Interview with ITRTs from the Longwood Area

Al and I received an email from a Dr. Manorama (Mano) Talaiver from Institute for Teaching through Technology & Innovative Practices. She wanted us to share our enthusiasm for Second Life as a professional network with ITRTs from the Southside Virginia Regional Technology Consortium (SVRTC). We shared the email with the rest of the team and the SL listserv which Danny, Barrie, and Janene also get. Dr. T wanted us to meet her during the day on Tuesday, May 19th. Unfortuneately that is an SOL test day and we CRSs are used as proctors in all of our schools. In addition, we are still not able to use the SL viewer from within the school firewall. The obstacles seemed impossible to overcome. As it turned out, however, every one of our administrators let us cut out Tuesday, missing SOL testing and connect to SL from home for an extended lunch. Mano sent Bill in her tall feminine avatar to represent the ITRTs who were observing us on a screen. It was indeed strange to hear a male voice coming from a female body but we pushed on. Bill let us share whatever came to mind about VSTE Island and our presence in SL. Eventually this led to questions from his audience which he relayed to us. When we were about out of time we toured the island on Mandie's magic carpet. We hope to see some of our western counterparts in SL soon.