hilary_mason_data hilary_mason_data-2007 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
1 hilary mason data-2007-10-24-Teen Second Life College Fair
Introduction: Teen Second Life College Fair Posted: October 24, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: education , second life | 1 Comment » I was immensely privileged to participate in the first ever Teen Second Life College Fair. The event was on the Eye4You Alliance TSL island. At least 18 institutions were represented (see some of the booths in the image to the left), and approximately 200 teens attended. I gave a short presentation on my own educational experiences and the incredible possibilities for careers in technology, but my favorite part of the college fair was the casual conversations that took place outside of the sessions and in the booth area. We talked about everything from education in Europe vs the US to tagging to SL building and scripting to politics… you get the idea! For educators and recruiters, this was a fantastic event for connecting with young people who are excited, passionate, and resourceful. The students were able to t
Introduction: An Experience with Using a Wiki for a Collaborative Classroom Documentation Project Posted: October 7, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: education | 4 Comments » I’m teaching a basic web design course this term that covers design concepts, XHTML , and CSS . The students are from a variety of backgrounds – some have knowledge of HTML, some are non-majors or non-credit students looking to pick up a useful skill, and many are complete beginners who are required to take the course as part of their degree programs. Only a few students knew what a wiki (distinct from Wikipedia ) was before beginning this project. The students were given a month to make their contributions to the wiki . They were each assigned primary responsibility for one page at random, but were graded both on the success of their page and their contributions to other pages. 43 students across two sections of the class participated in the project. Of those, five (or 11
3 hilary mason data-2007-09-02-Autoscript Creates LSL Scripts Without Code
Introduction: Autoscript Creates LSL Scripts Without Code Posted: September 2, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: second life | 188 Comments » This week, I created autoscript , a simple LSL script generator for Second Life . The concept is to translate the way you think about interactive design – what should happen, and when – into functional code. Scripting is one of the most creative parts of designing immersive spaces, and I hope this will make it accessible to more people. Please feel free to use this code however you like! Writing a program like this requires a balance between simplicity and flexibility, and I’m erring on the side of the former. I do plan to add more functionality to it and would love your suggestions and ideas! Also, if you encounter anything that doesn’t work, please let me know in the comments here. The link: autoscript
4 hilary mason data-2007-08-27-Second Life Community Convention
Introduction: Second Life Community Convention Posted: August 27, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: education , events , second life | 2 Comments » I just returned from the Second Life Community Convention in Chicago. I really appreciate all of the wonderful people that I had the chance to meet (or smeet) or just spend time with. There wasn’t nearly enough time for all of the conversations that I wanted to have! There were a wide variety of presentations. We’ve come a long way since last year! The diversity of disciplines was astounding. I think the strongest work presented was in the sciences and medicine, and I was particularly impressed with the Second Health machinima. Here are the slides from my presentation on Experiential Learning: I’m hoping it inspires people to think about how we now have this capacity to create learning experiences that were simply never possible before. What do we do with it? How do we measure it?
5 hilary mason data-2007-08-19-Curriculum Design as Software Engineering
Introduction: Curriculum Design as Software Engineering Posted: August 19, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: education | 1 Comment » This summer, I’ve been involved in the process of creating a new undergraduate curriculum essentially from scratch. I was reflecting back on this process, and I realized the development of a robust and relevant curriculum shares many attributes with the process of developing robust and functional software. Modern software development is a largely modular process. Each component of a system interacts with every other component through a defined interface. I see this same behavior in a degree program – each course has certain incoming requires and defined outcomes. Students navigate through a narrative of courses that must fit together to equal a bachelor’s degree. Unit testing is the practice of separating out each module in a software system and insuring that it functions correctly. The final system is will contain many
6 hilary mason data-2007-07-30-Tip: How to Search Google for Ideas
Introduction: Tip: How to Search Google for Ideas Posted: July 30, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: search | 1 Comment » Will someone please invent a way to search for ideas? Short on inspiration? Harvest ideas from the web by searching Google for “someone please invent” and see what people are wishing for. Using quotes around “someone please invent” insures that Google searches for that exact phrase only. You can further refine the query by adding related terms at the end of the query. For example, try searching for “someone please invent” game* to see game-related results.
7 hilary mason data-2007-07-27-Uninstall Programs … For Real.
Introduction: Uninstall Programs … For Real. Posted: July 27, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: utilities | 1 Comment » I don’t usually write about software, but this is an issue of general interest. When you uninstall a program, it often leaves behind little bits of itself. This cruft accumulates over time and, especially in Windows, can reduce the performance of your machine. I recently stumbled on a pair of utilities that quickly and easily remove this cruft: AppDelete for OS X and Revo Uninstaller for Windows (XP and Vista). AppDelete is exactly what you see in this screenshot. You drag a program’s icon onto the little wooden garbage pail from the Applications folder. It asks if you’re certain that you want to delete the program, and then removes it. I’ve been using it for several weeks, and it works great. Revo Uninstaller is a bit more complicated, but it has many more features. When you load the program, it displays a list of all of you
8 hilary mason data-2007-07-17-Where the Sun Rises… in Second Life
Introduction: Where the Sun Rises… in Second Life Posted: July 17, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: second life , virtual worlds | 1 Comment » .flickr-photo { } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } WindLight 1 , originally uploaded by Lex Zhaoying . The Second Life Scripters mailing list just had a great discussion on the cycle of the sun and the seasons in Second Life. As very detail-oriented residents may have already determined, the sun and moon in SL do not follow the Earth’s natural course. Scripter Extraordinaire Zyzzy Zarf (who doesn’t seem to have a web site, but if I’m wrong, please let me know in the comments!) provided some code obtained from a Linden that indicates that the sun moves in a circle around a tilted plane. The angle of the plane rotates around each year. This results in a “good enough” simulation o
9 hilary mason data-2007-06-11-Teaching Search Techniques with Google Games
Introduction: Teaching Search Techniques with Google Games Posted: June 11, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: games , search | 4 Comments » Educators routinely discuss how students have trouble evaluating and using the results of their Google searches. There are really two parts to this problem, though, and while it’s true that students may struggle to identify reliable sources, before we can address that, we need to teach them how to write good queries. It’s that old computer science maxim: Garbage In, Garbage Out . I like to teach students how to write interesting queries by playing games. This games force students to think about the queries they are writing, and not the results. I have no scientific proof of the results, but I do know that it keeps them entertained and thinking for a while! My favorite games: Google Whack – The classic! Find a two-word query, with no punctuation, that return one and only one result. The Google Whacks on the
10 hilary mason data-2007-06-08-The Best Time to Search for Academic Jobs
Introduction: The Best Time to Search for Academic Jobs Posted: June 8, 2007 | Author: hilary | Filed under: blog | Tags: search | Leave a comment » It’s common knowledge that academic job announcements are seasonal. In general, hiring committees are formed in the fall; they announce positions, wait a month or two for applications, then spend weeks interviewing candidates before making a decision in March or April for positions that will begin the following September. I found some data to prove it, and to possibly guide those engaged in an academic job search. I was playing with Indeed.com ‘s job trends feature, when I realized that you could search not only for particular skills and specializations, but for job categories. A search for “professor” reveals some nice peaks right around mid-October. While a search for “postdoc” isn’t quite so periodic. I can only guess that this can possibly be attributed to trends in funding for postdoctoral positions. It would