NMC Releases 2008 Summer Conference Proceedings

The 2008 Proceedings of the 2008 NMC Summer Conference features ten papers presented in PDF format to take advantage of the images, video, and links that they include.

The 2008 Summer Conference Proceedings can be downloaded in its entirety, or chapter by chapter, at http://www.nmc.org/publications/2008-conference-proceedings.

Although all the papers will be of interest to those interested in the development and application of new media, I found the following papers to be of particular interest, from an educational point of view:

Fair Use Ain’t What You Think It Is: Copyright and Fair Use in the Digital Classroom
Mark J. Davis, Tulane University, CERT, and Loyola University

This is an excellent, very clear summary of U.S. copyright law, particularly as it is applied to digital media used in education. It should be noted though that copyright law does vary from country to country; however, the principles do not change a great deal, and this paper covers the principles extremely well.

Infrastructures in Virtual Learning
Holly Willis, University of Southern California

This is one of the most interesting papers I have read on Second Life. It takes a theoretical perspective on virtual reality and uses that to adapt a pedagogical approach to several projects developed by the Institute of Multimedia Literacy at the University of Southern California. Essential reading for anyone who wants to break away from the replication of the traditional classroom model in Second Life.

Why Walk When You Can Fly? Reflections from an Advanced Second Life Preconference Session
Christopher Holden and Beth Sachtjen, NMC Virtual Worlds

This paper offers for those who have mastered the basics of Second Life (SL) a description of some of the tools and perspective required to move on to the next level of content creation.