My Projects

Planet Stewards
3D GameLab and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) teamed up to propose the creation of Planet Stewards for high school students. Planet Stewards allows students to create their own personalized learning pathways in environmental and science literacy, and earn certified badges as evidence of their achievements.  This project was a winner in the DML Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, in cooperation with Mozilla, HASTAC, and the MacArthur Foundation.

We are thrilled to be included in this group of winners who will partner with Mozilla as they begin to build the nation’s first infrastructure for creating certified badges.  Badges will become an important mechanism for certifying and displaying learning achievements in a way that’s open and accessible to everyone.

Site City Limits: Cowboys vs. Aliens!
This was a fun service project that started for the fine folks at SITE in preparation for their annual conference.  In the end, we had some major volunteer work in cooperation with VWBPE and ARVELSIG, as well.  If you’ve never visited a virtual world, this may be a chance to check it out.  Learn more at http://sitecitylimits.wordpress.com/

GoGo Labs

Oh yes, coming spring 2012 to Boise State University is GoGo Labs, a learning technology design lab designed to leverage the talents of faculty and students on our campus, and partner with the local and global community on the development of shake-it-up learning technologies.  In our new 3,000 sq. foot facility in Yanke Research Park, we’ll support innovative R&D in online curriculum and educational media production, virtual world and sim design, mobile learning games, app development, learning analytics, and more!

3D GameLab

3D GameLab is a quest-based online learning platform and a supporting summer camp for teachers and instructional designers.  Our prototype was developed in summer 2010, tested in college courses during 2010 and 2011, was released in closed beta in August 2011 in a teacher summer camp.  Over 900 players of all ages have completed over 20,000 quests to-date.

TeacherStream Ning Network

Based on our Going Virtual! national research series that analyzed the unique needs and challenges of K-12 online teachers, Kerry Rice and I built TeacherStream–a ning social network designed to overcome isolation in online teaching.  It is open to all teachers to support collaboration, information sharing, and informal professional development.

BSU Teacher Education Portal
The BSU Teacher Professional Development Portal leverages the best of the EdTech program and other programs in the College of Education to provide innovative workshops to teachers around the globe.  Over 100 fully online, socially networked workshops will be available as of fall 2011.

EdTech Island & CAVE Virtual World Simulations

EDTECH Island is our virtual world initiative for training teachers, co-founded with Chareen Snelson in January 2007.  As of spring 2011, we will have offered 14 graduate courses in the simulation, and provided training to hundreds of educators around the world.

Our most recent project involves the creation of CAVE (Community of Academic Virtual Educators), a collaborative partnership between iNACOL, AECT, ARVEL SIG at AERA, and EDTECH at Boise State University. Chris Haskell is the manager of EDTECH Island and CAVE.

Oct. 17, 2010 post:  The Future of Virtual Worlds and EdTech Island

Educational Innovator Daily Paper
My daily paper is published via Twitter newsfeed, you can read it here.  This was a simple project I created using paper.li.  Paper.li will compile the Twitter posts of you and the people you follow into a daily edition that is automatically generated each day.  This is a great project for students who might want to start a Twitter account on a particular topic, then “follow” all the experts in that area.  You’ll instantly receive all the daily posts in a digital newspaper format.