Presentations
Over the last few years, I’ve been asked to give several presentations at Penn State and beyond regarding virtual worlds in education (specifically Second Life) in addition to external speaking events. I’ve been experimenting with several of these worlds for years now as well as managing the College of Information Sciences and Technologies Second Life space, Istania.
Topics that I’ve presented on include:
- The link between gaming and education
- Virtual Worlds and education
- Designing learning opportunities in virtual, 3D spaces
- Lessons learned from our Second Life experiences at IST
- Lessons learned from teaching utilizing games, podcasts, blogs, and collaborative web tools
I’m currently working on a presentation that illustrates the link between gaming and Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning. I’m always looking for opportunities to talk with like-minded folks who are working in this space or evaluating whether or not to invest in things like games or virtual worlds for education.
I try and make each presentation unique to the specific organization and fulfill the expectations of the audience in the room. If you are looking for someone who’s been involved in the Serious Gaming community for several years and has practical experience deploying virtual worlds like Second Life within higher ed, consider me for your next event.
Contact: bartonpursel[at]gmail.com
Recent Talks
July 2010
The Education Technology Ecosystem at Penn State University.
Third Annual Learning Design Summer Camp, Penn State University.
January 2010 (w/ C. Stubbs and A. Clements)
Creating a centrally supported, university-wide educational gaming initiative (.
Annual Educause Learning Initiative conference (ELI), Austin, TX.
January 2010 (Poster w/ Emily Rimland and Hanah Inzko)
Abracadabra! Using an alternate reality game to create magic in the library.
Annual Educause Learning Initiative conference (ELI), Austin, TX.
October 2009
Experiments in Virtual Worlds.
Supporting NATO RTO Task Group IST-085/RTG-041, Visualization Network-of-Experts 10th workshop: Understanding Dynamic Networks – Visualization Research, Theory and Practice
June 2009 (Panel)
The Role of Virtual Worlds as an Environment for Partially Distributed Teams (Graduate Student Panel). State of Play Graduate Symposium, New York Law School.
April 2009. (Panel)
Information Sciences and Technology Graduate Symposium. Gaming and Virtual Worlds.
December 2008
Introduction to World of Warcraft. Comparative Literature Graduate Class, Penn State University.
June 2008
Big Ten Plus News Directors Annual Conference. Virtual Worlds for Outreach and Communication.
April 2008
IST Future Forum. Panel Moderator: Web 2.0: Social Networking in a Digital World.
April 2008
Playing to Win Conference.
Establishing a University-wide Educational Gaming Initiative
March 2008
Drexel University’s e-learning 2.0 Conference.
Case Study: Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies for Teaching and Learning.
February 2008 (Panel)
Information Sciences and Technology Graduate Symposium.
Cyber Society and Science
December 2007 (w/ Brett Bixler)
Penn State University’s eBusiness Strategy Group - Exploring Business Applications of Second Life for Penn State
November 2007
Kutztown University Design Conference - Design Considerations for 3D Environments
November 2007
Corporate Advisory Council (CAC) Conference - Virtual World Technology at Penn State
September 2007
Drexel University, LeBow College of Business - Second Life in Education
September 2007
Villanova University - Second Life in Education
June 2007 (w/ Brett Bixler)
Penn State Web 2007 - Virtual Worlds
2006 (w/ Shawn Clark)
Annual Academy of Management Conference. Leveraging Cutting-Edge Technologies in the Management Classroom.
Refereed Conference Proceedings
C. M. Hall, D. L. Hall, S. A. H. McMullen, M. J. McMullen and B. K. Pursel, “Perspectives on visualization and virtual world technologies for multi-sensor data fusion,” in Proceedings of FUSION 2008: the 11th International Conference on Information Fusion, Cologne, Germany, June 30 – July 03, 2008.
