Ambient Connections via Ron Edwards: December 2008 Archives

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December 11, 2008

Press Release on My Speech @ Learning Technologies

I'll be speaking at the 2009 Learning Technologies Conference in London next month. Here's an excerpt from the recent press release on it below from TrainingPressReleases.com (check them out!).

After the hype around Second Life and stories of abandoned ghost towns empty of avatars, virtual worlds have continued to grow in use in organisational learning, with hundreds of organisations now delivering learning programmes through them. At the Learning Technologies Conference Marco Tippmer and Ron Edwards will answer what these organisations are doing right (and wrong), and how is learning now being delivered effectively in virtual worlds?
Ron Edwards, CEO, Ambient Performance, said: 'Virtual worlds are being used intensively for learning and development right now and the scope for future use is immense. Virtual worlds are excellent places for simulation and classroom training - offering potentially considerable savings for L&D organisations - and as performance support environments where users practice tasks before carrying them out in the real world.'

'We are now seeing virtual worlds being integrated with other collaborative learning technologies such as standards compliant e-learning, whiteboards, presentation tools, application sharing, etc, and are now seeing them extending to mobile with video, audio and messaging support. I expect this trend to continue as the L&D community searches for new and better ways to deliver training, including getting more value out of their existing learning assets as well as reducing reliance on classroom training that can be costly and less efficient.'

Posted by Ron Edwards at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 10, 2008

Virtual Worlds Hot At Largest Simulation & Training Conference

There is a great overview of how prominently Virtual Worlds featured at I/ITSEC - the huge Millitary training and simulation conference held last week in Orlando. Dr. Michael Macedonia, Forterra Federal General Manager just guest blogged it at Virtual World News and noted that the current focus on the use of LAN based first person shooter type training tools for squads misses an opportunity to use the power of the Internet to enable global collaborative learning enabled by Virtual World platforms.

.It was my first time attending. It was great seeing the state of the art in simulations, displays, GIS data usage, Augmented Reality (ours has more potential), head mounted displays and innovative mobile learning by Forterra partners VCOM3D. I like Mark Oehlerts descriiption of experience known as /ITSEC best on his blog here.

I met a mind boggling amount of people including suppliers of great AI middleware, experts in GIS data, lots of our European customers and people we've been talking to about virtual world based solutions and of course some new ones too!

Here are a few pics:
The calm before the storm, here's Dr. LeRoy Heinrichs, formerly of SUMMIT and now with a new venture hung out with us quite a bit which was great. He continues to do pioneering medical vw projects.

Here's an example of being swamped during the live demos where we had dozens online going through various medical, homeland security and military demos. That's Bart Bartlett in the flesh with the mic leading the show.
(I've seen him in demos online some 30 times before meeting him in person!).