Busy, bouncing

U. of Hawaii Students shown round island: 5 (good); Masters Students inducted to SL: 9 (good); Broom rides installed : 2 (good); Trampolines installed: 1 (v. good)
See from quick scan of favourite blogs that others have been blogging some video called World Builder, trying out new educational tools and other admirable activities. In contrast have installed trampoline, removed crunchy snow & holly, planted hyacinths and created a glass observation basket using a snowdrop texture (plus a first attempt at a particle lamp). Hey ho.
Basket/lamp is probably worth blogging separately since is scarcely mind blowing but quite cute
Main focus was on introducing new Educational Informatics students to delights of SL last Friday. Apart from adding last touches to their village, was updating various boxes of freebies and landmarks, creating a special t-shirt and making out instruction sheet..

Was ably assisted, on the day, by Pete and Maggie. However on whole new students seemed to grasp idea v. quickly with minimal box-on-head activity, and leaving scarcely any litter.
After initial induction in the Build area to practice moving about, communicating & buying boxes, used the Mysti chair to zoom round island and then up to their new home, the Educational Informatics village in the sky.

People were keen to claim their new homes, so they learnt how to create textures with name on and upload them - just one student left with no home as yet. Meant was not as much time as hoped for looking at sample of educational places, but a few students went with me to look at Metaphor's boardwalk (as described in previous blog). Fortunately computers behaving much better than last year - not so cludgey and do not crash as often.

The previous night, had given a tour to a group of Adra's students, from the University of Hawaii.
Started at CILR, looked at first year posters and then again whizzed round on Mysti chair and dropped then in Edu Informatics village. Had set up broom ride to 7 Pillars, and enjoyed watching people setting off on the brooms at regular intervals. From the 7 Pillars, tis but a drop down to the Opinionator. You can see us trying this out: I had made statement "I really like pizza" and people were choosing appropriate response (agree, disagree etc.) Final stop was nearby common room (with its new trampoline).

Apparently trampoline got the biggest laugh, so was worth the purchase. This is me, bouncing.

Halloween

Halloween castles created: 1 (good); No of witch brooms owned: 10 (good); No. of freebie Halloween items collected: 25 (if you count all the earrings separately)

Halloween seems to be Big Thing in SL. Can scarcely move for pumpkins. Am swept up in general hysteria and celebrate by creating Halloween Castle out of freebies. First part is Castle, which got in Freebie Corner of House of Effulgence (maker of v. good japanese dewellings inc. the one I'm using as my office). Castle looks as if made from grey cardboard and has no windows, so would be v. depressing as home, but is ideally suited for task in hand.

Have collected various pumpkins, and witches hats, including ones from the University of Guelph Library in SL, which had pleasant aspect like RL Guelph uni library. Also make liberal use of LL freebie autumn tree (puportedly an oak, but seems general Autumnal to me). Had bought gothic room as one of potential student houses (and was indeed third room to be snapped up) and whilst room was not copyable, gothic draping that came with it was, so able to use that to festoon castle.

Did invest $50 on a coffin that you can lie in (see pic) and $40 on a tombstone, but Pile of Treasure, assorted dwarf mining tools, torch and wings were found as freebies. Then created posters with landmarks to some of the most delectable freebies, vis:

- Pumpkin chair

- Witches broom with 10 poses (as seen in first pic)

- Witchy shoes

- Trick or treat bag

- Sculptie necklace

- Very strange item that you wear consisting of bird with pumpkin in beak.

Piece de resistence was perhaps large pumpkin carriage which had in fact collected weeks before an rediscovered in Inventory just in time. Is perhaps worth mentioning in passing that inventory now contains 6, 781 items, so easy to mislay the odd vehicle.

Also made it challenge to find outfit consisting entirely of freebies. Found ensemble that seemed quite elegant, although skirt was in fact not free at all but a Scripted number and in this garb I led my 2nd session with the students on Monday. Will blog more about that in due course (i.e. student activities, not sculpted skirts)

Completed free aspect by using skirt from Halloween Lolita outfit snaffled from Kiki's closet, and made brief sortie to a Halloween party at the Haunted House of Gothic Literature. However, as is often the case with these US led events in SL, by then it was 2 in the morning and so gave up rather swiftly. In any case whilst costume would have done v. well for RL event, soon realised had no chance when were other people appearing as giant pumpkins, blasted trees and the like.