Sojourner's Dreams

This week VSTE will once again visit Dreams, a sim dedicated to the memory of Sojourner, Karen Derk Gans in real life, who used Second Life to rehabilitate herself and help others with brain injury.

From what I can gather The Sojourner, known as "Soj" by her close SL friends was a PhD in education when she suffered a series of strokes. If you google her name you can find books she wrote before her strokes. She worked with sufferers from brain truama before she had her own. She then found groups online with interests in rehabilitation from brain injury which led her to Second Life, where she became an official mentor.

It seems that back in her day there were few private islands but she convinced Linden Labs that she needed a safe place for people recovering from or living with brain trauma to be without griefers or other surprises. The Sojourner taught monthly lessons and helped people become comfortable in Second Life.

It was reported that she may have been the first to create an exhibition for non-profits in Second Life, the Dreams Fair, hosted on her own sim. The physical person behind The Sojourner, Karen Derk Gans, died of cardiac arrest in May 2008, months before I came to SL for the first time.

So how do I know about her? A friend invited me to a building contest he participated in on a sim called Dreams. He told me the story of "Soj" and shared his creation with me. Every month it seems there is a new building contest on this sim to support it's continued existence. The sim is home to building classes and support groups.

References:
http://gwynethllewelyn.net/2008/05/26/the-sojourners-last-voyage/
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/06/a-sojourner-pas.html
http://otsecondlife.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/to-soj-goodbye-and-thank-you/
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/05/sojourners-end.html#more
http://www.thesojournersdream.com/
https://carmenwiki.osu.edu/display/libraries/Physical+Diversity+and+Innovation

Last Meeting on Austen's Book

We had our last book talk meeting this week. It was a small but devoted crowd. I was happy to see Spiff and Scott there. I don't think they attended any of the other meetings. The discussion was full, with most present participating. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this series. It wasn't entirely as I envisioned it and Austen had to do an awful lot of sharing, but maybe she didn't mind.

 

Austen's book is full of technology and best practices for teaching. I believe this is how I most like to spend my time in Second Life, taking with other educators about things that can make me a better teacher in "real life." I'll have to find another project like this in the winter.

Riding a Stallion

VSTE Island's First Official Teacher Recertification Class

This is a milestone. Here "Hey" and her class of three educators are learning to move and communicate in Second Life. This is our first official class on VSTE Island.  Back when the island was really new a supervising teacher from another Virginia university met here with his student teachers. This time a recertification class from UVA-Wise is using a Moodle to prepare for avatar-to-avatar meetings and using VSTE Island specifically.

A non-member visited and joined in the conversation.

Bee Popstar is a member of the class.

Class portrait!

One class member kept walking into the wall and getting trapped.

Visit to a friend's space after class

Virtual Pioneers' BigD Talks about PBS's upcoming programming

Many of us came to the new location of Virtual Pioneers Headquarters on Eduisland 9 this Sunday to hear BigD talk about teaching children living in poverty. He teaches in a community in Arizona where many families are struggling in today's economic crisis.

 

BigD dispelled some of the many myths associated with poverty.

 

Unfortuneatly there were some griefers. This was one of them. They used voice to interrupt and say rude things. They rezzed prims and obstructed our view of the slide presentation. Used to dealing with teenagers, BigD was undisturbed.

 

BigD's partner, Kimmer, pasted into chat many links BigD had for us to view. This one was a You Tube clip by Ruby Payne, an expert in the hidden rules of class: generational poverty, middle class, and the wealthy.

 

The griefers had interesting and creative personna. 

 

Because VP has a new location we celebreated with this live musician, and dancing. The musician, Harry Frychester, is from Iowa and has a great voice. He sang mostly classical jazz and country. It was very pleasant. I found myself wishing for a dance partner.

 

Serena has decorated the area around VP headquarters with many interesting elements, like these cute bunnies.

Chapter 6

We have been reviewing a chapter a week of Austen Rae's book and I'm pleased that on week six we still have about a dozen dedicated participants. I took this shot because Orange Planer, a dragon, sat beside me most of the time, while an owl, Elphaba Helendale, sat near Austen. You never know what you will see in SL. We had a lively discussion about students writing historical fiction and becoming so excited Austen had two different related multimedia projects going on at once in her classroom!

Chapter 3 Can We Skip Lunch and Keep Writing?

This week we talked about using multimedia. In her book, Julie D. Ramsay talks about how the children attended an ISTE Webinar for teachers about digital storytelling and became so excited they wanted to create digital stories of their own. Students wrote about famous people from history and told how our lives would be different today if those people had not ever lived.

This session was not as well attended. All the other VSTE facilitators were busy with PTA open houses or had no power still from a recent hurricane. It's not our regular meeting night anyway. Attendees felt like a lot of teachers were busy with the beginning of school. We agreed to continue meeting Thursday nights as planned, with additional advertising this week.