Oh! Virtual Learning!

Script Me! Automated Basic Scripting :)

2008-07-20T05:48:00.001-07:00

If you're not getting the "Official Linden Blog" either by email or in your RSS aggregator, you should be. Little things like new Torley Linden tutorials keep me ever in the learning loop about things SL, and this morning is no exception. This is COOL! Directly from the blog email:

Today’s tip focuses on Ann Enigma’s Autoscript, a wonderful tool which has made a difference for many Residents. With a few clicks, you can make a script, then examine and edit it further. Only problem is: it hasn’t been getting enough exposure, so a lot of people who could’ve been helped by it… didn’t know it existed!

Now you do. Check it out. And have a great day, or night, wherever you may find your physical or virtual self.

Oh, watch for an announcement soon about MUVErs LLC, a new group formed to develop new ways of working with one another in the service of virtual teaching and learning. Or if you're really on the bleeding edge, be one of the first to search for the group "MUVErs" and join in the fun. Heheheheheeee. Hey, was this the announcement? Naw, I'll get to that later...

Gibson Guitars Launches Gibson

2008-07-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

In a very mixed-message article (probably reflecting both real and virtual realities pretty accurately) my local Tennessean.com today posted online an article called "Free Gibson guitar is a virtual perk," by Wendy Lee. The article appeared on the front page of the Business section in the print newspaper this very morning as well, with some additional comments, such as "Why Go Virtual? In real life, Gibson's LP-295 Goldtop retails for $4,399. In Second Life, you can own one for free."

This is all well and good, and I hope it helps raise some awareness about Second Life. However, I'm also quite sure its ambivalence with regard to sales, and in particular this quote-- "The hype that surrounds Second Life is quite a bit ahead of reality as a place that sells goods," said Rob Enderle, a principal analyst at Enderle Group, a San Jose-based technology products consulting and advisory service. "In terms of sustained sales, it's not that good..." --potentially does more to stir up the already murky waters of public opinion than to settle them.

I dropped into Gibson Guitar Island yesterday to catch the end of Cylindrian Rutabaga's (Grace Buford, irl) set and the beginning of marvelous Argentinan guitarist Joaquin Gustav's. There's more about the event at Gibson's own Gibson Island announcement. I highly encourage you to go visit!

Oh! Second Life Takes on a New Identity!

2008-07-15T05:13:00.000-07:00

Sittin' on my new S. Haras "Pegacorn" (haven't named him yet--any suggestions?) in the Blogger's Hut marveling at the most votes ever in the race for the Blog o' the Month for August. Come add to them!

This is the first post that puts this humble bloggie into compliance with Second Life's terms of service and out of non-compliance with its revised copyright violation policy (I'm workin' on the header image today and it'll reflect the new name in two shakes of an ant's noggin. Though I've renamed the blog, I want to make it perfectly clear, fellow citizens, that my primary focus will remain Second Life as educational platform. We've come too far over the past year to steer too far off the intended course...

But here's today's Second Life news, and it's good stuff! As a Nashville boy and a Gibson instrument owner, I'm tickled pink! I may just have to put on my pink tinged hair to wear to today's opening of Gibson Island! The article describing the bash today and the island's features appeared this morning in the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch!

I'll be there! If for no other reason than to play some of their fine instruments. I'm looking right now irl at my Gibson SG Standard in it's stand, festooned as it is with the autographs of Brooks and Dunn and Elvis's lead player Scotty Moore. And my Gibson A5L mandolin goes with me everywhere, though I don't play it as much as I should.

In other news, I've gotten so many blogs submitted for inclusion in the Blogger's Hut at ISTE Island that I've had to expand the "Window on Blogs" to a second window. Here's a pic of that:

Cheers from Nashville, from a happy guitar/mandolin boy. See you at Gibson Island!!! Watch for more on that opening here!!!

Random Good Reports from the Second Life Education Front

2008-07-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

I've been traveling irl on family errands this week, but still I've found time to discover good things happening.

New friend Norma Underwood, a rl district Technology Integration Specialist in Phoenix, Arizona, has created some interesting spaces in rental space in Desire (**Desire Rentals**, Champlain (152, 115, 351)) for her teachers. I highly encourage educators to visit and learn from Norma's displays, excellent examples of how learning opportunities can be created by taking advantage of the tools SL has to offer. Here are a couple of pics! The first one is me in Norma's wonderful build.

Next take a look at the photos in her new comedy club. The human being behind Norma has extensive stand-up comedy experience and hopes to bring some of the joy of that field into Second Life. Beware! Laughter can help you live better!

Lastly (though there's much much more at her site, including a generous "Educator Gifts" freebie box full of useful items), her wall of avatar pics representing her participating teachers:

In addition to Norma's fun space, I discovered another fine one during a little sidetrip to the Learning Experience (Kitviel Silberberg, The Learning Experience, Akamu Cove (126, 145, 22)). This place looks very promising: From their free (unless you are charging your students, in which case there's a rental fee--fair enough) open presentation/classrooms to their "Magicaves,"
I'm sure we'll find ways to take advantage of the generosity exhibited at The Learning Experience. Here's their info notecard text:

The Learning Experience is now open! In The Learning Experience you will find classrooms at your disposal, and FREE workshops on everything educational given all the time! FREE Creative showcase space is avaialble. FREE Newsstand vendor for you SL Publications. IM me (Penny Preez or Kitviel Silberberg) for more information.

and a pic or two:

That's all from the front this week. Stay tooned for more as we continue to explore how education in Second Life is being redefined moment by moment, day by day.

Look at Me! Look at Me!!!!

2008-07-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

This whole blogging thing is undeniably part narcissism, don'tchaknow. That admitted, I put a few minutes into googling pics from NECC, real world. SL ones to follow. It's all good.

WOW!!!

2008-07-08T09:18:00.001-07:00

"This is a historic day for Second Life, and for virtual worlds in general. IBM and Linden Lab have announced that research teams from the two companies successfully teleported avatars from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server, marking the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another. It’s an important first step toward enabling avatars to pass freely between virtual worlds, something we’ve been working toward publicly since the formation of the Architecture Working Group in September 2007. These are still early days, however, so amid all the excitement, we thought it would be helpful to clarify exactly what we’ve done — and what still lies ahead." READ MORE!

quoted directly from http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/ibm-linden-lab-interoperability-announcement/

NECC 2008 Resources and Survey for Educators

2008-07-08T07:58:00.001-07:00

SLedupotential co-panelists including Claudia Linden!

Wow, it's been like a week since I posted anything here. Some kinda record.
I'm firing my laptop at my home office stepmachine station and working out to lose some of the belly I've accumulated over the past months spending most of my waking hours at a laptop. I'll still get to be at my laptop, but at least I'll be burning some calories. My old vinyl record turntable is on the shelf above my laptop, so I'm firing up some vintage Shawn Phillips to help motivate my pace :)

Pardon me whilst I do a 5 minute yoga stretch b4 climbing aboard...

There.

So. I spent a wonderful week at NECC 2008, and the best part of the whole experience was meeting and renewing face-to-face friendships and acquaintances with so many folks I have been working with ageographically (I just made that up) for a year or more. I touted the virtues of my real-world employers to everyone I met, I passed out nearly 100 moocards (see earlier post) and I presided over a sold-out workshop with my 8 co-presenters and several other bonus guest stars and did the same for a packed-house "Birds of a Feather" session, helped the edubloggercon pre-conference "unconference" session called "Web 2.0 Smackdown" by ustreaming for stellar blogger Vicki Davis, attended Kathy Schrock's "Get a MUVE On" lecture and Peggy Sheehy's session on the Second Life Teen Grid, met and instantly felt a kinship with Linden Lab Education Director Claudia Linden, learned about how to begin working in the TG, worked a band member avatar in SL for the talented guitarist of "One Horse Shy," then worked a speaker's avatar in the closing session for a full house of around 7,000 out front. I also had numerous gets-together with folks irl at dinners and meetups, expanding my personal learning network(s) exponentially.

12 minute into my step workout I'm now perspiring nicely! Shawn is singing his magic. The album, btw, is "Do You Wonder." Nice.

From NECC2008, some links:

If you're an educator, PLEASE take the 4 minutes it will cost you to fill out this official Linden Lab survey to help Claudia and her colleagues improve Second Life for us and for our students!

SLedupotential (for maybe the last time--be sure to bookmark it! I think this site, developed before, during, and ongoingly after our 3 hour workshop, will continue to be a valuable one-stop-shop for shareable information for some time to come. Need to show your colleagues a video about this cutting edge education platform? SLedupotential? Find a new one? Or a new research report or article? Share it a SLedupotential. You see what I mean, I hope...

NECC 2008 bloggers--not sure why I'm not in there, but I'm posting the link anyway :( with the caveat that if it missed mine, it must have missed others, so it's incomplete :)

NECC 2008 podcasts--Some really good ones here. Not seeing them in iTunes, but they're p0sted at the Apple Learning Interchange website. Apple could do themselves a favor by putting them up on iTunes, based on recent twitter exchanges pleading for help downloading to laptops and mobile devices.

My NECC2008 flickrstream

All flickrsets tagged necc 2008

I gotta get off the step machine. I'm done! For now...

Cheerio!
Scott

The PRESENT of teaching and learning in Second Life

2008-06-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

I wrote this last night just before falling asleep at the keyboard:
Random good things have happened today. Tomorrow, of course is our SLedupotential presentation in both rW and SL.

This morning, we leap into the fray, 9 dedicated educators from 9 different states, all of whom met one another inside a computer platform in a place that doesn't exist, gathered together in San Antonio Texas to share a vast and essentially indescribable phenomenon to 30 mostly strangers we will be meeting for the first time this morning.

Life(s) is good.

Here's how I'm going to start, formally, in a little under 2 hours--

Good morning. I'm Scott Merrick and I welcome you to SLedupotential.

We've brought all these people into this room, and into this platform (welcome to any of you in Second Life, wherever you are in the RW (real world) for a whole bunch of reasons. Each of us is here for his or her own. Let me share some of mine.

I'm here because I believe the Present of teaching and learning is changing. You'll hear a lot of folks this week talking about the Future of teaching and learning. I want us to focus today on its Present. At this very moment a new tool for collaborative technology is poised in the wings of the internet's stage, going over its lines the way many of us up here have gone over theirs walking or in the cab on the way to the conference center this morning. The makers of this technology want us to use this tool to change the way we work, the way we collaborate, the way we view the world and most importantly--the way we spend our time.

I don't know what that technology tool is. None of us does because it hasn't been released yet. Last week it was Plurk, meant to be a "Twitter Killer app." Today it'll be something else. How do we see it and share it? Through our Personal Learning Networks.

Second Life has been that for me. Every single one of the dedicated teachers up at the front of the room with me this morning I met for the first time in Second Life. Every one of them has something special to share about her or his vision of the Present. Let's get started (speak to agenda notes).

The agenda is at the wiki. The tag for this session, btw, is n08s987. Please tag all your pictures, video, blog posts, anything with that tag. It'll make it easier for everyone to find what's going on.

Headin' off for NECC in the early morning!

2008-06-26T21:03:00.001-07:00

In the "real world," I'm packed and ready to sleep a few hours before my wife drives me to the Braniff National Airport, Nashville's finest, to fly to sunny San Antonio for NECC. Here in SL, I've recently added a sign in the ISTE Island Podcasters' Place linking to the most recent "Inside the Lab" podcast from Linden Lab, which features Claudia and Pathfinder Linden being interviewed about "Education in Second Life."

A very informative listen, ya'll. Image from a picture during the interview taken by Torley Linden, the producer of those great video tutorials! Enjoy!

Education in Second Life Podcast!!!

2008-06-23T09:59:00.000-07:00

Just out, an Inside the Lab podcast from Linden Lab, featuring Lindens Claudia and Pathfinder, announced at RezEd by RezEd member Rik Panganiban. I'm listening to it now. You should too!

DEN got a nice mention, as did Metanomics, but so far no mention of ISTE. Still it's a great discussion, 38:03 long.

Some highlights:

Pathfinder describing the robust use of SL as a platform for language learning.
Claudia talking about touring a new sim to train medical personnel for prenatal care in 3rd world countries...
Not all that fond of Pathfinder's repeated use of the term "academics" to refer to educators.

but..."everything in Second Life is about conversations in the context of the content..."

and "The greatest resource(s) for educators in Second Life are other educators"
and "When educators come into Second Life and succeed, it's good for the whole community, because the community becomes more interesting..."

a discussion of the Linden Lab Education Grid site is very informative
Edunation, Infoisland, Eduisland, New Media Consortium, all mentioned for collaboration and inexpensive rental for educators
Claudia adds an interesting bit of advice for educators new to Second Life--"find a practice partner" and THERE's the ISTE mention, YAYYYYYY!

also, "use the SLED listserv to introduce yourself and your project"
"Second Life is an 'echo system'--It's the platform but it's also the many blogs that discuss it"--YAY!

Pathfinder plugs The Second Life Official Guide as an excellent text for those new to SL
Claudia plugs The Second Life Community Conference, upcoming in Tampa, FL in September
Claudia: I see the future in some of the incredible innovations I see in Second Life (mentions a 3D wiki -- "studio wikitexture")
Pathfinder: I get excited when I see people trying to study the efficacy of learning in Second Life...is it teaching them differently? How is it teaching them better? The plural of anecdote is not data. You actually need to have some research..."

Go listen for your own durned self!!!

Museum of Robots, Eric Joyner's "Robots and Donuts" Art!

2008-06-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

Hey!

It's been a while since I posted something just plain fun here, and here goes!

My friend Gia introduced me today to the Museum of Robots, in the Kubrick sim (here's a SLurl), and I had a blast looking around, especially in the museum art gallery, OMG!!!

Artist Eric Joyner has obviously spent years creating his real world paintings, and images of those are on display through the month of August in the art gallery of this clever and comprehensive build, an homage to robots in literature, television/cinema, and the visual arts.

I'm going share some snapshots at a flickr set, with the caveat that these are low-res snapshots of very good scans/photographs of real world art. That said, you MUST visit this gallery to see some of the best use of Second Life for art display that I have yet found. I particularly love the audio commentary that accompanies many of the images. Want to hear the artist, in his own words and in his own voice, describing the painting? Just click on the pink donut!

The artist's website is here.

New Storefront at Publishing Island!

2008-06-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Just in time for NECC, I've put up a little rental storefront at Publishing Island, space number 95. I'll have adverts for me CD and me novel, as well as links to me teacher workshops and me bloggies. Why am I talking babytalk? Hmmmmm. Perhaps because I'm the world's perpetual n00b.

Anyway, stop by if'n you will, and also peruse the other shops on the island. There's something for everyone there, whether your tastes run eclectic, academic, altruistic, comic, or any other "ic" you can name!

Here's a pic and a SLurl!

SupersScottmerrickOh!

2008-06-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

Hey,

From rl vacation in Mexico, I just wanted to pop up this pic I took in the process of getting something for an ISTE banner I gather will be prominently displayed at NECC. They won't use this one, but I do so like it that I wanted to shareshare.

Hasta luego, amigos!

Learning and Leading Profile!

2008-06-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hey, all, I've been lucky enough to have been "member-profiled" in this month's ISTE Learning and Leading with Technology magazine (the link here is a .pdf of the article. The magazine issue itself is here.

This is a great honor, especially in its shared spotlight with SL friend Joie Despres, in her irl persona as Malinda McCormick. She's a great person and a hard worker. I am very much looking forward to meeting Malinda at NECC.

Enjoy the article, and there are some really interesting features this month, so be sure and check out the rest of the magazine!!!

SLedupotential Meetup: a Quorum!

2008-06-03T04:05:00.000-07:00

It's happened! We successfully made a meeting of 7 of the 9, potentially 8 now, presenters for SLedupotential, Monday, June 30, SL 6:30 to 9:30, high above ISTE Island in the SLedupotential Virtual Reality Room!

Present and accounted for: Ravenphoenix, KJ, Esme, Clare, Zsuzsa, Maggie, and li'l ol' moi. The fox himself, Jeremy, actually was lurking about the periphery on Skype!

Not only that, we actually made some good progress toward firmly conceptualizing our workshop session--began tackling technical issues, set out some tasks for preparation, made clear our dedication to hands-on time for the 30 participants, picked out and labeled the pads we'd sit on, committed ourselves to meet again...that kind of thing.

Here's a link to the flickr set of a few pics I snapped. We didn't discuss this, but I'm tagging these pics with "sleduNECC08," a moniker that I hope will become standard. Heck, let's tag this post that way!

SLedupotential--FULL UP!!!

2008-05-24T04:59:00.001-07:00

Yippee! I just finished adding "Reserved" signs on the last of the realworld attendees' chairs (the tie-dye ones on the floor) in the SLedupotential Virtual Room high above ISTE Island. Here's a snapshot--the little white signs all say "Reserved for a San Antonio SLedupotentialer, click for more info" and a click will take the clicker to the workshop wiki, already populated with more stuff than we could get thru in 3 days, much less 3 hours. Neat!

Attendees will be getting a brief pre-conf. survey the first of the week to help us narrow focus a bit to tailor the learning experience, which this will definitely be, and for all of us! Check back here for a SLurl the "day of," Monday, June 30, at 6:45 SL time!

Stay tooned!!!

Running Second Life from a Flash Drive

2008-05-20T03:48:00.000-07:00

WARNING: GEEK POST FOLLOWS!

I have a 2 Gb thumb drive and I'm sooooo going to do this. It will allow me to run SL on any computer anywhere, including on my wife's desktop PC, which is sort of the family computer and which is constantly topping out its storage at or around the "1/4 remaining free space" level that I consider mandatory for a well-running PC. Instructions contain a batch file for running the program as well as for cleaning up all files from the computer it's run on. Very clever, and very nice for schools and school computer labs.

From Brett Bixler at Penn State University, instructions for running SL from a flash drive!

1988 Virtual World!

2008-05-19T09:22:00.000-07:00

WOW! a 1988 video from Lucasfilm about Habitat, a "virtual world!" You MUST take the 8 minutes to view! I embed with the notation that the film is copyright Lucasfilm. welcome comments!

See the Virtual Worlds Timeline for gobs more information. This one's a GEM!

The Key to the Lure of the Platform

2008-05-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

It's pretty exciting to login daily (or so--it's a REALLY busy time of the school year) to my NECC Presenters' interface and check the list of registered participants for our upcoming 3 hour hands-on Second Life workshop, SLedupotential: Educational Potential of Second Life and Virtual Worlds, to see if it's grown. The last two days I've seen the number grow from 20 to 23 (of the maximum of 30) and when I see a new participant has signed up, I go visit the Google Map to add a pin for the new colleague.

That's how I view these folks, and while I'm not planning to make that their official title, like Walmart might designate its minions "Associates," they are firmly ensconced in my mind and in my heart as colleagues. And while there may be an enhanced fizz factor to the pins in Russia and Australia, I cherish no less the interest of my new colleagues in Canada and our fair country.

I had a few minutes break yesterday and so I teleported to the SLedupotential Virtual Room we're tricking out for our presentation June 30, and I created a little "Reserved" sign for each of the 30 seats in the build that will be needed for the local San Antonino, Texas attendees. Here's a pic:

The white cards on the chairs are a little hard to see on this page, but if you click the picture you'll get an enlarged version. That's me in the back row, surveying my handiwork like the Creator Himself on the 7th day.

While I was merrily clicking Ctr-D and painstakingly moving the newly created Reserved sign to its new chair in the front rows, I had an insight about the experience of Second Life that I hope I can remember to share in the workshop itself. I am not a programmer--I lack the patience and the skill set(s) to create useful tools in the manner of, say, David Warlick, whose programming expertise has brought the educational world such little miracles as the Educational Podcasting Network and Son of Citation Machine. I have nothing but utmost admiration for those folks (especially David), but when I've heard him say things like, "programming is relaxing for me," I really haven't "gotten" that before.

Somehow, the process of creating this graphical environment, made so easy by the tools Second Life has to offer, was immensely relaxing for me. When it was finished, and I sat down in an unreserved seat (one of only seven remaining) to view my handiwork, I was pleased with my little miracle. And so I rested.

Bottom line: If you haven't started building in Second Life, get thee to a sandbox, take a class or two in how to build, and start your imagination rolling toward creating pleasing, fun, or simply utilitarian objects, essentially, and importantly, something from nothing. It's key to the lure of the platform.

Random Comments from the Front

2008-05-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

It's the end of the school year for many of us in the U.S., and hence the long gap between posts. I haven't been unbusy, though, in Second Life.

Last night, while I was on ISTE Island for a routine check of my two little spaces, the Blogger's Hut and Podcasters' Place, I had twitter going on in a side window of twhirl. I mentioned in a tweet that I'd purchased a new Volkswagen minibus (circa around 1965) inworld on a whim, and before I knew it the avatar I know as Randal Hoorenbeek was asking for a ride in SL. I was hanging around chatting with new Montanan friend Henny Zimer (teacherman79 in twitter) and after I rezzed my bus we all climbed in and started tooling around ISTE Island.

Now, the islands are not really set up with roads. More, well, walking paths. And the bus is a bit oversized. I ended up taking a wrong turn and crashing around Clare's CUE installation and then the Arizona Technology for Education Alliance's nice space for a bit, then finally steered us toward a bridge that seemed wide enough to bear our driving over. Somehow we ended up nose down in the river. I found myself holding my virtual breath.

Wait, there's a point to the story. Sort of.

Oh. Yeah. Well, there we were face down in the river, all "heheheee" and "lol" and such, and I just kept backing up and going forward, nosing up out of the water and crashing back down. My passengers were bearing up quite nicely, though Henny had asked a vexing question about seatbelts which I was unable to answer. I'm not sure why I didn't just evacuate and "take" the vehicle, but I guess I approached the experience much as I do any tech problem, stubbornly (some would say "persistently") trying solutions until I hit upon the one that works. Finally, we hit an underwater terraformed surface that allowed us to make forward progress, and up, up, up, we rolled until as if by miracle we were where I had intended to take us! Right in front of the fabulously detailed Alamo build-in-progress by fabulously talented Second Life builder neoznet Watts. Vianne Udet, it appears, is knee-deep in this effort and it may be that I'm mistooken about neoznet's Alamo involvement--I do know that the immense sim-vector positioned new ISTE Auditorium is his. Somebody clarify this for me. Kitty?

Anyway, persistence breaks resistence, whether it's a rule applied to driving a virtual microbus out of a virtual river or figuring out why a teacher's printer isn't printing. That's my point. For now.

Cheers, and hold on tight! Summer's almost here!!!!!!!~!

Call for Proposals, SLCC September 5-7

2008-05-04T08:59:00.000-07:00

All the details are here on this hot-off-the-internet-press call for proposals for what looks to be a fabulous opportunity for those of us interested in teaching and learning in Second Life. "Speed Mentoring!?" Indeed!

I'll be grounded into the school year here in Nashville that weekend but may just look to do something virtually!

"Avatar Rendering Cost" Announcement

2008-05-03T03:44:00.000-07:00

The Linden Blog just announced an experimental feature called "Avatar Rendering Cost" and I think you should know about it. Essentially, in the Release Candidate, one can now open a new tool by that name (Advanced/Rendering/InfoDisplays/AvatarRenderingCost) and see little numbers floating above the heads of oneself and one's nearby avatars. COOL! Watch for this to be an important feature as event organizers begin requiring (either mandating or "suggesting") that avatars at events hold their own numbers down to a common level. Note that the display device carries its own CPU overhead and so should not be running all the time.

Do you really NEED to be wearing that prim necklace or personal lighting system? Ever been to a Science Friday event? I can't wait to turn on Avatar Rendering at one of those babies! Some interesting comments (145 of them since its announcement this past Thursday) indicate mixed but mostly positive reception. Those that dissent, however, have some thought-provoking resonences. Consider this one:

17 Maklin Deckard Says:
May 1st, 2008 at 3:48 PM
Oh great…rather than work on the EVERY WEEKEND and a couple tims a WEEK lag from the asset server (you remember that, Pastrami…unable to rez, warnings about ingame transactions?), and the lag from high connectivity (aka, too many freebie accounts on at once), they pick a TINY cause of lag for those with inferior video cards, then set up a situation that just SCREAMS of a player against player witch hunt situation (all this re-occuring weekend lag is from those darned over textured, overprimmed avatars…BAN THEM from the parcel / sim!!) to cover the real causes of the problems.

Whole thing translates to ‘wear a ruthlike avatar, or expect to get banned from most venues for ‘lagging’ the place up’ I can see fun times ahead for various prim-based avatars as the smoke and mirrors gets ramped up to divert people from blaming the lindens for much of the lag.

Way to go, Pastrami Linden! You folks REALLY know how to build community.

Read the announcement and the comments for more!

Cheers, and happy weekend!

Side note, SLedupotential is now officially 2/3 full! See the google map for its international scope! Wooooooooooooooooot!

Rare plea but it's a good cause!

2008-05-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

From stellar teacher and friend Steve Smail:

My film class put together two 25 second "safe driving" PSAs and entered them in a contest sponsored by Fox17, Ford Motor Co and Westfield Insurance.

One of the two - "Confessions" - was chosen as one of 4 finalists, viewable at http://fox17.com/shared/ford/wztv_video.shtml

The finalist receiving the most online votes between May 1 and May 10 has their PSA aired during American Idol and of course fame and fortune come our way.

So, visit http://fox17.com/shared/ford/wztv_video.shtml, vote for the USN entry (Clip 1, Confessions) if you feel so inclined, and send along your friends and family to do the same.

Now go vote!

http://fox17.com/shared/ford/wztv_video.shtml

Merry Month of May at the Second Life ISTE Island Blogger's Hut and Podcasters' Place!

2008-05-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

Got all the tweaks tweaked I do believe, and the featured blog, by popular vote, for the month of May at the Blogger's Hut is (drrrrrrrrrrrrrumroll please!) NMC Campus Observer! The New Media Consortium is a major player in Second Life, and their blog is certainly a great read. Put that baby in your RSS feed aggragatrr and keep up with it! (Click the pic to see an enlarged version.)

In the Podcasters' Place, Jamestown Elementary School's student podcasts are playable on our free Podcast Pickle Player. Give these a listen--they were discovered for me by a 3rd grader last week whilst her class was exploring David Warlick's Education Podcast Network. Very FUN!

The poll is up for you to vote for your favorite blog of June's four nominees, Weblogg-ed, Around the Corner, Fleep's Deep Thoughts, and Change Agency.

No fair voting with alts! See yaaaaaaaaa.

Welcome KJ Hax!

2008-04-30T09:51:00.001-07:00

Great news! KJ Hax (Kevin Jarrett irl) has joined us for the SLedupotential panel in San Antonio come June 30! Kevin's a prolific blogger in his role as Events Manager for ISTE Island (he organizes all the Tuesday Speaker Series presentations) and in his rw role as a K-4 technology coordiinator in Northfield New Jersey. He also teaches online at Walden University. Does he ever sleep? I guess we can ask him that at SLedupotential!

By the way, the Google Map is getting very interesting! We now have 16 attendees registered, mostly from the U.S., but there are also three Canadians and one Russian! Wooooooot!

View Larger Map