The year's symposium will be held May 7-9, 2008 at the Carefree Resort in Carefree, Arizona and online in the Second Life virtual world. A short trip from Phoenix, Carefree provides an ideal setting for a 300-400 person event. See the hotel web site for more information. Select presentations, including Keynote and plenary speakers, will be streamed to the Second Life event, where online-only presentations will also be provided in Second Life. Attendees at the face-to-face event at the Carefree Resort will be able to “cross over” to the virtual event from the face-to-face event through their own laptop and the wireless network. A wealth of pre-symposium events will also be held online in both Moodle and Second Life starting in January, 2008 and leading up to the event. For information on pricing and delivery modes for this event, please visit the pricing page.
About the Carefree Resort
The Carefree Resort was selected for its beauty, great weather in early May, and a layout that provides great support for a highly engaging event inside and outside. Ways that Sloan-C will utilize the Carefree Resort space during the May 7-9, 2008 event include:
- Walks in the Desert With Experts - Take a brisk walk with symposium topic experts and discuss the key topics of the conference while taking in some of the most scenic areas of the resort. The Carefree Resort provides numerous trails to give the perfect setting for an early morning stroll with your colleagues.
- Quick Draw Sessions in the Opera House - This is the wild west, but instead of quick gun slinging, we are slinging key information about the symposium topics in quick format poster sessions. Jump from table to table to get in touch with a variety of topics in a very short time period.
- Informal Second Life Sessions in the Red Horse Saloon: The Quest for El Caballo Rojo - Equipped with projectors and screens linked into the Second Life virtual world, the Red Horse Saloon will provide a place for us to reach into this new educational landscape in ways unheard of at your traditional conference, while enjoying informal socializing with colleagues in the usual fashion! Jeremy Kemp of San Jose State University, one of the track chairs for the Inventive Uses of Media and Tools in Online Learning track, has organized an SL scavenger hunt complete with team prizes and a wealth of activity in this innovative format. This Second Life scavenger relay is an all-out metaverse adventure game, a technology-fueled, virtual reality-based experience that encourages hard play and a keen eye for the weird, the beautiful, or the faintly out-of-the-ordinary. Teams of three players take turns running the game course on a provided laptop, completing missions and building creative masterpieces. You will navigate the amazing sims of Second Life by following fun clues and capturing images and objects on the way. Each completed mission earns your team $500L. The audience votes for the most creative team who wins a mystery grand prize. The first round starts at 8pm, the second at 9pm in the Red Horse Saloon.
- Town Hall Forum in the Opera House - This town hall meeting is designed to encourage discussion across all of the symposium attendees and tap into our collective wisdom as a group. The meeting will come complete with google jockeys to provide real-time fact checking and Internet research and all discussion notes will be collected and posted overhead and online for later download by attendees.
- And much more...
Find out more about this incredible location where this event will take place May 7-9, 2008, including key highlights and more images, by downloading this PDF.
See it for yourself from Google Maps satellite images.
About Carefree, Arizona
Carefree is a wonderful place to get out of your everyday routine and attend the exciting event we have planned. According to Wikipedia, Carefree, Arizona has a town motto of "Home of Cowboys and Caviar, Where the Old West Meets the New." The name and town atmosphere is meant to emphasize leisure and Western culture with street names such as Easy Street, Tranquil Trail, Ho & Hum Roads, Stagecoach, and Long Rifle. So come and relax with us in Carefree, Arizona as you learn more about how technologies can be utilized to improve online education.
Maps and Directions
You can use the Google Maps link below the following address to see a satellite image of the conference location and/or enter your location and receive maps and driving directions.
