Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Summer—a Time for Knowledge Sharing

There can be long stretches when life is too frantic there is no time to write. There are other times like today, when so much is happening that one has to record at least the main points. Today is such a day. It was fully a "meeting day" today and tomorrow promises to be much the same. Meetings can be soooo frustrating as there seems to be stacks of work that NEEDS to be done and meetings threaten to upend. The important piece about a good meeting, as I've learned from experience, is that is it can raise the bar. Voices of many can cut the work load by slicing through to the "best" solution. Properly delegated much can then be accomplished OR many can be reached. Today was such a day at the EMC. 

At the very end of the day, Brian and Jeremy presented to Ken and myself on their plan for the Masie iPhone application. Their challenge is to become proficient at developing the code behind the application so that at the October conference they can create an app in 3 days with  a community of advisors and two other Champlain students: a designer and an artist. This summer they are working to learn but they also are working creating on an innovate app to profile pre-conference.

Today Sarah, Ken, Ray and myself were involved in two interviews one for newspaper, the other for community radio. One interview focused on the Cystic Fibrosis project now in completion of the concept and testing of the games by patients. They are quite wonderful to play. It was good to share where they started, what they are, and likewise how we've come to appreciate that community.

The other was an interview was on the Violence Against Women game project. Let's hope it can raise awareness and bring new support to the project. The good news is that in the last few weeks, thank in part to the a generous donation by Population Media Center, we've raised $30,000 to bring the project out from under hiatus!!!!We will need much more to complete the project so we've begun a campaign - we're calling it the "It's a little thing" campaign in reference to the email that began it. To each donor, no matter the size of the gift they can give, we will bring them in on the creation process, presenting to them art assets, scripts, test results, etc. so they can follow and become part of our team.  

But back to today and this week the team presents work to date to the UNFPA tomorrow. We will share the video presentation with you through our web site Empowering Play  For over a year now, I've been writing about how incredible our students our, their creativity and their talent. In this video, it shines through clearly!

Last but not least, Thursday the team working on our Virtual Museum web presence project with VT. State Archeologist Giovanna Peebles share their concepts to the board of advisors for the project. Wish them luck—their idea(s) move way beyond the boxes of artifacts stored, way beyond museum exhibits, and into global knowledge sharing. And isn't that waht this is ALL about—global knowledge sharing?

Ok big breath, smile - as my friend Pat says -it's all good.

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