IV Congress of Cibersociety 2009. (Call for papers)

Hello. I encourage you to participate with a text, presentation or even a video in the IV Congress of Cibersociety 2009.It is an oline Congress. Your work will be published in the web of the Congress and even in a CD-ROM with ISBN.
You can submit your contribution to several Work Group focused in a wide range of topics. In this moment, the Description of the Groups of Work are not available in the webpage but soon it will. be The submission form will be available from July 29th to September 15th. Communications or "papers" are at the core of the Congress. Therefore, they must be framed and appeal directly to the issues presented by any of the Working Groups. The sending of communications has to be made exclusively from the pages of the group you want to get. Do this by using the online form of transmission that the organization has prepared for this, where the communication should always try to appeal to the questions and considerations of the Working Groups. Besides other developments of this issue, we've included the possibility of communication in different formats (text, audio, video or slide show).

This is the webpage of Our Work Group in the Congress.

Work Group: Metaverses and 3D Environments.

Melanie Hughes, Ramiro Serrano García, Jaime Alamo Serrano and Gloria Gómez-Diago coordinate the Work Group: Metaverses and 3D Environments. Bellow, I include our presentation in order to help you to contextualise your contribution in our work group.

This Work Group is open to contributions focusing on any of the metaverses and/or 3D environments which can be used in the development of teaching and or training activities. The Fourth Congress of the Cybersociety 2009 is an excellent opportunity to share and exchange experiences and findings on the proposed theme, which is not only present but has excellent projection. Besides Metaverses and 3D environments, people use the terms : virtual worlds, Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) or MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games). The 3D environments and Metaverses amplify our capabilities and capacities for the establishment of human relations, the development of business initiatives or to take part in educational activities. Following McLuhan's approach, these tools operate as extensions of the body, removing barriers spatio-temporal. Levy (1998: 24) emphasizes the human aspect of these virtual environments when he says that when virtualization is a reinvention, a multiplication, of the human. Betsy Book identifies more than 20 virtual worlds currently available and identifies the key features of these environments as follows:
1. They are a shared space
2. Contain a Graphical User Interface (GUI), which enables the use of immersive 3D
environments
3. The interaction takes place in real time (immediate)
4. Users can create, edit and share content (interactivity)
5. The environment continues although users may be out of it (persistence)
6. This enables social interaction and the formation of groups and communities.

Many and varied studies, from different perspectives of science and research are conducted to identify the Metaverses / 3D environments applications. Similarly, we can also find exploratory works designed to investigate the construction of social organization in these environments. Others require descriptive detail especially in seeking to learn how some institutions operate in virtual worlds. A third group of studies focuses on the analysis of educational activities that are implemented in these environments, analysing their differentiating features, finding the tools that can assist in implementing these actions, and so on. While training, has a growing importance in virtual worlds, the potential role of enterprises in terms of promotion of products and or services as well as in regard to testing of them is also very important.

Questions proposed by the Group to motivate possible contributions:

1. Which are the virtual environments with the most opportunities and why?
2. What are the main applications of Metaverses and virtual worlds?
3. What subjects or sciences are using virtual worlds?
4. What are the main advantages of using virtual worlds for education?
5. What are the best examples of successful applications of virtual worlds for
education?
6. What educational tools can we use in virtual environments?
7. What are the main objectives of the institutions who have a place in virtual
worlds?
8. What kinds of students benefit most from instruction in a virtual environment?
Why?
9. How is teaching and learning in a virtual environment different to teaching and
learning in a real world?
10.What are the expected and or unexpected benefits of using virtual worlds for
education? Give examples.

Submissions´s Requeriments

Submissions must be original and must not have been previously submitted to any other conferences.


Meta-information

All submissions must be accompanied by five key-words and an abstract in the original language of the submission. Besides, any submission must also present its title and abstract translated into English. All of this will be required fields in the electronic form used to submit the contributions, but it is recommended that participants have this information before beginning the submission process. In addition to the versions in the original language and in English, we also suggest the translation of the title and abstract of the submission into the other official languages of the conference, as long as the participants have previous knowledge of the languages and thus the translation process would not represent a problem.

Accepted languages for submissions

The working languages of the Conference and the ones in which the organization will accept submissions are: Catalan, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese and English.
The organization of the conference will provide an automatic translation system for all web submissions.


Accepted formats

For this edition of the conference, two new formats of submissions will be accepted, in addition to the traditional text format: videos and presentations. Text: RTF, TXT, ODT, SWX, DOC
Videos, audios and presentations: each user can choose the video/presentation hosting service that she/he prefers, and provide the URL where it can be accessed. It is required that the elected video/presentation hosting service provides embed code so it can be integrated into the platform of the conference (vimeo, youtube, bliptv, dailymotion, Odeo, libsyn, SlideShare, prezi, etc.).

In all the cases and formats, it is required that the submission is accompanied by an abstract (maximum 200 words) in the original language and in English.

How to submit a contribution

In the case of submission in text format, the electronic form will accept the following file formats: RTF, TXT, ODT, SWX, DOC, ZIP and RAR. The organization of the conference would like to suggest that authors use free formats for their submissions (RTF, TXT or ODT).

In the case of other formats (videos / presentations / audio) the URL where the submission is hosted should be sent to the coordinators of the Working Group, acording to the election of the participant (vimeo, youtube, bliptv , dailymotion, SlideShare, prezi, mindmeister, etc.).


Extension of submissions

For submissions in text format, because of operational reasons and the general uniformity of the content, we recommend a minimum length of 10 double-spaced pages (approximately 3,000 words) and a maximum of 32 double-spaced pages (approximately 10,000 words). This is only a recommendation, since electronic format allows us to be as flexible in this aspect as the quality of the content suggests.

In the case of submission in video or audio format, it is recommended that you do not exceed 15 minutes of transmission.

Submissions in presentation format should not exceed 20 pages or slides (or equivalent schemes).


Complete submissions

This conference will accept only complete submissions from the very beginning of the call. That is, for a submission to be accepted it must be sent as a final and complete contribution. Because of formal issues, incomplete submissions, initial summaries or abstracts will not be accepted for consideration.


Deadline for submitting a contributionThe deadline for submitting a contribution will be September 15, 2009.

Recommendations to articulate content

The Conference organizers believe that all the submissions should clearly explicit:

The object of study of the submission;
The relevance and interest of the specific subject matter, depending on the goals and approach of the working group;
Methodology and academic fields according to which the submission was developed.
To seek to end the presentation with conclusions regarding the topic of the submission.

Citations formats within the text

For communications in the form of text document, we recommend using citations within the text of the communication, in brackets, indicating the author's surname, year and page reference, for example:(AUTHOR, 1997: 101) or, also: (AUTHOR & COPYRIGHT: 1997: 101-105). Only use footnotes for citations if they give more information or comments on the appointment.


Formatting the bibliography
We recommend not to use indentations and use the following format for the preparation of bibliographies or similar:

Books:
TURKLE, Sherry, 1997, Life on the screen. Identity in the age of the Internet, New York: Touchstone

Book chapters:
STRATTON, John, 1997, "Cyberspace and the Globalization of Culture", en David PORTER (ed.), Internet Culture, New York & London: Routledge, pp. 253-275

Journal articles:
STARRS, Paul F., 1997, "The sacred, the regional and the digital", en The Geographical Review, vol. 87, no. 2, pp. 193-218

Online article:
Organismo Autónomo de Museos y Centros (1999, July 4th). Museo de la Ciencia y el Cosmos , [online]. Tenerife, España: Trujillo, W. M. Recovered June 23 2005, from http://www.mcc.rcanaria.es


Literature, citations and references for videos, audios and presentations

If deemed necessary, a text file (RTF, TXT, ODT, SWX, DOC, ZIP and RAR) may be attached containing the bibliographic information, citations and references used in the submitted material