The C&WOnline 2005 Conference presentation entitled, "MOOs--The Second Decade?" will be held tonight in ProNoun MOO from 7:00-8:30 PM CDT. After some discussion, we will shift over to the new beta enCore v5 site for a brief tour. Tonight's session is the only real-time synchronous presentation at this year's C&WOnline conference.
Here is a help page with information for attending the conference at ProNoun MOO: http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/lirvin/encore/CW2005/conf.htm
Below is a description of the presentation as well as a list of discussion topics:
MOO, or Multi-User Object Oriented Domains, were one of the first real time synchronous tools that connected "online" users within composition classrooms or virtual communities in the early 1990s before the Internet. But the text-based origins of MOO have not weathered well the growth of the Internet and the blog-era. Other online tools like blogs, CMS platforms like Drupal, and course platforms like WebCT or Blackboard have dominated the online teaching space for writing teachers in recent years. Some question has been raised whether (as Tari Fanderclai stated) "MOO is dead." Last year saw a number of MOO decline landmarksthe shift of the Computers & Writing Online synchronous discussions to another platform than a MOO and the death of Connections MOO. Can MOO evolve to fit a modern Internet environment?
This presentation will discuss the present state of MOO for the field of Composition and Rhetoric. Is it still relevant and why? In particular, it will showcase the new evolutions of the enCore Learning Environment and discuss the effort of the new enCore Consortium created to support development of the enCore. The presentation will highlight the unique aspects of MOO (especially within an enCore interface) that are still desirable features for teaching and collaborative learning. It will showcase the new enCore version 5 and discuss the new directions enCore is taking to make MOO a viable online learning environment for the future.
Overview of Presentation Topics:
1. Introductions
2. MOOs--where we have been; where we are
3. enCore's place and history
4. A description of the enCore Consortium and its mission
5. Goals and Projects of the Consortium
6. enCore version 5 description
7. Field trip to visit and explore the beta version of enCore version 5
I hope some of you can make it.
Lennie Irvin
cross-posted to the techrhet list as well as the encore-list
