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.