ISPR Presence News

Monthly Archives: December 2020

Call: What teacher educators should have learned from 2020 (book chapters)

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

What teacher educators should have learned from 2020
Published by AACE – Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education & SITE – Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education
https://site.aace.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2021-lessons-from-2020.pdf

Full chapters due: January 15, 2021

Call for a fast-tracked, open access, book published by AACE on lessons learned and best practices from 2020. The chapters will focus on research and practical outcomes from 2020 that have implications for improving teacher education with or through technology.

  • Submission for practice and research brief due: January 15, 2021
  • Chapter length: 3000-5000 words maximum
  • Publication date: March, 2021
  • Proposed topics include (but are not limited to):
    • Rapid publishing of ideas in tech and teacher education
    • Preparing current and future teachers for online experiences
    • Re-valuing teachers and the public perception of teachers and teacher education
    • Using technology to defeat divisiveness
    • Teaching teachers to be the social and emotional connection behind the technology
    • Teacher education responding to equity and accessibility issues
    • The role of instructional design in 2021 and beyond
    • Using innovative technologies for culturally responsive teaching (e.g.,
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Cooee offers personalized Zoom tours of places you can’t visit

[After ten months in which actual travel is risky or impossible, virtual travel options look more appealing, especially the personalized one offered by Cooee and described in this short story from Fast Company (the original includes three more pictures). On behalf of myself and ISPR I wish you, and us all, a much brighter year ahead. –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: Paul Szewczyk/Unsplash]

Missing vacation? Take a custom Zoom tour of Cambodia or Peru

Cooee is finding ways to keep tour guides in business during the pandemic—and let people get a view of somewhere besides their own house.

December 23, 2020
By Adele Peters

If you’re on a staycation and you’ve run out of things to watch on Netflix, here’s an alternative: Call someone living in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and he’ll take you on a one-on-one tour of local temples and floating villages.… read more. “Cooee offers personalized Zoom tours of places you can’t visit”

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Job: Postdoc in Predictive modelling for Conversational AI at KTH in Stockholm

Call for Applications

Postdoc in Predictive modelling for Conversational AI
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Stockholm, Sweden
https://www.kth.se/en/om/work-at-kth/lediga-jobb/what:job/jobID:369978/where:4/

Deadline for applications: January 29, 2021

KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has grown to become one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as a key centre of intellectual talent and innovation. We are Sweden’s largest technical research and learning institution and home to students, researchers and faculty from around the world. Our research and education covers a wide area including natural sciences and all branches of engineering, as well as architecture, industrial management, urban planning, history and philosophy.

We are seeking a Postdoc for the project “Prediction and Coordination for Conversational AI”, led by Prof. Gabriel Skantze at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. The project is part of our larger goal of developing systems, such as social robots, that can engage in spoken interaction with humans in the same natural way we interact with each other.… read more. “Job: Postdoc in Predictive modelling for Conversational AI at KTH in Stockholm”

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Nissan GT-R(x) 2050 wearable vehicle takes Brain-to-Vehicle tech to the next level

[MotorTrend reports on a Nissan intern’s innovative car design, which the company has brought to life in a full-scale model. The Nissan GT-R(x) 2050 allows the driver to share control via a brain-to-vehicle connection and “feel as one with the car.” See the original story for 35 photos and a 3:38 minute video. The Nissan press release (which includes even more images and the video) includes this quote from David Woodhouse, vice president of Nissan Design America: “JB [Choi] has essentially envisioned a new mode of transportation that people could experience like clothes, ‘wearable,’ instead of a traditional vehicle ‘carriage.’ It is the kind of breaking-the-mold thinking that has always been encouraged here at NDA.” For more details about the project see Choi’s website and for more on Nissan’s Brain-to-Vehicle technology (including videos) see the Bitbrain blog. –Matthew]

Nissan GT-R (X) 2050 Concept First Look: A Wearable Autonomous Supercar?read more. “Nissan GT-R(x) 2050 wearable vehicle takes Brain-to-Vehicle tech to the next level”

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Call: “RPG at a Distance: Online and Remote Forms of Analog Role-Playing” issue of JARPS

Call for Papers

Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies (JARPS)
RPG at a Distance: Online and Remote Forms of Analog Role-Playing
https://jarps.net/journal/announcement/view/2

Deadline for expressions of intent to submit a contribution: February 15, 2021
Deadline for submissions: April 30, 2021

The Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies (JARPS, https://jarps.net) is seeking innovative, constructive and thought-provoking papers regarding the challenges raised by the global COVID-19 pandemic but equally about the emerging possibilities for the various practices of (usually) analog (non-digital) role-playing.

The events of 2020 impacted all facets of social life and in particular those depending on personal interaction in a shared local space during times of social distancing and community lockdowns. TRPG and larp groups and players across the world were challenged with interruptions and emergency cancellations of their face-to-face role-play activities, impacting the social well-being of individual players as well as the situation of small RPG businesses.… read more. “Call: “RPG at a Distance: Online and Remote Forms of Analog Role-Playing” issue of JARPS”

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Virtual reality holds promise in combatting ‘stereotype threat’

[This story from Davidson College describes the potential for presence-evoking technology to reduce the negative effects of gender stereotypes. See the original story for two more images and for links to Professor Peck’s publications on this and other presence-related topics see Google Scholar. –Matthew]

Virtual Reality Holds Promise in Combatting ‘Stereotype Threat’

December 22, 2020
By Mark Johnson

Harvard’s president lost his job. So did a Google researcher. Mattel recalled a new version of “Barbie.” Each was a consequence of reinforcing the harmful stereotype that girls and women can’t compete with boys and men in science and math.

The stereotype not only is damaging, it self-perpetuates. It contributes to the difficulty of convincing more young women to study and enter those fields, where they already are underrepresented, because they think they will do poorly, said Tabitha Peck, assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Davidson College.… read more. “Virtual reality holds promise in combatting ‘stereotype threat’”

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Call: Fictional Practices of Spirituality: Vol. I: Interactive Fiction

Call for Papers

Fictional Practices of Spirituality: Vol. I: in Interactive Fiction

Deadline for abstracts: 7 February 2021

Spirituality and narration are two deeply intertwined elements in the history of humankind. The epos of Gilgameš, perchance one of the earliest surviving narrative texts, already weaved central religious elements of Mesopotamic belief into a cardinal example of the hero’s journey. It is that basic dark earth in which fiction and narration grow their root, and from which they sprout their fruits (Vogler 1998). Through narration, believers invoke elements of their religious experience. Any time a rite is performed, they (re)tell and (re)experience elements of their foundational story and identity building. Religion, as Valliere argues, may be built through tradition or through narration (Valliere 1986). This can happen within or even beyond a formal religious structure. George Lucas’ Star Wars universe, for example, gave birth to Jediism, a spiritual movement that was recognized as a religion in the United States in the early 2000s.… read more. “Call: Fictional Practices of Spirituality: Vol. I: Interactive Fiction”

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Microsoft Flight Simulator’s new VR mode haunts my dreams

[As this first-person report on the new VR mode in Microsoft Flight Simulator makes clear, there are many early-day bugs to overcome, but the experience evokes a strong sense of spatial presence and presence as realism. See the original Engadget story for three more images and a 4:51 minute video. A 6:52 minute video review by a professional pilot is available on YouTube, along with the same pilot’s sparsely narrated 23 minute video of a bush flight and flights around New York and San Francisco. –Matthew]

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s new VR mode haunts my dreams

When virtual reality meets dream reality.

Devindra Hardawar
December 24, 2020

I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll never be anything more than a casual Microsoft Flight Simulator player. I’m not a hardcore “simmer,” as devoted fans of the series call themselves. I’ve played the game off and on since its release, and like Engadget’s Jessica Conditt, I’ve found it to be a chill and meditative experience.… read more. “Microsoft Flight Simulator’s new VR mode haunts my dreams”

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Call: 34th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2021)

Call for Papers

The 34th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2021)
July 15-17, 2021
Virtual (online) from Ottawa, Canada
http://casa2021.ca/

Submission deadline: February 27, 2021

CASA is the oldest international conference in computer animation and social agents in the world. It was founded in Geneva in 1988 under the name of Computer Animation (CA). In the last past ten years, CASA was held in Switzerland (2006), Belgium (2007), Korea (2008), Netherlands (2009), France (2010), China (2011), Singapore (2012), Turkey (2013), United States (2014), Singapore (2015), Switzerland (2016), Korea (2017), China (2018), France (2019), and UK (2020).

The 34th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2021) will be held virtually (online) July 15-17, 2021, from Ottawa, Canada. The conference is organized (tentatively in cooperation with ACM SIGGRAPH), supported by the Computer Graphics Society (CGS).

We invite full papers on topics including but not limited to Computer Animation, Embodied Agents, Social Agents, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Visualization (see below for a detailed list).… read more. “Call: 34th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2021)”

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Hot new trend: Kids on TikTok are convinced we’re living in a simulation

[The theory that our entire existence is an advanced simulation is going viral on TikTok, as reported in this link-filled short story from Futurism. The December 22 Your Tango roundup it mentions has more examples and notes that “The simulation theory hashtag on TikTok already has 27.4 million views and the simulation hashtag has 624.4 million views — that means it’s gaining a ton of traction on TikTok.“ The September 2020 Bustle story “#GlitchTok Viral TikTok Videos Are The Best Way To Creep Yourself Out” says “There are thousands of videos to lose yourself in, and comment sections to theorize in. Search for #glitch, #conspiracytheories, #matrix, #simulation, and explore from there — if you want to believe.” I also found several “Simulation Theory” songs on TikTok including ones by Calavera, Sergey Kolosov and Truth & Truth. These stories don’t mention it but perhaps living through the era of Donald Trump and a global pandemic has something to do with this new attention to the theory, as if the creators of our simulation are experimenting with or torturing us (see ISPR Presence News posts from 2020, 2018 and 2016).… read more. “Hot new trend: Kids on TikTok are convinced we’re living in a simulation”

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