Shannon+Gray


 * Story Board: Week 5**

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 * Story Board: Week Four**

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**Description of Innovation** The innovation that I will focus on for my multimedia presentation will be that of Virtual Worlds. Virtual Worlds are a three dimensional world where people interact, build, learn, and participate as an avatar. There are many Virtual Worlds on the web; Second Life, Active World, Atlanta Quest, Whyville, and more. All worlds require a membership, but they range from free to a small cost. Virtual Worlds are often times open to the community, but there are also areas that are for private use only. Worlds like Atlantis Quest are set up for students and you must be approved to interact within the world for safety reasons. Second Life has a separate teen world due to some of the graphic nature in Second Life where you have to be eighteen to participate. If you can imagine it in real life, both good and bad, it can be accomplished in the Second Life experience. Within the Virtual World, there is buying, selling, building, interaction and so forth. Therefore, the diffusion process is two dimensional; there is diffusion of the Worlds themselves, but also a diffusion of products within the World. There are numerous ways that this technology would benefit education. If we can get children to have “experiences” through field trips and hands on interaction in a Virtual World, we can build background knowledge and vocabulary. For our students that come from homes where trips to the zoo and leaving their neighborhoods is unheard of, then we can enrich their experiences and possibly give them an advantage they are lacking when entering school. For my project, I am going to focus on creating a parent center within a Virtual World. There is a strong push for parental involvement in the schools, but many parents are uncomfortable, or have job commitments that interfere with participation. I will introduce it to the board as a trial year within one school in the district. We will then collect data to see if there is an increase in parental involvement within that school. This is yet another way that Virtual Worlds can benefit Education.

**Selection of Innovation** The main reason that I picked the technology innovation that I did is because it fits closely to my dissertation topic. The second innovation that I looked at was Augmentative Reality. During the Christmas Holidays, we have already seen this technology shown in commercials for Christmas Cards. Using a webcam, you can have three dimensional objects appear using a marker. This is a technology that has free software to build with and is being utilized by Google. Students could create a map of their school and have objects that can be seen as three dimensional. The other technology I looked at was the Itouch. Between free apps and the ability to have books and audio books available, there are limitless uses for this technology.

**Diffusion Studies on Virtual Worlds** The importance of the study of diffusion for Virtual Worlds is that there have been few at this point. This is a technology that can open many doors. There are virtual schools and classrooms available and the global impact has the possibility of being very significant. Small studies that show the individualized diffusion of this innovation have found that for some students, this technology allows students to take on leadership roles, become more social, and indulge in technology to a point that they become experts at a very young age. By focusing on this innovation, there is a move toward diffusion and future implementation in an educational environment. References