No Summer Vacation for Flameheart…

If you have been following my posts, you may have noticed a conspicuous absence since the end of June. Not to worry; behind the scenes things are as busy as ever! First, I began a new position within the University of Colorado – Denver as the Assistant Director of Online Learning for the recently launched Global Energy Management (MS). My role is to translate learning to mobile formats and to stream important events to the Internet.

This takes amazing advantage of my areas of expertise, as well as my interests in virtual worlds. The first month has been exhausting, as I have an hour commute and am now riding public transportation (quite a change from my home-based efforts of the last two years). This makes for some long days, and once I get home my puppy is all but on the attack ☺.

On to my research: My goal was to have my lit review finished by the middle of August, moving on to dissertation chapter three in the fall. That wasn’t going to happen with the job transition and all the reading I have to condense into something coherent to read. The idea of taking three years of reading and writing and condensing it all to 30 pages is intimidating. When I first learned about literary reviews, and the expectation of length, I didn’t know how I could write 30 pages of what amounts to referential support for my work. Now that I am writing, I have 24 pages of my lit review completed (at least a draft) and I don’t feel I have said much of anything! Knowing what I still have to complete, there are at least 10 pages left to complete.

At the same time (wow, this has been a busy six weeks), I have been asked to review an article for the journal THEN. I have written reviews, but have never blind-reviewed another person’s work for publication. This was a great learning opportunity, not only in seeing the level others are writing at but also to be able to critique another’s work. Which reminds me…my own review of Castronova’s Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, was published in the journal of Learning. Media and Technology. Here is the reference:

Wise, D. (2009). Synthetic World Order. Learning, Media and Technology
Vol. 34, No. 2, June 2009, 185–189

Also, check out my other blog: http://houseofflames.com. That blog covers my real-world, virtual world music and events pursuits and covers some exciting things happening on that side of life.