Room 155 (Live Stream)

1.  Education Panel
Learning Best Practices: A Live Panel Session from Second Life
In this panel session, join four experts from Second Life who will share best practices in the application of virtual worlds to education, health care, and government. The panel will model a virtual meeting, with participants interacting, showcasing their work, and discussing their projects live from Second Life. The highlighted projects have been chosen for inclusion not only because they have solved many common concerns related to virtual worlds to deliver effective outreach, education, training, and public information, but because they have done so in ways that have really illustrated the potential of these spaces.
View video archive (122.5MB)

Larry Johnson, Chair, The New Media Consortium
Claudia L'Amoreaux, Linden Lab
David Taylor, Imperial College of Medicine, London View .ppt pres. (22.2MB)
Eric Hackathorn, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration

Room 101

2. Lars Ulberg—University of IL,Chicago
CADE Project—Virtual World Preparedness Training
Center for the Advancement of Distance Education (CADE) is located at the University of Illinois, Chicago under the School of Public Health. CADE’s Readiness Training Group was created in 2005 to bring together developers and facilitators with experience in modern learning technologies to create a new kind of preparedness training.  Our continuing goal is to apply the best technology and practices as soon as they are available and affordable to accomplishing public and private sector objectives. In this presentation, you will have a tour of its virtual training locations and present various techniques developed for conducting virtual world exercises,  share its evolving list of insights, best practices, and lessons learned from actual exercises in virtual world and will see examples of data collection and evaluation tools being used in conjunction with virtual world exercises and how these can support performance measures, regulatory compliance, and evidence-based decision-making.

Room 196

3a Brent Smith
Weapons of Mass Instruction: The Emergency Management Nexus
The overarching technical objective of the Emergency Management Nexus is to provide a fully integrated local-to-national training, education and collaboration capability for National Guard leaders and associated civilian emergency management officials. While the National Guard Bureau is the lead agency for EM Nexus, the total requirements and capabilities were developed in concert with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and other Federal agencies concerned with emergency preparedness and response. This discussion will focus on how these requirements, specifications and interfaces were derived to support true interagency interoperability.

3b Lt Col Pickell (National Guard)
EM Nexus and the Integration of Government Workplace Training, Education and Collaboration in the Virtual World
EM Nexus is the first Massive Multiplayer virtual environment specifically designed for use by government personnel.  EM Nexus supports workplace education training and collaboration through the use for virtual classrooms, training facilities and collaborative workspaces. The mission of the EM Nexus capability is two fold:  The capability must enhance worker productivity across government and it must reduced costs relative to conventional workplace methodologies.  It provides educational, training and collaborative support as well as providing a visual intuitive interface. 

Room 187

4. EMS Training Panel
Laura Bartlett, NIH, chair
Michael L. Pack, University of Maryland College Park
Disaster and Emergency Training in Virtual Worlds
This panel presentation will discuss disaster trainings and initiatives that have occurred in virtual worlds. Second Life and Forterra’s OLVIE platform have been used by civilian (non-military) emergency responders to simulate real-life disaster and emergency incidents. The trainings and exercises have included local, state, federal government and specialty fields such as medical and transportation to create small and large scale response from multiple agencies. Federal government funders and participants in virtual preparedness trainings include the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Several state and local agencies within California, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, and New Hampshire and Universities and Colleges have also participated in virtual preparedness trainings. Elements of emergency planning and response implemented in these trainings include crisis communication, incident command, resource management, and tabletop exercises.

Room 197

5a  Susan Stucky—IBM
Rehearsal in 3D Virtual Worlds: Approaches and Infrastructure
In this presentation, the presenter will address two kinds of support for rehearsal: the native “affordances” of the virtual world environments (what the virtual world environment provides that can be exploited for learning) and some of the tools and methods useful in providing reliable, scalable, engaging and effective learning experiences.  These kinds of support lead naturally to certain kinds of value that the rehearsal experiences provide. 

5b Scott Overmeyer—Baker College
Bakerville—A Domain for Teaching Software Engineering Concepts & Practices
View .ppt presentation (3.5MB)
This presentation and demonstration is of the capabilities of Baker Island, a private island in Second Life.  This NSF funded project has produced a fully populated college town called Bakerville for the purpose of helping student learn how to perform systems analysis, requirements analysis, task analysis and other early lifecycle system development tasks within a real-world context.  This concept is easily extensible to the domain of teaching system procurement and management practices, using conversational agents as mentors and information sources for new program managers.

Room 178

6 Julie Henderson, Franz Futterknecht, Paul Fishwick, Elinore Fresh,
Benjamin D. Hamilton—Biosketch
Second Life and Culture: A Model Immersive Cultural Learning Environment
View .ppt presentation (3MB)
International events in recent times have seen overseas operations for US Government personnel increase, spawning a growing emphasis on cultural awareness/competence. Appropriate behavior in a foreign context is often underrated; however, skillful cross-cultural interactions have great potential in diffusing, solving, and avoiding problems, as well as promoting healthy and highly co-operative relationships with local populations.

Prior in-country immersion is rarely feasible predicating the need for adequate alternatives. A model immersive cultural learning environment integrates Second Life and traditional web content optimizing the affordances of both 3D immersion and web content for a robust cultural learning experience. Reflecting principals of situated cognition, appropriate integration of authentic materials, and contextualized learning, the immersive cultural learning environment shows promise in meeting the need for cultural awareness/competence training in an authentic, learner-centered, cost-effective 21st century manner.

Hopper Auditorium (Record Stream)

7a Shaffer Ramsey—Tech Guard Security
Security, Privacy and Technological Dominance in the Virtual Worlds
HIPIHI is a 3D Virtual World designed and authorized in part by the Chinese government.  It appears to be very similar to Second Life, and is targeted for the 150 million users in China with the intention of becoming the dominant virtual platform for the 3D Internet.  It is widely believed that eventually the two systems, HIPIHI and Second Life, will be merged.  Whatever the US government does in the coming 3D Internet, the largest system will likely be HIPIHI.  Being the largest, with the most users, it will likely drive global standards.  For the first time in the Information Technology field, a foreign country will be setting standards for the US government.  The following points will be covered: 1) How to achieve secure communications in a virtual world; 2) How to maintain privacy in a virtual world; 3) How the US will face the challenges ahead in maintaining technical dominance in virtual environments given the advent of HIPIHI.

7b Jonathan Cabiria—PA Institute of Technology
Jerri Lynn Hogg—Bay Path College
Virtual Worlds:  Immersive Learning Strategies for Overseas Engagements
The use of virtual world activities to enhance governmental objectives continues to evolve as virtual world technologies and communities mature over time.  In fact, virtual world engagement offers limitless potential in many different learning arenas, including diplomacy training, cultural sensitivity, language acquisition, landscape orientation, and countless types of simulations limited only by the imagination.  This presentation will focus on the uses of virtual worlds as a tool to enhance our overseas activities, primarily those activities requiring immersive learning techniques.

Room 242

8a Bonnie Klein—Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
Copyright in Virtual Worlds and Elsewhere: A Primer for Government Content Creators and Managers
View .ppt presentation (1MB)
This session will cover Copyright Law basics and touch on the Public Domain and Works of the US Government, Government Data Rights in Contract and Grantee Works, Fair Use and other exceptions for using copyrighted works for Government purposes, and the Rules of Engagement for managing Intellectual Property in virtual communities and other social networks.

8b Alex Koudry / Terry Weaver—Government Services Agency
Section 508 how it applies to Virtual Worlds
View .ppt presentation (1.5MB)
The government has to comply with Section 508 when building, procuring, or leasing electronic and information technology.   This presentation will review the basic requirements of Section 508 and how they map to the creation of virtual spaces.