Keeping Up!

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So admittedly it has been a long pause since I've posted here last. Yet it has also been a long time since I've gotten serious friend, vacation, or exercise time (not a habit I recommend). Which in some sort of internet way means, I wish I had been sharing all that has been going on at the Emergent Media Center with our EMC followers!

Often these days, I wonder if it would be simpler if I just put a stop to our collective creative thinking—then keeping up would get so much simpler. But truthfully there is much that needs doing, so many that can benefit by what we do, and so much that is worth doing! If we hold our collective breathe then the speed of change will make us obsolete. Likewise the value of the education we are creating would be less so.

Our EMC students (over 200 in two years) such as Kate Baxter walk out the door with classroom learning but also a fuller understanding of how their classroom knowledge applies to the world and with the skills to make visions reality.

It has been a very busy semester.

We progressed forward on or concluded a long list of projects this semester:

• Google Earth mapping of Burlington and the campus (which continues on this summer) driven by Ray McCarthy-Bergeron and Alex Keyes,
• the Virtual Vermont Archeology Museum project with star student now grad Mike Fowler,
• two projects driven by amazingly creative teams of students: 1) conversion of the Information Literacy game for the iPhone and 2) the movement of data from our Polhemus Motion Capture device to Maya and our game engines,
• and moving the United Nations game to end violence against women from concept into beta Breakaway.

Overwhelmingly the students reported that these projects were among the most valuable of their educational experiences—providing portfolio experiences, tying together classroom learning with real world outcomes, providing relevance that they could recognize, and pushing them beyond their comfort zones into accountability onto a formerly unknown scale.

We traveled to Saint Lucia, New York City, and Milan, Italy presenting, testing, and recording with the poorest of poor and with some of the most influential. We brainstormed with groups and thinkers such as the likes of Ben Cohen on concepts that could impact ways of viewing actions. We built upon classroom learning and applied it to sponsors' projects with real world goals—projects where failing or non-complete's were simply not an option.

And among ourselves we struggled with: our ideals of leadership and transparency; balancing productivity and insight in a learning/productivity structure; pipelines for production; continually changing teams/workforce; cohesively managing and producing as a cohort of millennials, next gens, and baby boomers; and producing work with professionals and world leaders on world impacting projects.

So it was a very busy 4 months. The summer looks even busier.

Our game, Breakaway, with the UN has found an international soccer star, Samuel Eto'o as its champion and launches in three weeks for the FIFA World Cup, the Google Earth project continues with the city of Burlington, other projects are in the pipeline to include internal Champlain College web projects, projects such as the Governor's Institute of Vermont in Information Technology for teens,

and the launch of the MFA in Emergent Media—bringing an entirely new dimension to learning within this real world, multi-dimensional format.

So much to look forward to—and if I'm lucky I will keep our readers informed and I'll schedule in some friend and exercise time!