In Conversation with Terry Beaubois / Tab Scott: In the Details

September 28, 2011
4:30 PM SL/PST (7:30 PM EST)

Frank Lloyd Wright was once quoted as saying “A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines”. If God is truly in the details, as suggested by Ludwig Mies, then the next generation of avatars involved with virtual business, government, and education are going to have their work cut out for them. The balancing act between architecting the future, while at the same time having a wide variety of ‘horticultural tools’ to draw the eye away from a lack of attention to detail, has the potential to lead to social dissonance.

This week Kevin and Terry discuss the challenges of architecting that future and its potential for effecting social dissonance.

About Terry Beaubois

Terry (aka Tab Scott) is the Director of the Creative Research Lab in the College of Arts & Architecture, at Montana State University

Terry is an architect with over 35 years of professional practice. He is also a University teacher and researcher. Starting out in Second life in 2005, Terry designed a “Digital Collaboration for Architects” class in the College of Arts & Architecture at Montana State University. The success of the class gained international notoriety when Popular Science magazine wrote “…..a version of Beaubois’ classroom could become the standard for distance learning.” (Sept, 2006).

Recently, Terry has demonstrated a new After School Partnership technology for use by MSU Dept. of Education and Montana K-12 schools, for Homework help, Math-Science, Mentoring, and Book Clubs. One part of the demo featured an educator from the Northern Cheyenne Tribal area in Montana talking to pre-service teacher instructors at MSU-Bozeman.

Learn more about the REHAU-Montana ecoSMART House Project: http://montanaecosmart.com/

His Creative Research Lab was selected by the Montana Governor’s office as the lead agency for statewide education grants. Terry is a Montana Ambassador representing “Business-Government-Education” efforts in the state. He is also a member of The Triple Helix Association, an international organization headquartered in Turin, Italy, which promotes the study of the interactions between the academic, industrial and institutional (governmental) systems as means to foster technological innovation and economic growth.

On October 27, 2011, Terry will be appearing in SL at the in-world Second Life event called “Virtual Learning or Learning in Virtual?” – an international midnight-to-noon
conference exploring the promises and pitfalls of virtual space in the context of learning and education. Tab Scott will be conducting a workshop and be on a panel at the conference. Conference hosts are: Kim Holmberg, Isto Huvila and Olle Sköld and the host institution is Department of Information Studies, School of Business and Economics, Åbo Akademi University, ÅBO, Finland.