Meet+Your+Neighbor+-+LizaJune+Stoop+-+LO+OP+Center

[8:43] Glitteractica Cookie: so, let's get started with Meet yr neighbbor [8:43] Glitteractica Cookie: Please give it up for Liza Loop!!! [8:43] Zed Canucci: welcome Liza Loop [8:43] Smash Lane: ♫♪♫♪ ☺ Applauds! ☺ ♪♫♪♫ [8:43] Buffy Beale: Whoo Hoo Liza!!! [8:43] Abbiee Benazzi: ♫♪♫♪ ☺ Applauds! ☺ ♪♫♪♫ [8:43] Zinnia Zauber: Rah Liza! [8:44] LizaJune Stoop: HI all. [8:44] LizaJune Stoop: I'm going to try to use a speak easy for the first time so bare with me [8:44] Nany Kayo: eeep. [8:44] LizaJune Stoop: was that the right kind of bear? [8:45] LizaJune Stoop: And I have a board here somewhere. [8:46] LizaJune Stoop: Of course, this is the second slide. I'll let you read it while I get the speak easy... [8:47] LizaJune Stoop: Good morning, thanks for giving me this chance to help you know me better. [8:47] LizaJune Stoop: I'm LizaJune Stoop in SL and Liza Loop in RL. There's a fair amount of stuff about me on the web so I invite you to Google me if you feel like it. [8:47] LizaJune Stoop: This morning I'm going to tell you a little about LO*OP Center, the educational 501(c)(3) California nonprofit that I founded in 1975. LO*OP stands for Learning Options....Open Portal and yes, it is my legal last name. [8:47] LizaJune Stoop: [8:47] LizaJune Stoop: Now I want the first slide and the board has a mind of it's own... [8:48] LizaJune Stoop: There. Pretend I just started...please [8:48] LizaJune Stoop: Our logo is the dragon. This is partly in homage to Bob Albrecht, one of the pioneers in personal computing who used a dragon as his symbol. I thought it was quite appropriate because a dragon is partly a real reptile augmented by the human imagination. L [8:48] LizaJune Stoop: Wrong first slide. Well, this is what it's like to be a newbie... [8:49] LizaJune Stoop: LO*OP Center began as a public access computer center in 1975 in the little northern California town of Cotati. This slide gives you a sense of what I was trying to accomplish. [8:49] LizaJune Stoop: This one is the right one. [8:49] LizaJune Stoop: For 3 years we introduced kids and adults to their first computer in our store front. By then I had lost as much money as I could afford and closed it down. After that, LO*OP Center became what I call a "true umbrella" organization. When we needed a nonpr [8:50] LizaJune Stoop: and now I see that I used too many characteris in the speakeasy. [8:50] Glitteractica Cookie: lizs maybe you should just type [8:50] Glitteractica Cookie: since we have a limited amount of time [8:50] LizaJune Stoop: We closed the umbrella when we weren't using Lo*OP Center and it didn't cost much [8:50] LizaJune Stoop: In 1978 I got a job in Silicon Valley (before it was called that) writing the user's manuals for the Atari computer. Although this was a personal contract that didn't run through LO*OP, it was still helping folks get started with computers. I wrote for a [8:50] LizaJune Stoop: All this time I was observing and taking notes on how people -- kids and adults -- approached the problem of learning to operate computers. I wanted to understand how serious research was done so I enrolled in Stanford University School of Education. This [8:50] LizaJune Stoop: While at Stanford I discovered the field of Intercultural Communications. LO*OP Center merged with another organization and added cross cultural training to its activities. I also got interested in earth science education and became certified to teach in. [8:50] LizaJune Stoop: So now it's 1998 and I've realized that I'm never going to finish my degree at Stanford. LO*OP Center has operated out of my back room for 20 years and has a lot of experience but still hasn't grown into a thriving organization. So what should I do? I fol [8:51] LizaJune Stoop: Four year ago I realized I was storing a huge amount of "stuff" accumulated over the years of teaching and observing. I had to either do something with the materials or throw them out. What bothered me was that most of my "stuff" was not available on that [8:51] LizaJune Stoop: It took me 3 years of part time effort to get the collection out of storage and arranged sufficiently to begin to catalog and evaluate it for historical value. I know I wanted a Virtual Museum of scanned artifacts and not a physical, brick and mortar ins [8:51] LizaJune Stoop: [8:51] LizaJune Stoop: Then, 3 months ago a friend suggested I go to the Libraries, Education and Museums Conference on Info Island. I took the preconference orientation session so this time I was able to navigate, attend sessions and meet people. It became obvious that I could [8:51] LizaJune Stoop: do the museum in SL! [8:51] LizaJune Stoop: So -- that's what I'm doing now. I have one exhibit room on Info Island courtesy of Alliance Virtual Libraries. I have an Office here on Plush courtesy of TechSoup/NPC. And I'm very excited about a new space that has been made available to LO*OP by Kennes [8:51] Buffy Beale: Wow! [8:51] snow Scarmon: nice [8:51] LizaJune Stoop: Kennesaw State University. [8:52] Zed Canucci: very nice :) [8:52] LizaJune Stoop: They have 4 islands. [8:52] LizaJune Stoop: The KSU museum will be highly interactive. I have 10 separate exhibits I'm working on. As of now I'm assembling teams of graduate students to research and build each exhibit. Some of the material will be drawn from LO*OP Center's extensive collection (tha: [8:52] LizaJune Stoop: My hope is that some forgotten ideas will be revived and some mistakes made in the past will be remembered so they are not repeated. The Museum should be a resource for scholars and curriculum developers as well as students wanting to know the story of ho [8:52] LizaJune Stoop: how computers became essential tools for learning and education. [8:53] LizaJune Stoop: That's my story for this morning...messy but delivered to you. [8:53] page Putzo: lol very well;o) [8:53] Zinnia Zauber: Awesome! [8:53] LizaJune Stoop: I'll be back later to answer questions or you can visit my office . [8:53] Glitteractica Cookie: i think that this may have been too much info to digest in this small time frame [8:53] Ricken Flow: Welcome and great initiative [8:53] Glitteractica Cookie: maybe you should blog on nonprofitcommons.org [8:53] LizaJune Stoop: As usual. [8:54] LizaJune Stoop: NOw that you've all mnet me, lets work together. [8:55] LizaJune Stoop: Any time you want lots of words, just call me...