{"id":28,"date":"2007-10-16T21:34:31","date_gmt":"2007-10-17T04:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=28"},"modified":"2025-07-16T11:47:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T15:47:55","slug":"how-i-became-an-fas-groupie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/how-i-became-an-fas-groupie\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Became an FAS Groupie!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.\u00a0 Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.<\/em><\/p>\n

–Margaret Mead<\/p>\n

This summer when the ALA Annual Conference was held in Washington DC, I paid a visit to the FAS (Federation of American Scientists)\u00a0on K Street.\u00a0 As the Chair of the newly revamped Great Interactive Software for Kids Committee, I wanted to make sure that our committee had a solid foundation other than playing games for fun.\u00a0 And although we have expanded our criteria to include the evaluation of console games and other digital forms, in addition to pc cd-roms, I wanted a deeper philosophical backbone to our committee.\u00a0 So I turned to the scientists for help and decided to pay them a visit since our conference was in their neck of the woods.<\/p>\n

I didn’t\u00a0really know what\u00a0to expect as I walked into the gray building, heavily guarded by security guards.\u00a0\u00a0Michelle Roper, the Director of FAS Learning Technologies\u00a0had said that the emergency drills after 9\/11 had been frequent, although not so often now.\u00a0 I don’t think I could ever imagine what it must have been like in DC\u00a0on September 11th,\u00a02001 when one of the planes crashed into the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

FAS was located in one of the top floors with an intercom to let visitors in.\u00a0 When the\u00a0receptionist let me in the door, I\u00a0found a starch-white office complex with multiple\u00a0cubicles surrounded by pristine walls.\u00a0 There was little sunlight and the air was thick with concentration and severity.\u00a0 As a children’s librarian doing story times in lively colorful areas, I felt completely out of context.\u00a0 I was temporarily relieved when I spotted an adjacent\u00a0room filled with books on a bookshelf.<\/p>\n

When Amy Nicholson, the Program Coordinator for FAS Learning Technologies greeted me, I was surprised to find she was an attractive, energetic woman with a way-cool demeanor.\u00a0 We instantly got along as we talked about playing games like World of Warcraft, Asheron’s Call\u00a0<\/strong>and Guitar Hero II<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 I admit that I had a stereotypical image of what the scientists might be like after reading their profile on the webpage (since they described themselves as the predecessors of the atomic scientists having worked on the Manhattan Project).\u00a0 My expectation was to meet people like my undergraduate Chemistry Professor–eccentric, introverted with coke-bottle glasses, pocket protector and\u00a0gingivitis.\u00a0 Instead, Sachin Patil and Adam Burrowbridge, the Research Associates,\u00a0looked like they could have\u00a0walked off\u00a0the cover of\u00a0GQ<\/em><\/strong> Magazine<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 And although I had never met Michelle Roper, I’m positive that she is just as lovely in person as she is over the phone.\u00a0 In fact, I was embarassed that I was the one with the glasses, a geeky personality and loud laugh.\u00a0 Had they decided that I was just a children’s librarian that had nothing to do with their research world, they wouldn’t have given the time or day.\u00a0 Instead, they were delightful, and patient, helping me\u00a0understand, in layman terms,\u00a0different aspects\u00a0of their project.<\/p>\n

Sachin flew around on Second Life, Discover Babylon,\u00a0showing me\u00a0how he was reconstructing the city of Uruk (ancient Iraq) from blueprints.\u00a0 I had to tell myself to overlook the cosmetic interface and forget that he was flying around in a cartoon body.\u00a0\u00a0I found it challenging\u00a0not to be overly-conscious and move past\u00a0it, even though I had been in\u00a0a multi-user virtual environment before\u00a07 years ago when I played Asheron’s Call.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>Second Life is not <\/em>a game but the Internet in a different skin.\u00a0 Amy\u00a0described\u00a0it very clearly to\u00a0me\u00a0that it was\u00a0a wikipedia of MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online) worlds.\u00a0 Once I suspended my disbelief, something amazing happened.\u00a0 I saw the beauty of the technology–that it rolled everything into one–IMing, emailing, podcasting, videostreaming, weblinking (Web 2.0 features) into one.\u00a0 I finally understood what all the rage was about!\u00a0 It was truly the internet in its next evolutionary stage.\u00a0 And a great platform to ally ourselves with other open-minded, public-serving organizations.<\/p>\n

At the end of my visit, toting my dictionary of computer terms,\u00a0 and enlightened by my new-found friends, I left the building with renewed hope for my committee.\u00a0 The scientists sensed my desperation to help them\u00a0and\u00a0let me write about them,\u00a0act as\u00a0their intermediary, and invited my committee to become part of their focus group.\u00a0 And I\u00a0 became an FAS groupie that day, fueled by their desire to bring learning to the world and their mission for public good.\u00a0 Thank you FAS.\u00a0 You rock!<\/p>\n

For more information about the FAS and\u00a0its Learning Technologies Initiatives, visit <\/em>http:\/\/www.fas.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.\u00a0 Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. –Margaret Mead This summer when the ALA Annual Conference was held in Washington DC, I paid a visit to the FAS (Federation of American Scientists)\u00a0on K Street.\u00a0 As the Chair of the newly revamped Great Interactive Software for Kids Committee, I wanted to make sure that our committee had a solid foundation other than playing games for fun.\u00a0 And although we have expanded our criteria to include the evaluation of console games and other digital forms, in addition to pc cd-roms, I wanted a deeper philosophical backbone to our committee.\u00a0 So I turned to the scientists for help and decided to pay them a visit since our conference was in their neck of the woods. I didn’t\u00a0really know what\u00a0to expect as I walked into the gray building,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[24,9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-world","category-partnerships","category-projects-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}