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If anyone from PSU is interested in presenting, I will assist as I can!

Call for Proposals
The NMC Symposium on the Evolution of Communication
December 4-5, 2007

Proposals for presentations for the NMC Symposium on the Evolution of Communication, a special 2-day, live online event to be held December 4-5, 2007 in the virtual world of Second Life, are being solicited through November 2.

See http://www.nmc.org/2007-fall-virtual-symposium for full details. Proposals may be submitted at http://www.nmc.org/2007-fall-virtual-symposium/proposals.

About the Symposium

The Symposium on the Evolution of Communication will explore the premise that technology has not only mediated communication in countless ways, but that the very ways we communicate—and even the ways we talk and think about communication—are changing as a result.

Part of this premise is backward looking, in the sense that if we set literature and the creative side of communication aside for a moment, the formal communication strategies we have been taught in schools were often focused on how to convey lots of ideas or information (at relatively infrequent intervals) and generally in the form of written papers, books, or compilations.

Added to and fueling the premise is an admittedly unscientific assessment of how we have added to those forms in recent years. A look in almost any direction will reveal patterns of communication very different than the traditional writing in which we were trained. Small bursts of information, technology-mediated for the most part, permeate our experiences, and increasingly we have people with whom we are in contact almost constantly—and more so every day, these people are scattered across the globe.

Mediated by new tools and new technologies that have made the marginal cost of long distance communication essentially free, both work and social activities are commonly shared by groups of people who need not be geographically near each other to be close. Our premise, simply put, is that these and similar trends represent a significant shift in the way we interact with others and in the way we understand the nature of those interactions.

Proposals are encouraged on the topic in any of the following areas, but this list is not exhaustive and selections will not be limited to these categories:

* Cultural impacts and trends
* Reflections on new kinds of interactions in social and professional settings
* New “dialects” developing in conjunction with new forms of communication
* Tools and techniques
* Learning applications
* Pedagogical potentials and implications

Proposals may be submitted online at http://www.nmc.org/2007-fall-virtual-symposium/proposals.

This event is the tenth in the ongoing series of specially focused online gatherings that explore new ideas and issues related to technology and learning. The NMC Series of Virtual Symposia (formerly the NMC Series of Online Conferences) is itself an exploration of emerging forms of collaboration and tools. This particular symposium incorporates the theme of new scholarship with the release of Social Networking, the “Third Place,” and the Evolution of Communication and the dialog that we hope will arise around it (see www.nmc.org/evolution-communication to read and comment on the text).

Additional information about the Symposium can be found at http://www.nmc.org/2007-fall-virtual-symposium.

Posts will be made here when the registration period opens on November 6.

Please circulate this announcement to any and all areas on campus that may be interested in participating.