ISTE Meeting Nov. 7, 2008

I love ISTE meetings. There are at least two a week that I regularly attend; KJ Hax's Speaker Series on Tuesday nights, and the ISTE Social on Thursday nights. Then there is the biweekly Sunday Tour which I sometimes attend. This week the "social" was more of a meeting, but as you can see, was well attended.

Corinne led us in a discussion of what should be included in freebie resource packages for new teachers coming in-world. It led to a discussion of what we more mature "avies" want as well.

Teachers have many different purposes for being in SL. Some are here to learn to teach students so they can make a move to the teen grid and have the skills necessary to engage and enrich their students' experiences. Others are here to network and find collaborators for real life school projects. Still more would like to learn how SL can be used for staff development. Then there are the professionals working on advanced degrees that are studying the use of SL by teachers and students. All of us, I think, appreciate the social aspects of SL, enjoying the discussion and times we find to play.

I'm not sure how ISTE can meet all of these needs but I know it will try. We need to start, I think, with some basic SL skills for newbies. That's my specialty. I love mentoring.

I find myself wondering how VSTE, the ISTE partner I'm associated with, can help. What can we offer that ISTE isn't already doing or planning to do? What skills do we have? What resources can we offer? What needs are there not already being served?

Open Space Sim Protests

I purchased my 1/2 sim in August, so happy to have found something pretty that I could afford. I had more prims allowed me than I would ever use. There was lots of open water for sailing. It cost me $135 US down and about $42 a month, which would continue unchanged indefinitely, or so I thought. Yesterday or the day before Jack Linden announced that Open Sims were being abused by overuse. They are going to raise the tier as of January 1 to some amount I can not afford. I am under the impression that my sim owner has many folks in my situation living on his open sims. I think this means that he will have to default and I will not even be able to sell my sim. I will lose my initial investment. It's only money, but it's sad and unfair just the same! Thank you, Anibal, for the photo. http://www.saveouropenspaces.org/forums/index.php

Running into the Boss

It's always nice to log into Second Life and find Flying Story wandering around. Last night Jazmemo and I nabbed him and took him to see Cafe 101, one of our favorite teacher hangouts. I was able to pull in Louise, Mandie, Cyrus, and a couple others joined by chance. Jaz couldn't stay connected, Louise got busy, and Cyrus had to leave to teach; but Mandie was able to pin Flying down a little about his vision for our project. It's so nice to have communication. (In the photo, left to right: Flying, Mandie, me, and Louise as Lily Muster for a Halloween party!) I've passed on three pages of notes, quotes really, to the team. We have our official meeting tonight at 7 PM our time, 4 PM SLT. Here are the key points: [16:45] Flying Story: i want the pieces connected [16:45] Flying Story: I don't want parts floating on their own [16:46] Flying Story: i want their to be some logic as one moves across the island [16:46] Flying Story: it seems there are things on [another educational sim] that are there because they could be rather than should be [16:47] Flying Story: i want the whole island to be a demonstration of the future for SL in Education. [16:55] Mandie Mimulus: we have 256X256 square meters [16:56] Mandie Mimulus: I had thought of dividing the island like the map [17:01] Flying Story: didn't i ramble enough on the island? do you have specific questions? [17:01] Mandie Mimulus: the existing building? [17:02] Mandie Mimulus: do you want it on the new island? [17:02] Flying Story: i want a building. I don't care if it is the existing. you guys were talking about redoing it [17:02] Thunder Insippo: We are thinking of two [17:02] Mandie Mimulus: Milosun is attached to it and we can't do much [17:02] Thunder Insippo: an HQ and a meeting place similar to this [17:02] Flying Story: he is supposed to be packaging it for us [17:03] Flying Story: but i don't care if you use it or not [17:03] Mandie Mimulus: we thought of moving the existing as a temporary [17:03] Flying Story: that is fine [17:03] Mandie Mimulus: but Thunder has wonderful plans for an open and airy space like this coffee house [17:03] Flying Story: that is great [17:03] Thunder Insippo: what we need is ideas for reasons to meet [17:04] Thunder Insippo: we are tossing that around [17:04] Flying Story: virginia vegetation? [17:04] Thunder Insippo: that would be nice [17:04] Mandie Mimulus: do you like this coffee house atmosphere? [17:04] Thunder Insippo: dogwood [17:04] Flying Story: i don't care about that level of detail. [17:04] Thunder Insippo: Mandie is awesome at designing spaces [17:04] Thunder Insippo: her island is beautiful [17:05] Mandie Mimulus: we also have a bit of money now [17:05] Flying Story: where does money come from that you all have some? [17:05] Flying Story: you aren't buying it are you? [17:05] Thunder Insippo: we were [17:05] Mandie Mimulus: no... it is a small grant I wrote

The Voyage Video

Someone teach me to do machinima! This was taken at my kitchen counter with my Flip camera! It looked so much more impressive on my computer screen. You just have to be there October 26th at 12 noon SLT to see it "in person!" (in avatar?)

The Cruise

Ahoy, Mates! She's seaworthy! Here we are taking the Susan Constant on her maiden voyage with Bigreal. It was fantastic! I had to wear a third of her. Big wore a third. the rest was few enough prims for the sails to pull. What an experience! I kept pulling friends into it to join us. Louise, Amethyst, Anibal, and I were all on deck. Big was below steering. I think all he had was a rudder. We went through a small squall and hit a few objects. Once the ship keeled over quite a bit. I didn't know that was possible! I don't know how Big linked and packed some of the prims for himself and me to wear them, but that's why he's a builder and I'm not! Added 10-27-08 - photo of me "wearing" 1/3 of the ship. Awesome! It was necessary for the sails to be able to pull the ship. We had to lighten her up quite a bit. The physics in SL are genius!

Ships Delivered!

OMG! as they say in Second Life! (Oh my goodness, for me) We purchased three ships from Bigreal Luik yesterday! They are awesome, especially the flagship!

Here you see Bigreal, Pocahontas, and Mandie. I was "in" Pocahontas for the Linden/ship exchange, but Mandie actually created her. We decided that we needed an avatar who was the agent for the project. We will form no attachment to her personally. She will hold the Lindens and own the objects in the build so that, should we leave or loose interest, we can pass her on to the next group of volunteers. She will eventually have appropriate Powhatan garb. What an exciting day this was! Thank you, Mandie, for the photo!

Multiple Intelligences Build

This weekend I went on a tour to this build, by Zotarah Shepherd, which is probably the first such place that I found any real personal connection with. It's about Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences theory. Basically he defines many areas of human understanding. The linguistic, mathematical logical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, spacial, naturalist, musical, and kinesthetic are the eight represented in this interactive site. I have heard of these for years and found it interesting to try to figure out which my children and I had to greater and lesser degrees. It's a fun place to play as well.