In this book, we begin the work of articulating the challenges and possibilities for non-verbal communication in virtual worlds. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, we consider the past, present, and future of human communication online.

A Washington Post Bestseller Your manual for remote and virtual work. Communicating virtually is cool, useful, and now even more ubiquitous and necessary than ever. But we're often reminded that the quality of human connection we experience in many forms of virtual communication is awful. We've all felt disconnected in a video conference, frustrated that we're not getting through on the phone, upset when our email is badly misinterpreted, or anxious that we're being misunderstood. How can we fix this? In this powerful, practical book, communication expert Nick Morgan outlines five big problems with communication in the virtual world--lack of feedback, lack of empathy, lack of control, lack of emotion, and lack of connection and commitment--and shows how to overcome them as we shift to working remotely more and more. Morgan argues that while virtual communication will never be as rich or intuitive as a face-to-face meeting, recent research suggests that we need to learn is to consciously deliver a whole set of cues, both verbal and nonverbal, that we used to deliver unconsciously in the pre-virtual era. He guides us through this important process, providing rules for virtual feedback, an empathy assessment and virtual temperature check, tips for creating trust in a virtual context, and advice for specific digital channels such as email and text, the conference call, Skype, and more. Whether you're an entrepreneur, an independent professional, or a manager in an organization that has more than one office or customers who aren't nearby, Can You Hear Me? is your essential communications manual for twenty-first-century work.

Why does the tail wag the brain? What is virtual autism? Why can't our avatars walk hand-in-hand? Will a nonverbal Babel fish save the world? Jeffrey Ventrella, a seasoned virtual worlds programmer and visual language expert, reviews the history of avatars, smileys, and other expressive forms, and considers a future of spectacular creativity. This book combines thoughtful scholarship with amusing anecdotes from the trenches of Silicon Valley. Virtual Body Language presents a thorough analysis of the neurological, linguistic, aesthetic, and technical aspects of how nonverbal communication can be distributed over the internet. Based on nearly a decade of avatar development, Ventrella has the practical foundation on which to justify even the most outrageous claims, regarding what "avatar" might mean in the future.

Nonverbal Communication in Everyday Life, Fourth Edition, is the most comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and up-to-date introduction to the subject of nonverbal communication available today. Renowned author Martin S. Remland introduces nonverbal communication in a concise and engaging format that connects foundational concepts, current theory, and new research findings to familiar everyday interactions. Presented in three parts, the text offers full and balanced coverage of the functions, channels, and applications of nonverbal communication. This approach not only gives students a strong foundation, but also allows them to fully appreciate the importance of nonverbal communication in their personal and professional lives.

Over the last 20 years there has been an expansion of network mediated social activities, and an accompanying explosion of research interest into the poetics of networked communication. Of particular interest is the rise of what have come to be known as "virtual worlds": persistent graphical environments populated (and often partially authored) by large communities of individual users. Interactors in these worlds are embodied as avatars: digital puppets or representations through which the user exerts his or her will on the environment. It is this virtual embodiment that makes today's virtual worlds so interesting. With virtual embodiment comes a host of new and important communicative possibilities, and an assortment of new challenges and literacies including a wide range of nonverbal communication behaviors and non-linguistic social signaling options. In this book, we begin the work of articulating the challenges and possibilities for non-verbal communication in virtual worlds. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, we consider the past, present, and future of human communication online. See Video Figures referenced in the text.

The increasingly pervasive use of digital technology has catapulted society into an interconnected world where the natural boundaries between humankind and machine, virtual and real, individual and community have become less perceptible. As individuals interact with different digital technologies, they must build a digital intelligence, which must be further cultivated as it is a key competency for the future of school and work. Digital intelligence includes understanding the mutual strengths between people and technology, as well as developing an awareness in the use of digital tools in order to avoid common threats such as cyberbullying, addiction to video games, techno-stress, and more. As adolescents continue to engage with virtual reality and 3D virtual worlds where the online and offline overlap and coincide, it is important to build this intelligence as well as utilize these technologies to promote successful learning. The Handbook of Research on Teaching With Virtual Environments and AI explores the new personalized educational opportunities that are available with digital technology and virtual environments that can be used within education. This book focuses on the use of these tools and how to navigate the use of new technologies such as AI and virtual environments for educational practices. While highlighting topics such as virtual worlds, game-based learning, intelligent tutoring, augmented reality, and more, this book is ideal for teachers, administrators, technologists, educational software developers, IT specialists, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in how virtual environments and AI are being implemented in teaching practices.

A practical guide on how to transform your ideas from virtual world course ware to virtual world learning experiences. It argues that setting up learning in 3D virtual worlds requires a transformative approach.