Photo Board by Biran Gould

Behind the desk in my office I have my second Photo Board by Biran Gould. I had one on Channel Island but I've accidentally deleted it or it is in the wall there somewhere. This is a great board. You add up to 15 photos by holding Control and dragging them there from your inventory. When one of the photos is clicked it grows to cover the whole board for easy viewing. Click again and you are back to the collage. I love it! I was tickled to find a photo Corvette took of me my first month in Second Life so it is there to show the newbies who come by discouraged about their looks. Corvette has said he did not like the way I looked then. I can't see why!

Mon aime beaucoup, Ciril

Ciril is a new friend I met while on Christmas vacation. He was wandering around Serenite, one of my favorite sims, and I was there people watching. I think I was actually helping someone else when Ciril came up. He needed more help and I was distracted away from the other av. Do I have a little cyber ADD? Ciril works with cars in France. I haven't figured out whether he makes, repairs, sells, or drives them, but I know it's something to do with cars. You see, he speaks only French. I don't. Madame Slack and Mrs. Williams would be ashamed of me, but Mrs. Curtis would not be at all surprised! :-P Ciril needed help with his inventory, like finding the photo I took of him to put in his profile and finding and wearing the ice skates from the rink I took him to. He wanted very much to rid himself of a sign over his head. For that I took him to my office. He could not find it in his inventory to detach. I had him detach all and take off all clothes in my second room with me modestly on the couch in the outer office. It was quite frustrating. My friend, Anibal, who speaks French and English, came to help after I begged for a bit. He was able to let Ciril know I was trying and frustrated. Ciril and I parted for a few days while I regained my strength. Ciril and I each have the free translator from inside SL now and we communicate much better. I'm taking this opportunity to try to recapture some of my high school French. Most of the time when we are talking he is far away dancing with some sweet gal his age and I'm with my teacher friends. Our translator does not work in instant messages so I try to remember some of the phrases I've used lately.

C'est une manière amusante de rappeler quelques-unes de mes leçons de français.

Milosun Draws a Weapon and I Embarrass Myself

This was fun but maybe went over the top as you will see. I found this Likert Scale object and brought everyone I could find online, who I thought would be interested, to see it. See earlier post. Here Milosun, the original VSTE SL guy, Mandie, and I are standing around after everyone else left. Somehow we became playful. Someone mentioned snow and I put on my snowball thrower and aimed at Milosun. He donned this storm trooper outfit from Star Wars for protection. I went berserk and got out my shoulder sitter! Why can't I leave well enough alone!? I don't have a photo thank goodness but I sat on Milosun's shoulders and he could not get away until I stopped, which I hope I did pretty soon. :P Here is the REALLY embarrassing part. Later I repeated this silliness at ISTE. Although KJ gave me permission beforehand he didn't really know what was going to happen and, as I sat backwards accidentally, it wasn't pretty. I have deleted the monstrous mechanism from my inventory now because I know I'd do it again given the opportunity. As in RL I can not pass up the chance for a laugh! I was a gift from an Aussie member of ISTE and friend of Henny. We had so much fun riding each other's shoulders early in the AM at ISTE when the Aussies were there. It just did not come off as much fun in the more serious evening group. I am not responsible or mature enough to own such a device!

Egpytian Images

There are many places in Second Life that depict real places, some very historical and related to units of study in my school. I've heard someone say they use photos like this that they take in SL for students to use in projects in the computer lab. Was it Marie? Anyway I thought I'd start collecting some and see how helpful it is. This was hanging in a store near a shop rented by my SL friend Leonard Hawker. There was no other appropriate shot I could get since it is not an Egyptian setting. This was just art for sale. I think I will spend some of my SL time looking for sims with interesting photos I could take.

Southern Georgia and Darra Nimbus Advertise Their Toy

It was a very interesting night at ISTE on Saturday. I popped in there as I often do when I'm in SL with no particular goal. There were a couple of groups gathered which eventually grew and blended into one large group. SG then pulls out this marker and drew on the scene with it! He could write a word, circle an object, or draw a beard on KJ. It was really awesome. If you click the photo and zoom in you can see the circle he drew around Darra. This is 3D and as I moved to take the photo it was no longer placed correctly. When he wrote a word it was backwards on my screen but I could walk around it to see it correctly. Naturally all the educators there wanted it! We began to ask, beg, and whine. Finally he teleported his friend, Darra, to answer our questions. I got the impression it was hers and her information to share. Apparently she has started a group called Virtual Education on Virtual Education Island where SG has moved his Freebie Mall and teaches his classes. This was all a ploy to get us interested in taking classes to get more info on the marker. It worked! Darra rezzed a very cool object that we all clicked to be added to a list and get messages about future classes. It doesn't even occupy one of our precious group slots! Way to go Southern and Darra! I think you have something here!

Likert Scale

This is so useful! I was looking at another educator's profile when I saw this pick: Entes, Sunrise Mountain, Tupi (147, 149, 303) and had to go see it. I have to work this into a VSTE meeting soon. It seems that avatars can answer an opinion question by standing in a bin that says, Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree and the tool will count them and give percentages. What a fun way to take a survey!

From William Magee via the SLED Listserv Dec. 30, 2009

I'm on vacation, as most of you are, and I'm doing some things around the house, but not killing myself at it. Mostly I'm doing what I want to be doing and a lot of that is in my virtual world, Second Life. This morning, reading the SLED listserv postings, which I rarely have time to do, I came across a post by William Magee. I will paste it here in it's entirety because it so completely describes what SL can be for education. I wish I could be this elegant in sharing what SL is to my friends, colleagues, and family who still do not "get it."

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Bill Magee (Wam7c Macchi) Second Life is a simulator for encouraging the imagination, a playground for nourishing the creative process, and a blank canvas for inspiring innovation. Very few Real Life schools can make these claims. Compared to the lackluster cubes in which we educate our children, Second Life is the outside of the educational box. Here is just a partial list of the capabilities of Second Life as an educational platform: ACTIVITY CENTERS Art studio* Experiment modeling* Project design modeling* Visualization studio** Seminar classroom* Conference center* Meeting space* Remote office hours** Language-learning facility* LSL programming environment** Community-building* Socialization and recreation areas* RESOURCES Museum* Library* Project Poster and Demo center* Student projects laboratory* Student projects display center* Construction facility** Holodeck** INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Database retrieval system Powerpoint presentation display* Slide projector* RSS-feed receiver Remote connection to Moodle learning-management system** MULTIMEDIA streaming audio and video player. machinima production studio* movie theater web browser COMMUNICATIONS instant messaging and peer-to-peer text communicator email client VOIP-enabled international voice communication system* * Second Life provides this function at lower cost than common tools and facilities. ** This function is unique to Second Life.