NMC Asia Connections

For the last three weeks I have been touring in China, Hong Kong, and Japan, and taking advantage of my time here, took the opportunity to visit with some of our NMC colleagues in the region. The last leg of this trip was in Japan, when I visited with Tatsuya Umezakii with NMC Member Hitachi Information Academy.

The Hitachi Information Academy provides training and eLearning for Hitachi, which is an international organization with more than 300,000 employees. They make more than computer parts; I saw all kinds of mechanical devices in Japan with the Hitachi name, including things like escalators.

Tatsuya was very interested in learning about NMC's projects in Second Life and has been experimenting with both a sim his organization owns and trying to develop some content in OpenSim. If anyone reading this has some experience in OpenSim, Tatsuya is interested in connecting with you.

While in Japan, I also had the opportunity to do a presentation on the Horizon Project for NIME - the National Institute of Multimedia Education where several in the audience were already familiar with the Horizon Report. This group had a strong interest in helping us publish a translation of the report in Japanese language.

The week before this I was in Hong Kong to spend time with Nick Noakes and NMC member Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST).

I did a version of 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story to a group of faculty, staff, and some graduate students at HKUST.

The primary purpose of this trip was an invitation to be a featured presenter at the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai, which focuses on the use of technology at International Schools. Presentations at this conference included ones on the Horizon Project, GigaPan Technology, and Storytelling with photos.