Well, I haven't been keeping a very detailed log of my recent activities. That's because I've been preparing for the CALICO conference, which actually just ended today. I went to one presentation this morning and then hit the road. I saw the twisting Lombard Street and then headed down to Pier 39, and finally hit up the Golden Gate Bridge, pictured left. I crossed the whole thing by foot. Twice. Total distance walking to all this stuff: approximately ten miles.
The weather was beautiful all day, and pretty much all three days I've been here. The conference was incredibly productive for me, and I'm really glad I did it. Especially, the presentation I saw this morning. The last few days have been filled with stuff on Second Life. I was familiar with underlying concept of Second Life, but had never actually played it. After hearing the third (of five total) presentations on using the game for educational purposes, I decided to download the thing and try it myself. It was easily one of the most unexciting gaming experiences of my life. It lacks overt structure... scratch that. It lacks any structure. The teacher can create structure, but the if the teacher needs to do that, then why doesn't the teacher just create his or her own video game? And if you're going to do that, why not base your design on sound SLA principles instead of falling back on commercial software that wasn't designed with those principles in mind.
Anywho, aside from the Second Life fanaticism, it was a very productive experience on the whole, especially in terms of networking and developing ideas.
Early tomorrow I'm leaving for Seattle. It'll be my first time there too. Should be fun! Expect more pics soon.
