Winner of the 2010 Jennifer Burke Award – John O’Connor (DIT), with Morag Munro (DCU), Claudia Igbrude (DIT), Paul Gormley (ILTA)

On 21st April  2010 the 5 Jennifer Burke Award finalists were invited to showcase their innovations in the  Helix Gallery, DCU. The panel comprised: Karlin Lillington (Irish Times); Muiris O’Connor (HEA); Sheila Porter (Intel); and Brendan Tangney (TCD).

After much deliberation the panel decided to present the 2010  to John O’Connor (DIT). John was nominated by his colleague Claudia Igbrude, for his work on the  module “Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?”. A thorough knowledge of online social networking opportunities in virtual environments is becoming increasingly essential for anyone working in the creative and cultural industries. This module is designed to encourage Art & Design students to explore the creation of their own virtual presence. Delivered entirely in Second Life, an online virtual environment manifested as a visual world and accessed through a personalised avatar, students learn how to establish and maintain virtual relationships and reflect critically on the process through a personal blog and posting to facebook, twitter, linkedin etc. Practical experience is gained through the creation, management and exploitation of the content created blogs, online social networking sites, virtual worlds, video and picture hosting sites etc.