Hodgins and Susan Smith Nash, as well as colleagues from around the world as we explore the emerging technology of mashups!

About the Symposium

The Symposium on Mashups, web applications that combine data from more than one source via a single, unified tool, are often about data visualization, but they can also be creative products of other kinds—indeed, the term “mashup” originates from the music industry — such as assorted film and music clips assembled into parodies of well-known productions, for instance. Data mashups are powerful tools for navigating and visualizing datasets; understanding connections between different dimensions such as time, distance, and location; juxtaposing data from different sources to reveal new relationships; and other purposes.

In the Symposium we will explore both the tools for generating mashups as well as the applications of them to teaching and learning.

To register for the conference, or for more information including the preliminary schedule of events, please see http://www.nmc.org/2008-spring-symposium/program.

We also have a pre-symposium white paper online set up for open discussion of mashups- please add your comments.

Please circulate this announcement to any and all areas that may be interested in participating.

All of us at NMC are looking forward to seeing you online!

NMC would like to welcome the following institutions who have joined the NMC since December 2007 through February 2008!

• Alma College
  http://www.alma.edu/
• Austin College
  http://www.austincollege.edu/
• Ball State University
  http://cms.bsu.edu/
• Center for 21st Century Skills
  http://skills21.org/
• Fashion Institute of Technology
  http://www.fitnyc.edu/html/dynamic.html
• Northern Arizona University
  http://www.nau.edu/~d-elearn/index.php
• Oakton Community College
  http://www.oakton.edu/
• Occidental College
  http://www.oxy.edu/
• Remedy Communications
  http://www.rtchealth.com/index_fl.aspx
• Swarthmore College
  http://www.swarthmore.edu/its.xml
• Towson University
  http://www.towson.edu/
• The Open University
  http://www.open.ac.uk/
• University of Alberta
  http://www.ualberta.ca/AICT/
• University of Massachusetts, Boston
  http://www.umb.edu/it/

Today the New Media Consortium (NMC) announced a $250,000 two-year collaboration with Sun Microsystems to launch the Open Virtual Worlds Project, an effort that is aimed at making it easier to learn, work, and exchange ideas in virtual space. The project will develop a range of standards-based, portable open-source educational spaces, content, and objects, and use them to extend Sun Microsystems’s open source Project Darkstar and Project Wonderland virtual world platforms.

Open Virtual Worlds video announcement (6.5 Mb Quicktime)

In launching the Open Virtual Worlds project, the NMC will build on its extensive presence in Second Life and add to the services it offers educational institutions with a suite of services aimed at those who need a secure extensible platform or simply prefer an open solution. Open Virtual Worlds will be a new project housed within NMC Virtual Worlds, along with its extensive Second Life project.

The NMC remains deeply committed to the Second Life platform, and plans to continue to offer comprehensive services for it for the long term. At the same time, we believe that Sun’s open-source platforms will meet the needs that many institutions have for higher levels of security, clear ownership of intellectual property, and portability. Adding a suite of open-content, open-source services will add an important dimension to NMC Virtual Worlds that we hope will help members continue to explore the evolving range of options unfolding in the virtual world arena.

As part of the Open Virtual Worlds effort, the NMC will also join the Sun Immersion Special Interest Group , which is a Sun Microsystems Inc. sponsored community dedicated to advancing the state of open source technology and content for virtual worlds and gaming in education. At the same time, Sun Microsystems will become the NMC’s newest Platinum partner, which is the highest level of corporate participation in the NMC, and reflects a strong commitment on the part of a company to the work of the NMC and its members.

"Sun is delighted to participate with the New Media Consortium and their outstanding community of creative individuals and organizations in expanding the opportunity and use of open source virtual worlds and game-based learning to enhance student achievement and academic scholarship around the world with Sun's Project Wonderland and Darkstar technologies," said Kevin Roebuck, Community Manager, Immersive Education, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

The project’s business plan includes scalable hosted solutions that will make it very easy for any institution to experiment with the educational spaces and content that is planned for development, as well as very high quality custom development services. Over the long term, revenues from custom development will support a range of off-the-shelf products, activities, and events that will be open to all.

See the official press release for more information. As the Open Virtual Worlds project unfolds over the next few months, we will add a major new component to the NMC Virtual Worlds website that will be the repository for news, information, downloads, and more.

Learn more about Project Darkstar
Learn more about Project Wonderland
Learn more about the Sun Immersion Special Interest Group

NMC Symposium on Mashups -- April 1 - 3, 2008
Call for Proposals is Open!

The call for proposals for the NMC Symposium on Mashups is open! This Symposium is the eleventh in the NMC's Series of Online Symposia and will take place April 1-3, 2008 in both 3D and flat web environments. The theme of this symposium draws from the 2008 Horizon Report and will focus on the topics of scholarly uses of mashups. The deadline for proposals is Monday, February 18.

White Paper on Mashups

As part of a recent addition to how we design our online conferences, a topical paper is released in advance of each symposium for comment. The discussion draft for this symposium has been posted as a Comment Press version and in Adobe Acrobat format. Your comments and suggestions are encouraged; the final version of the white paper will be released at the upcoming NMC Symposium on Mashups. The hope is that this whitepaper will prove helpful as you consider a porposal submission, and that the series as a whole will spark discussion, discourse, and especially critical thinking on the topic.

Symposium Format and Topics

The symposium will be conducted either in the virtual world of Second Life as well as the LearningTimes web environment. Sessions will be conducted live and will incorporate a variety of visuals and rich media, and are generally about 45 minutes in length, with about one-third to one-half that time devoted to dialog with participants using Second Life voice chat or the LearningTimes chat space.

Proposals are encouraged on the topic in any of the following areas, but this list is not exhaustive and selections are not limited to these categories:

• Tools and methods for creating educational mashups
• Projects which demonstrate creative use of data mashups
• New approaches to data visualizations based on mashups
• Strategies for encouraging development of mashups
• Applications of data mashups. especially learning applications

Proposals may be submitted online at http://www.nmc.org/2008-spring-symposium/call

Please note: All presenters will be required to do a technical run-through of their session with conference staff in advance of the Symposium. If your proposal is accepted, you will receive further information with the acceptance notice.

For complete information on the NMC Symposium on Mashups please see http://www.nmc.org/2008-spring-symposium

If you have any questions, please contact the NMC headquarters at 512-445-4200.

Today the New Media Consortium (NMC) announced the launch of Pachyderm Services, a new suite of services which will provide colleges and universities, museums, schools and other learning-focused organizations a new suite of services supporting low-cost web-based multimedia authoring.

The program offers two categories of services — hosted accounts for teachers, students, museum professionals and other individuals; and hosted server solutions for institutions and departments. The new unit will provide a variety of ways for individuals and institutions to have hosted Pachyderm authoring accounts on a yearly subscription basis designed to match any budget.

“Pachyderm combines interactive multimedia, digital storytelling, and clean, simple design in a way that lets authors focus on the content they want to share,” notes Rachel Smith, Vice President of NMC Services and Pachyderm Project Director. “Photos and video can be recorded with a basic digital camera, edited with free or low-cost tools, and placed into Pachyderm quickly and easily. This really is a tool for people who don’t have access to expensive equipment and software.”

Designed for people with little multimedia experience, Pachyderm is accessed through a web browser and is as easy to use as filling out a web form. Authors upload their own media (images, audio clips, and short video segments) and place them into pre-designed templates, which can play video and audio, link to other templates, zoom in on images, and more. Once the templates have been completed and linked together, the presentation is published and can then be downloaded and placed on the author's website or on a CD or DVD ROM. Authors may also leave their presentations on the Pachyderm server and link directly to them there. The result is an attractive, interactive Flash-based multimedia presentation.

“Pachyderm is perfect for students, from grade school through college,” according to Kris Wetterlund of Sandbox Studios. “We have seen museums create kid-friendly pieces that blend art from their collections with classroom concepts in history, literature, mathematics, and science. Putting Pachyderm in the hands of the kids themselves is going to be a powerful way to let them express themselves and really work with the content they are learning,” she adds. “I can’t wait to see what they do with it.”

Edutopia, the online magazine of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, described Pachyderm as “multimedia authoring for peanuts” (“The Elephant in the (Class)room: Pachyderm’s Multimedia Tool,” Edutopia, August 29, 2007). Basic subscription accounts are available for $99 per year; premium accounts, which include unlimited Help Desk access, are $149 per year. No special software is required to author in Pachyderm—the service runs entirely in a web browser.

Dr. Larry Johnson, NMC’s CEO, notes, “The aim of Pachyderm Services is to provide options to schools and museums, especially the smaller locations that simply don’t have the technical staff to support an installation of their own. With Pachyderm Services, museums and schools don’t need to install a thing to be able to support multimedia authoring for the web—no servers to maintain, no need to train technical support staff—it’s all done for you.” Johnson also notes that organizations requiring large numbers of accounts can save money by leasing a dedicated Pachyderm server for as little as $5 per account per year.

Hosted Pachyderm accounts and server solutions are available immediately. For further information or to request an account, please visit pachyderm.nmc.org.