Immersive Education Day at Harvard

There's an interesting activity taking place next Saturday afternoon (Dec. 8, 2007) at Harvard: A series of presentations and a panel discussion about Immersive Education, organized through the Harvard Interactive Media Group. Here's an overview of the event:

Join the Harvard Interactive Media Group and the Grid Institute for a free half-day event to explore and discuss Immersive Education--the use of interactive 3d graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality and other cutting-edge digital media tools to invigorate and enhance teaching practice. Educators, researchers and administrators from Harvard University, Boston College, MIT Media Lab, Amherst College and the United States Department of Education will give a series of presentations and demonstrations to provide attendees with an overview of Immersive Education and how virtual world and game-based learning technologies are used in and out of the classroom today.

... And here's a list of the speakers and the titles of their presentations:

"Enabling the Age of Immersive Education"
Aaron E. Walsh, Director, Immersive Education Initiative
Faculty, Boston College

"Fostering Civic Engagement through Immersive Education"
Gene Koo, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
co-Director, Hub2 Project

"School 2.0 and Immersive Education"
Timothy J. Magner, Director, U.S. Department of Education
Advisor, Immersive Education Initiative

"The Restaurant Game: New forms of Artificial Intelligence for Immersive Education"
Jeff Orkin, Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab
co-Chair, Immersive Education Initiative

"Pedagogy, Assessment, and Learning Outcomes for Immersive Education"
John Carfora, Director of Sponsored Research, Amherst University
co-Chair, Immersive Education Initiative

I found out about the activity through my affiliation with the HIMG, but I already know most of the scheduled speakers, including Aaron -- check out our Terra Nova conversation from May, in which he outlines some of his ideas on education in virtual worlds. Jeff's "Restaurant Game" is also fascinating -- I saw a demo at a virtual worlds conference at MIT earlier this year, and it shows some interesting applications of game-related programming in AI and virtual worlds research.