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.

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