Coke Break During VSTE 09

Alfredo, Elizabeth, and I have a Coke break in SL during the last Second Life session of the day.

Mackmarn Parx's Parkinson's Disease Build

The Notecard States:
Welcome! 
This site is part of a master’s research project examining the potential of 3D virtual worlds as immersive health education environments.  An interactive resource elucidating the neuroanatomy and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease is in development.
Please feel free to contact the researcher if you have any questions.
Mackmarn Parx (SL)
Mike Moran (RL)
mmoran22@uic.edu
MS Biomedical Visualization
www.ahs.uic.edu/bhis/programs/bvis.php
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Timbucks/98/35/41

This is a build by a new neighbor on Timbucks. I don't think I've met Mack yet, but this is an example of many educational/medical builds in SL meant to show understanding and educate others in a 3D environment. The nerves seem alive as they dangle from some unknown source and glow and sparkle. They remind me of the anticipated tooth pain when visiting the dentist!

Up close you can read signs, see demonstrations, and view slides and video explaining the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. I hope he gets a great assessment!

Timbucks is a community of educators. We "live" here. All the residents had to prove their eligibility to be a part of an educational sim and it is strictly PG. Living in SL means having a place that is yours where you have rights to create things and set certain limits for visitors. There are 18 plots at Timbucks of various sizes, all but 2 are rented out. I know well six of the other residents and several more are my friends. It's nice to rez in a place where you feel community.

Spiff Whitfield at VSTE

Monday night at our VSTE meeting, Spiff Whitfield spoke to us about Virtual Pioneers.
Spiff showed slides of some of the more meaningful events the Virtual Pioneers have had over the past year. He changed historical costumes during his talk, his trademark. In this photo he is sharing a visit with Fanny Starr, a Holocaust survivor.
Virtual Pioneers is without a doubt the most successful educational group I've been a part of outside of ISTE itself. VSTE and DEN also do a great job, but there is something about VP. I remember at the beginning being annoyed at some of the things that happened routinely but those things were growing pains issues: introducing everyone every week, not starting and stopping on time, meetings about meetings. VSTE has been through those things too. It seems to be a part of establishing a basis for a group. Now, however, VP has a steady following and the meetings are consistently every two weeks and full of information that not only teachers appreciate, but all people who want to know and understand more about the world we live in and the people in it. Hats off to Spiff, a very smart, unpretentious, accommodating man! You've done a great job!

Pioneering in Second Life

While looking for an event for the upcoming VSTE face to face conference I fell upon a role play territory that looks like a lot of fun. There are several adjacent sims with this western theme. They all adhere to the same rules. Primarily everyone must be in costume as a pioneer, native American, or western US animal (on all fours).

There is an orientation area where one can read all the rules so as not to offend the proprietors and role players. You can participate or wear a tag that identifies you as an observer.

When I first visited I met Alphawolf99735 Wijaya, a native American male, who was very friendly and welcomed me. He gave me the name of a sim owner who he said does a great job of presenting to groups, Doggie Jigsaw, a collie.

Doggie Jigsaw put me in touch with Mieze89 Braveheart, a native woman, who will help us with orientation to  SL, the sim, whatever we need, and she is gathering male and female transferable costumes for us. Her idea is that all the newbies should wear the same outfit so they are easily identifiable. Teachers love to dress up so I am sure most of our group will want to dress in clothes they have or find for the occasion.

October 2009

October 5th Thunder and Alfredo shared two ways to make SL T-shirts. Thunder uses a new blank t-shirt and applies a photo taken in SL. She showed how to position the camera to make the front of your t-shirt have the image you want (be sure that is in the upper left corner of your photo.) Alfredo showed how he creates t-shirts from a template and a graphics program using layers. He recommened Paint.net, a free program for Windows that will do the trick. His You Tube video was a great resource.

October 12th Mandie taught VSTE members how to work with textures and took us to four locations in Second Life where free textures are readily available.

October 19th Mandie facilitated a tour of the Johnson & Wales Library sim hosted by Barbarathelibrarian.

October 26th Cyndyl, Syd, and Pikskate hosted a VSTE Halloween Party in their disco club. Members came in costume or as alternate avatars.

VSTE Meetings in August 2009

I had a rough time keeping up with Thunder's adventures for a while this summer and fall. I will attempt to fill in the blanks.


On August 3rd Mandie had CoolestBean Brunswick come to VSTE Island to show us how to create sculpted prim objects. We had to opened Sculpty Paint, a free web program, and followed his directions to create a cushion and a goblet. It was an amazing introduction to this software and a rare chance to learn an application from within SL.

On Tuesday, August 11, at 5:00pm SLT (8:00pm EDT) the VSTE Island Team along with Flying Story (Danny Arkin RL) presented VSTE Island and the virtual Jamestown Settlement at the ISTE’s Speaker Series in the Bandshell on ISTE Island. There were approximately 50 participants in the Bandshell audience and 32 visitors came to VSTE Island for a self-guided tour following the speaker’s series.


On August 17th Mandie presented her First Africans exhibit on VSTE Island. She had created it for a course she took in Second Life from our friend Esme in ISTE.

August 24th The third session of VSTE’s Summer Book Talk was held on Monday, August 24, at 5:00pm SLT (8:00pm EDT). WitchyRichy Witherspoon (Karen Richardson RL) facilitated 14 particpants in the final discussion session of the book Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.
VSTE in SL group meeting was held on Monday, August 31, at 5:00pm SLT (8:00pm EDT). Jazmemo Zimminy (Lisa Alconcel RL) faciliatated 19 participants in a “back to school” celebration.

Planning the VSTE Meeting with Cyrus

My good friend Cyrus is leading the next VSTE meeting, August 17th, for us. He is taking us on a tour of two popular Chinese sims, Mao, and Kowloon. The latter is one if his personal favorites. I've purchased a few things there while touring it with him. He's over planned! He has a Speakeasy set up with interesting information about the Great Wall of China, slides about it as well, a help notecard for voice, group chat, and viewing media - which will help us for all our future meetings, and landmarks to the two sims we will visit. I happen to know he has a costume to wear, too. :-) Cyrus is awesome! I adore him. Cyrus wants to be a VSTE Island Manager when Flying takes us from 4 to 8 managers and I think he's perfect for the job. He's in Virginia but on the other side of the state from the four of us who are running things now. He's higher ed, rather than elementary. He has the ability to be online during the day from work, so he could sometimes meet those folks who want tours and information when the rest of us can't get to SL. He has a technical background though he is a teacher and director now. His field is distance learning, which SL is, for us. Cyrus was the one who did the audio streaming at the unveiling of VSTE Island to the world in February 2009. He's been very supportive of our activitites. In reading his notes I ran across the creator of the Great Wall itself, Amiryu Hosoi. She has a beautiful website with many machinema that I just have to share. http://hosoi-ichiba.blogspot.com/

Bee Comes to SL

My RL husband has watched me learn, use, enjoy, and grow in SL for the past 18 months with pride but not much interest. He brags about my accomplishments and relationships in SL to friends and family but has insisted it wasn't for him.
Finally this weekend he ventured in anew and let me take him through some basic training until he felt comfortable. He actually liked it. I still don't see him using it to play, and that's okay. He may attend some meetings and meet some colleagues here from time to time.

	Hey, Mikey, he likes it!

Squatter

I'm squatting on land for my friend Jazmemo. Yosemite found this sim reserved for educators and showed the rest of us, who were recently made homeless by the loss of Voyager by Skipper Burns. She rented a small parcel and her sister, Gator, and Gator's husband, Harry, bought one, too. I'd get one myself if I hadn't just rented a place for five weeks. Jazmemo is on vacation so I'm sitting on the parcel she wants until the owner comes back online and I can rent it for her. We can settle up when she returns. We think poor Skipper must have passed away or become incapacitated in some way. He was a very responsible region owner. Unfortunately I lost $135 real American dollars buy buying Channel. I did have it for 12 months so I guess it's not a huge loss. I have learned a lot about land use in SL. If I buy a piece of an estate or homestead again I'll be sure I know who the real person is behind the avatar and know what they have in place to ensure a longer future. If Skipper had had a partner, for instance, it would have helped.

Dewey Jung Brings Grad Students to VSTE Island

I knew Dewey might bring his current grad class to VSTE Tuesday night but I didn't know when. I really wasn't stalking when I happened into SL just before my Quest Atlantis training, but I saw he was online, remembered his hope to get to VSTE, and took a peek at VSTE on the map to see if he were there. Low and behold there was a double stack of green dots in the center of the island! I dashed over to take a couple of photos and ended up helping a couple of newbie girls with extraneous skirt removal. I also took a couple of newbie boys on a magic carpet tour and gave them a crash course in opening a box in the VSTE sandbox. I was only a few minutes late to the QA training! :P It's all in a day's work for a proud VSTE Facilitator!

Celebrity!

Bob Sprankle came to Channel Island and played Greedy with us! I'm quite impressed with myself over this! I went to ISTE Island HQ because Soulstar was there and there was a little circle of people visiting. She was among them so I joined in. I checked the profiles of everyone there that I don't already know and standing to my immediate left was Bisto, who is Bob Sprankle in RL! I learned about Bob Sprankle when I was taking a class on podcasting from UVA a couple of years ago. He was the only teacher I could find who was podcasting with kids. Since then I've seen his podcasts refered to in a number of other blogs. To me he is celebrity, a pioneer in podcasting. Fortunately he is also very nice! When I took Soulstar back to my island to play Greedy Bisto and Snowflake came, too. This photo to mark the event is courtesy of Snowflake. I LOVE SL! Where else could I meet and talk directly to educational technology experts one on one!?

Flying High with Neo

Neo is one of my two friends in Second Life from the Cleveland Freenet and Dalnet days. He's not a teacher and doesn't especially find our teacher activities interesting. After Monday's meeting I sometimes play Greedy with him or sit and talk. Tonight we went in search of an SL tour. It's fun for me to find things that you can ride around in Second Life while exploring. Your avatar just sits while you use your mouse to view the landscape. The creativity of the inhabitants in creating this world for themselves amazes me. Some tours give information while you ride.

Corvette and Constructivist Island

Corvette and I have a mutual friend, Anibal, who has a sim for Constructivist Psychotherapists in training. Here I'm showing Corvette around. He was gone from SL during the period that it was created and is rarely online the same time Anibal is, since Anibal is in a time zone about 6 hours ahead of him. This is another reason I love Second Life. Here I am showing a man in Mexico the island of a friend in Portugal. Seriously!

Neo and Amethyst

Here are two of my best friends in SL, Neo and Amethyst, enjoying a dance together at the Caribbean Breezes Club. Later we got Kiwi to join us and the four of us line danced. SL is so much fun, especially in the summer.

Mexico Live!

The person behind the avatar-also-known-as-Corvette lives in Mexico in RL. He is learning the language and immersing himself in the Mexican culture. Lately when he ventures into SL he does the same. SL does mimic RL afterall! Here we morphed back to the avatars we were when we were doing a lot of SL exploring together. I just had to record a photo of it.

Corvette Visit July 14

Lately I've been running into my old friend, Corvette, online more. I really enjoy talking with him about real life and second life. Though we have never met, we have a significant real life connection as my dearest RL friend used to work closely with him. She herself has never been in SL but she introduced us by sharing our SL names one to the other. I've known Corvette since my first month in SL. The timing of when you meet someone in Second Life is somehow significant. I was a newbie, still in my original avatar when he came to Cybrary City to meet me. Over several months he showed me a lot of his favorite places in SL and shared a side of it I didn't really expect. I learned a lot from him about SL and RL and am proud to call him a friend. When he has a couple of hours to spend talking with me I'm quite blessed.

VSTE building Institute Day 1

We had a guest builder lined up for July who was going to teach us to use sculpties to create new avatars for ourselves. I was really looking forward to it. The builder is a really fun character himself, and though, sometimes inappropriate, always entertaining. During our team meeting when he talked to us about what he would like to do, he walked on our board room table like it was a runway. He's just a hoot! Sadly was unable to participate in the project and backed out just days before it was to take place. Mandie got Kip (Pikskate in SL) to rescue us! Because he has class on Mondays he could only build with us on Wednesdays. So Mandie decided to create a four day building institute. She would help members create something that would use skills similar to the ones Pikskate would need from us on Wednesdays. This was the first day. We created what looked like two trees on one prim. We learned that a prim can be manipulated to form a flat right angle and a transparent texture can make one side of a prim invisible. Handy to know.

Quest Atlantis

My Quest Atlantis training has begun. This is not about Second Life but I learned about it in SL so I will blog about it a little. Here you see my class in QA waiting for everyone to make it in. We are all in white because we haven't yet earned the right to wear other clothing. Everyone can see that we are newbies. Quest Atlantis is a virtual world for 9 to 15 year olds. It teaches Internet safety, global awareness, the responsibilities of citizenship, and curriculum. Teacher train in pairs to learn how to bring Quest Atlantis successfully to students. My gifted resource teacher is my partner. We have to learn to walk and fly, communicate, and complete quests. Flying from a Mac laptop is challenging. I have done it once successfully and can not seem to repeat the performance. I have done two quests and have two to go. I'm doing one of them with Soulstar as a co-quest. I'm very excited at the prospect of bringing this to fifth graders at my school.

Thunder Traps Kiwi

Kiwi was my mentor when I was a newbie in Second Life (see http://thunderliving.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-does-this-happen.html and other early posts). While I have rented various parcels, bought land, and tried several houses on my island, Kiwi has always stood on the top of his bank at cybrary city. He's always there, or his avatar is. Very often he's in fact AFK and his avie is unattended. ;-) That's where I come in! It's great fun, okay my life is not very exciting at times, to go bump him off his building and see how long it takes him to notice. He awakens and sees me as Queen of the Hill, laughs, and we get to talk for a few minutes before I find someone else to bother. On this particular day he was gone a long time and I had nothing special to entertain me so... I enclosed him in a box. He came to in the dark and couldn't walk out. He used the map to TP to a nearby spot, but it was a fun moment.

President Obama Speaks in Second Life

Okay so that was misleading. It mislead me, too. He was only on a big screen with dozens of avatars gathered around watching, listening, and commenting. When the message came via one of my groups from someone I know and respect said that Obama was speaking in SL I thought he'd have an avatar there. I left what I was doing and followed the link almost immediately. Now I wouldn't cross a street in RL to see a celebrity. I don't want to be in a crowd. I wouldn't expect to be able to see or hear the celebrity, much less have any sort of verbal exchange. But this is a key difference between RL and SL. I meet avatars operated by real people who I've heard of and admired all the time. I get close to them, even have a one on one discussion, sometimes. No, I haven't meet a world leader, or famous actress, or wealthy athelete; but I have met a Holocaust survivor, a pioneer in podcasting with kids, and international speakers on the topic of instructional technology. So why shouldn't I expect to see my president if only as an avatar? Maybe some day I will. We have invited Senator Warner, former Virginia governor, to VSTE Island. I don't think there has been any response, though he was one of the first politicians to go public in Second Life. It seems like an easy thing to do to make an impression.

ITC Visits Channel Island and Learns Greedy

This was a fun time when Chellie came by while I still had Channel Island. She is a rare visitor to SL.

Virginia Trekkers

We were proud to have the Virginia Trekkers visit VSTE Island for a meeting in May.

Amethyst's New Home

Amethyst has a new crib! She moved across her sim to a larger, gothic Victorian house with three floors and at least two balconies. She has a flare for decorating! Here I visited with Louise.

Red Square with Jorgito

Shakespeare at the Pavilion

On Sunday night I attended a production of Shakespeare at the Pavilion, presented by Avatar Repertory Theater and the San Diego City Sim. They did one scene from several different plays. The interesting thing about SL is that one can "go" behind the stage with camera controls to see the sitting actors waiting for their turns. Avajean Westland was one of the actresses but she doesn't know me. She's only met my alt. I could not seem to get anyone to come see this with me. I sat with strangers. :P