Photography Class in SL

I was supposed to be a helper to the teacher. As it turned out there were few students so I joined their ranks. Olivia Hotshot taught part one of her two part Photography in SL series for ISTE. Tuxedo Ninetails facilitated it by advertising and organizing. Tuxedo is in charge of such offerings by ISTE. They have a name that escapes me at the moment.
We learned all about settings for our SL application to improve our photos. Olivia had us sign up for Snapzilla and Flickr. We used our cameras to take photos of the class, each other, and finally of ourselves. Along the way we views Olivia's Photo Garden. MMMMM beautiful!

Olivia was very generous with photography equipment and directions. We received an SL book with her slideshow in it and pose balls to use to create our own photo booth.
I must say I enjoyed posing. :-)

Awesome K1 teacher in SL

I met an inspiring teacher at ISTE this morning! Her Twitter name and SL name is K1looper. She teaches kindergarten in north Ohio and will loop with them to first grade. She does amazing things with her kindergarten class on the web. Here is her classroom wiki for parents http://sheploop.pbwiki.com/ and here is her classroom blog http://www.classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=214460 . Yes, her students blog! By far the most precious thing is the Yoki's they created. I will stop thinking that kindergarten students are too young to use Web 2.0 tools! K1 has agreed to speak at VSTE in SL sometime this summer.

Training for Helping with Photography Class

We ISTE members often get opportunities to help run programs with experts. This was such an opportunity. When I signed up for it I didn't know my friend, Mandie from VSTE, was going, too. That was a nice surprise. We in fact were the only two participants. There is another training session for others later. The actual photography class will be taught in two two-hour sessions on Saturdays from 5 to 7 PM my time. Unfortunately this training was from 11 to 12 midnight on a school day. Zzzzz Come, Spring Break!

Scott Merrick's TED Movie Sessions

On Monday nights immediately following the VSTE meeting ScottMerrick Oh has a viewing of a TED video at his hangout on Lighthouse Learning Island. It's more fun than you would think! We avies sit around on cushions, read the brief descriptions of the four movies available, vote for the one we most want to see and then view together. Back chat is welcome! It's so much fun. Scott typicially counts down so we can all start our video at the same time and be relatively in sync. It never works! He and I are usually in sync with the majority of others close behind and at least one person ends up woefully behind or without ever getting video to work. Back chat consists of us all typing remarks about what we are currently hearing and seeing, often tongue in cheek comments about serious subjects. These people are all smart and educated (not me though) and I love hearing the banter! It's a great way to calm down after leading the VSTE meeting, which tends to be stressful for me. (It's a bit like throwing a shower in your home - constant worry about whether everyone is having a good time and not sorry they came!)