Preparing for the VC

Posters uploaded: 5 (good); PPts uploaded: 4 (tedious); No. of hours spent deciding what to wear: 1 (v. bad)
Tomorrow is RL visit of Vice Chancellor to our Dept., so detailed plan drawn up of military precision. He will be shepherded through panoply of learning and research exellence. As Director of Learning and Teaching, ahem, I had v. important task of drawing up catalogue for teaching part of exhibition, ensuring poster boards put in correct position and last but not least will be demo-ing SL. For 5 minutes.
What can one do in 5 minutes in SL?

1) Wait for the room to rez OR
2) Attempt to move from one side of the room to the other and get stuck behind a sofa OR
3) Have a conversation with an academic on the other side of the planet consisting mostly of ";-))" and "lol" OR
4) Try on 16 pairs of shoes and buy one pair by mistake OR
5) Attempt to teleport , suffer aeons of blank screen + irritating line which may or may not be moving, and then hear fatal "ping" which means you are back where you started except now you are frozen & unable to move.

Of course none of this will happen tomorrow. Instead imagine self failing to get beyond "Initializing world" as Head of Dept taps foot and looks at watch.
Or alternatively will all go swimmingly.

Have uploaded some teaching and research stuff that in end was deselected from exhibition (on grounds that we shouldn't be setting VC speed reading test and therefore less was more).
One student kept sending new versions of poster, so seemed never ending task. Also (finally) uploaded remaining "Is SL dangerous" ppts produced by first years - now full set of 6 is in display in main building. Should really blog about these as others might find them interesting.
Contacted a few Friends to ask if they could come along and say "Hi Vice Chancellor I'm X from Y, and gosh it's Z am/pm here" though latter bit will not be v. impressive if they are all from UK. Also considered putting up "Welcome to the VC" banner, but island probably looks too much like a kiddies playground already.

Most importantly spent considerable time deciding what to wear. In end (you will be fascinated to know) opted for favourite skirt from Material Squirrel, with stripey top from SySy and new necklace from Earthstones, plus natty shoes from Maitreya. Hair is style called "Sheila" which is really a bit Big & Fluffy, but apart from having same name as me, looks v. good from back, which is part of me likely to be most on view. NB hair name is, I assume, marketing ploy, in that every hair with a woman's name must be guaranteed sales to people with same name. Wonder if they have done research on this?

Blowing bubbles & getting the bird

Demonstrations of SL given to VIPs: 1 (good); Sets of cute tweeting and twitching birds bought: 2 (good); No. of pillars in 7 pillars of information literacy: 7 (good)

Am slowly integrating back into first life at work, though remains bit of a struggle. Was particularly busy on Thursday as our Departmental Advisory Panel (or those of them that could get through the RL snow) were visiting us. I had organised the Teaching & Learning exhibition part of the day, which included some posters about Innovative Modules and student research, some demos of multimedia objects created by students and on the Big Screen, demos of Wimba & SL. Not simultaneously, I should add. Wimba sounds like a SL name, but is online learning package used in distance learning programme.

For SL I did a broom tour of island, then zoomed over to the 7 Pillars build, tp-ed over to Liverpool Uni to see Graham's molecules, then back to highlight some cute bits like Hobbiton. Was able to dispel idea that it's all about people doing fantasy stuff for recreational purposes (though suppose that showing people bees buzzing round flowers in Hobbit home may not give right message ....)
Will be doing abbreviated repeat this week as this Friday Dept. has visit from Vice Chancellor i.e. head honcho in the university. We will be giving tightly timetabled tour of learning stuff and research stuff, so am thinking of asking some Friends to come along to look impressive and interactive at key point. Can actually kill multiple birds by putting up research and teaching posters in SL.

Talking of birds, have bought some v. cute birds from HappyMood, also hung round for ages to get free Bubble Chairs (chairs in the form of giant soap bubbles) from the HappyMood lucky chair. Have formed 14 of these into a little Bubble Chair Circle on a transluscent platform, which looks particularly cute when partially submerged or up in air (see first pic). Inevitably, since was waiting round for lucky chair on a HappyMood rocking horse, also ended up buying one of those. It is Copy, so can make Rocking Chair circle too.