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.

The Meeting House

Identity Euler is an avatar/person who needs a portfolio to be a builder for hire. I found her through the SLED listserv when she asked for building projects. We have asked her to do several projects for us. This is the 1607 Meeting House. It's going to be larger than scale because we want to hold actual meetings in there and not have our cameras go nuts. She's doing an awesome job of contacting Mandie and me to let us check her progress. Once again Mandie has the vision better than I do. I've also asked Identity to do the furniture and fireplace for the HQ building.

Merry Christmas!

This was fun. Several CRSs and four of the ITCs worked at the ATC December 22 and 23 since our buildings were closed and we were required to work. We worked on getting the ITCs up to speed in our virtual world for the upcoming VSTE conference. This was taken the last moment we were together, and it does not include everyone who was there, but Merry Christmas from, left to right: Joan, Marie, Charlie, Kim, Al, Bill, ??, Lloyd, and Janene. ?? = if someone remembers who that was, I'll fix it! Sorry!!

So far behind

These posts are all just to get some photos uploaded in some sort of order. I will write the blogs when I'm not so tired. What a busy time!

Virtual Pioneers Dec. 21st

What an awesome night! We started with a meeting where Spiff taught us to add URLs to a kiosk that we could place in SL. When visitors click it they will receive a notecard with our suggestions for URLs to social studies sites. It was oral but I was helping a newbie without voice. I had to listen to Spiff, follow his directions, and type them to my friend. She didn't have the right tag on so none of the directions were working for her. It was frustrating but I learned something. After the meeting we went to Avalon Castle where the owner hosted an 18th century dance for us. It happened to be my birthday and Louise invited a lot of my friends who are not members of Virtual Pioneers. We danced 18th century line dances for an hour! Everyone came dressed in period costume. I felt like I was living Pride and Prejudice!

Winterfaire

It seems Second Life is always having some sort of world wide celebration. In the fall it was something about fire life light... I don't remember, but now it's Winterfaire. Winterfaire seems to be all about snow and snowmen and iceskating. I wear skates most of the time now because every spare minute my friend, Cyrus, wants to explore another Winterfaire sim. For once I'm getting into it myself. I've been introduced to several sims I'd not otherwise visit. One was about accepting customs of people from other cultures. You can take a quiz to see how familiar you are with the cutomes and you get an immediate score. I'm sad to say I did not do well on any that I took, including the one on United States.

DEN Winter Wonderland Meeting

David Warlick Speaks at ISTE

VSTE Meeting December 15th

Enjoying the Holidays in SL

I Made It!

I made the ISTE Docent Wall. There I am on the bottom right. :-) I'm very proud to be an ISTE docent and glad I got on the wall. Not only am I there but Kittygloom put my photo there twice because I changed my look from the first submission to the time it was loaded. I enjoy serving at ISTE as a docent one hour every Saturday morning. Come see me!

Virtual Pioneers Dec. 7th

On this occasion I had all of the fun and did none of the work.

Visit with Scot

December first I had a nice visit with Scot, my English friend living in France, at Amethyst's house. He is still wearing the tux he wore to an event we went to together in late October. It's all he has, except for a pair of bathing trunks! It's always nice to talk to Scot. He's an English gentleman and tells me about his life in the country in France. He has three cats, Gris Gris, Tommy, and Kimmy. Amethyst has done an amazing job finding a little house for herself since loosing the house she had on an open sim. Always the gracious hostess she offered us a glass of wine which matched my dress perfectly! Ah, Second Life!

Tour of the Great Wall

Members at the Dec. 8, 2008 VSTE Meeting Galt Jefferson Argus Mircastle Mandie Mimulus Valaina Shepherd WtchyRichy Witherspoon Alfredo Bedrosian Sebastien Lucero Katie Indigo Willoughby Lorefield Ryuko Pobieski Thunder Insippo Mandie took us on a wonderful tour of the Great Wall of China on Sichuan Island. VSTE Tour of The Great Wall of China This is Mandie's wonderful notecard. In preparation for this tour Mandie met the developers of this sim. It's new and we were among the first visiting group. The history and social science standards of learning for second grade students in Virginia include an introduction to the heritage and contributions of the people of ancient China. Come visit a miniature version of the Great Wall of China. Currently the Great Wall of China stretches approximately 6,400 km (4000 miles) and has been built and rebuilt from 6th Century BC to 16Centuray AD to protect the dynasties from conflicts with the people of Mongolia. There are more than 10,000 watchtowers and beacon towers on the Great Wall. They were used to house troops, store weapons and send signals in case enemies were seen approaching. Smoke signals were used in the day and fires were lit at night to communicate with other military outposts along the wall. More SL information on the Great Wall of China can be found at the 7 Wonders of the World Museum Sim 􀀁 and for more information on this particular build visit the sim's blog: http://hosoi-ichiba.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-tourist-attraction-great-wall.html RL Educator Resources: Use your Second Life camera to take photographs of the Great Wall for use in the classroom. For example: I opened a SL photograph in SMART Board Notebook V10, applied the screen shade vertically to half the picture and exported as a jpeg. Students opened the jpeg in a graphics program (we used Tech4Learning’s Pixie) and with drawing tools completed the missing half of the picture with a written description. Or use your SL photographs for backgrounds in Chroma Key or Green Screen skits created by your students. Student Created Website on China: http://www.fi.edu/fellows/fellow1/apr99/ Loogootee Community Schools, Loogootee, Indiana Compare and Contrast ancient China and Egypt SMART Board Notebook activity by Marie Booz, CRS, Virginia Beach (VA) City Public Schools: http://sbrevolutionfiles.wikispaces.com/

DEN Meeting about Online Projects

Macsmom Alcott did a great job of sharing various online projects and resources for finding them tonight at the DEN meeting. I have to say that DEN is the best place for an elementary teacher to meet in Second Life for ideas you can use right away. It's always practical! We got a lot of links that I will explore later. I tagged them all on Delicious: http://delicious.com/kvharris/onlineprojects.

Last Week - the stuff I was too busy to post

I heard Spiff Whitfield, a good friend give a talk at ISTE as part of J Hax's Speaker Series. He was fabulous. As he showed slides of the historical places we have toured, he changed costumes to match the era of history being explored. It was clever and interesting! Early last week I attended a workshop on sim management at the suggestion of my friend Louise, of ISTE. It was partially intended for folks who are planning to buy islands and parcel them to rent out at a profit. There was a lot of useful information to be had about the HUD and tools the land owner has access to that I have never seen. At the end of the course I purchased the entire thing to be able to share with my team. I attended Virtual Pioneers and toured Plymouth Plantation and Red Rock. I attended the Speaker Series and saw the beginning of a PBS scavenger hunt through the PBS online resources for teachers.

Numbakulla Tour - Meant to Be

During a break from preparing for Thanksgiving dinner, (I do not cook any of it, but clean and prepare the table) I went to Numbakulla to prepare for the tour I will do Monday for VSTE members. I happened to notice something out of place, a snowglobe, near the beginning of the adventure. I IMed the owner feeling sure it was not meant to be there. Sure enough it was an accidentally dropped item but the owner turned out to be one of the creators of The Pot Healer Adventure! We had a nice visit for about an hour and she became my friend. We were offering friendship at precisely the same time actually! There is another layer to this story that gives me chills! Being Thanksgiving day the topic of the Mayflower came up and it turns out she is descended from Mayflower children, too! She is fourteenth generation from the Mortens. What a small world! Our ancestors knew each other intimately and we met in a virtual world.

Happy Thanksgiving!

...from the deck of the Mayflower. My family, on my father's side, can trace our ancestors back to Mayflower cooper, John Alden, and passenger, Priscilla Mullins. I think I'm tenth generation. It's not that uncommon. I have actually run into a couple of others also descended from them who are no relation to me otherwise. It's interesting though and has always been a source of pride in my father's family. In fact he was born in Massachusetts and his was the first generation of our branch to leave the state.

First VSTE Meeting

November 17th we had our first VSTE meeting. There were fourteen avatars in attendance. These notes are from Cyrus. Thanks, Matt! Thunder Insippo Cyrus Hush Alfredo Bedrosian Emersyn Sweetwater Argus Muircastle WitchyRichy Witherspoon jazmemo Zimminy Willoughby Lorefield Mandie Mimulus Baroness Babenco ITRT Jetcity After introductions all around, we chatted in text and voice about our uses of blogs, bookmarking tools like Diigo and Delicious, picture platforms like Flickr and Picasa and content management systems like Porta-portal, Moodle and Nings. After that we agreed to try to meet every Monday night at 5pm SLT to share best practices. Thunder showed off her teachers apple URL to her Google Docs Sl teacher database. http://www.rockingham.k12.va.us/resources/soltechintegration.htm was mentioned as the place to go for lessons! Several ning and delicious sites were mentioned.

Birchwood

Today Mandie and I visited an historical European sim called Birchwood. It has several things we can probably use for our project, including pull cart 2D farm animals 2 handed saw barrells and crates black and white dog thatched roof buildings corn garden sack of flour

New Docent Photos at ISTE!

I've been waiting for this! I think there were 12 new docent photos added recently. They will soon run out of room. I do wonder why some are missing and why some people who have asked to be trained do not get contacted. Are these decisions someone makes or carelessness? I'm doing a double shift this morning. One with my partner, Henny, and one alone afterwards. There are so many hours unattended. It's good to have two docents together in case one can't make it. I've met one teacher this morning who was bringing in a group of teachers. He wasn't an ISTE member. I took care of that. :-) Hopefully all the teachers he brings in today will also become members after he sees the benefits.

VSTE Avatar Database

Avatar Database for VSTE Click and add your information to help connect you to other educators.

Collaboration Online

This morning I met Laurie in Illinois, a K8 four school integrator, on iChat and she shared her desktop with me. She showed me the moodle she uses at Global Classroom. We used voice and shared some ideas we had for our students and teachers working together collaboratively online. She has a first grade teacher with a lot of activities online for her students. She has a fourth grade group of teachers, one of which would likely be interested in sharing a state to state history comparitive experience with J. Nutt's fifth grade class. I suggested something similar to Henny's "Far and Away" project at http://teacherman79.wikispaces.com/. After Laurie showed me around Global Classroom I created an account and signed up for a class. I can't wait to see if it is open at school.

Live Streaming Audio

Matt Poole, AKA Cyrus Hush, is my hero! Mandie and I asked him to look into how to stream live music from real world to Second Life Sunday and today, two days later, he's figured it out! You can hear anything, but we are standing there, on Mandie's island, listening to Matt sing "Strangers in the Night." What a guy! Every little piece of our project could be the piece that stupefies us, but we keep finding resources that make it easier than we thought. This was one of those times. Whew! Thank you, Matt!

Ohio State University Medical Sim

I was home during the day today because of the Veterans day holiday. Naturally I spent as much time online as possible. Not all of it was in Second Life, but while I was on midday someone sent a message via the ISTE group looking for this particular simulation. I'd heard of it but never been there. Quite a few of us decided to go along on the tour when the landmark was shared. I am riding a sperm in a simulation at OSU's Medical build of the testes. It's very professionally done. As you ride through a male voice explains all the parts you are seeing at the cell level. I had no idea it was so complicated! They are working on the creation of an ovary next!

Virtual Pioneers - Ummah of Noor

Tonight Virtual Pioneers visited an Islamic build. We were greeted by a small group of members of the sim, some of whom had built parts of it. Here Maggie Marat is wearing traditional dress for Islamic women. She is on the right.

Pocahontus Whybrow

I have a new friend. She's Pocahontus. Isn't she great!? She hangs out at VSTE HQ in Second Life. Here she is in the executive lounge in front of an aerial view of her home, Jamestown.

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.

Close Up of Ride with Bigreal

There is a closer shot of the shipwreck as well...

A Ride with Bigreal

I have spent a lot of my freetime in SL this week watching Bigreal build. Saturday he took a break and gave me a ride on a couple of his personal ships. He rezzed this ship, unfurled the sails, I hopped onto the bow and we were off! He sailed around several sims in his area and ran aground briefly once. The sails actually propel the ship and the wind direction matters. It's amazing to me that the creators of this virtual world have actually included the physics of the natrual world. Along with sailing there are mermen and mermaids living in this water as are sea creatures of many kinds. There are often battles between ships and Bigreal tells me the damage is actual. Perhaps the captains can simply rez a new copy of the ships they lose, I don't know. You can see in the distance on this shot a partially sunked ship.

More Blog Guilt

Ugh! I realize that all I've done is create captions for pictures. My thought is that later, when I have more time, I'll fill in the blanks. How do other bloggers find the time!

Anibal

Anibal is my newest friend. Here we are looking at art together. He was a newbie at ISTE when I was a docent there one morning. He lives in Portugal and is six hours ahead of me so we bump into each other at odd times. His young son often watches what we are doing in Second Life so it is my challenge to find new and interesting things to do that a five year old would like!

New Educator Pilot Program

ISTE members and newbies met tonight to hear George Linden and discuss the new pathway for educators into Second Life.

Alfredo and Mandie are Building

While I was at a meeting in Real Life, Al and Mandie were building an awesome wall. They did a great job. Mandie seems to have had the shape and Al had the carefully trimmed png from our trip. I added my barrel. :P Things are moving along. The search for artifacts is on! Oh and Bigreal, the shipbuilder says we are wrong about the deal we have with him. He is not giving us resell rights for the price we are paying. He charges a lot more for that. I think we can live with not reselling instead of paying more. Mandie came up with a super idea for ownership of all these things. If we have things that are not transferable, like these ships we will buy them with an avatar that we all have access to. The avatar can belong to VSTE and we can pass it along to future VSTE members, afterall the organization will outlive us.

Two Ships Under Way

Here is the picture I thought I had earlier. My friend, Susan, asked to see this. I have GOT to go to bed now!

Proud of Cyrus

My friend, Cyrus, spoke at ISTE tonight about his work in Second Life setting up a classroom for university and professional college students. He did a good job of explaining the process for anyone who is interested and doesn't know where to begin. I was proud to see someone up on the stage that I know so well. I was really nervous for him and couldn't even listen the entire time! Silly me! I guess I know him so well and have known him so long I was overly empathetic, as though I were up there. I can't imagine ever being in that position. There must have been 40 or more avatars there at one point. For the first time that I can recall there were griefers, too. One female avatar drove her sports car right up on stage. Cyrus handled it very well. It was an SL moment, that is for sure!

Building

Al and I stand on the deck of the newly created Discovery, October 13. It's so exciting to see the ships being created. Al and Mandie have also been trying their hands at building. They have each created their own versions of fort walls.