I celebrate my Rez day with the cats

No of years in SL: 5 (good); No. of cats in SL: 5 (furry; well, sort of); No. of times interviewed in SL: lost count (bad)

Another year another Rez Day and here I am celebrating my 5th, with the same old animated birthday cake over my head. Earlier in the day had been marginally more social.
Had been asked by Kali to transcribe at the VWER meeting, and so had hour rattling away at keyboard. Up side is that had to stay awake and pay attention, down side is that by end fingers felt partially detached from hands through overuse.

Took along newest kitty acquisition, vis, Tassie. She is seal point siamese, and is named after The Silver Tassie, as in Burns' poem. In fact almost called her Tassel*, but thought that sounded too much like I was considering using her tail for a bell-pull. Since she is still only a few days old, she sits on my shoulder rather than being held, which is very much in the cute-or-what-category. Can see in the 2nd pic what Tassie looked like when newly rezzed i.e. small lump of clay.

Returning to subject of Rez Day, had thought about attaching sign to head with something amusing e.g. Rez Day Girl! However a mere nanosecond of reflection revealed that this would not be amusing at all, so didn't. Did receive one IM from someone wishing happy rez day, so am grateful for small mercies. Outside SL have reached stage where get v. few actual birthday cards. Thank goodness for Facebook, as got lots of Happy Birthdays on there, where would one be without social networking.

After the VWER meeting, got interviewed about teaching in SL, by a PhD student. Was thinking that could probably get article out of analysing all the squillions of interviews I've given about my teaching in SL. Would be interesting to compare what had said each time, though probably only interesting to me.

* I know that Tassie isn't short for Tassel, but they sound jolly similar.

Buttering parsnips

Educators meetings hosted: one (good); Educators meetings attended: 2 (good); Tools demo-ed: 2 (v. good); Parsnips chopped: one (tasty, I hope); Simultaneous identities logged in: 3 (challenging, but only in retrospect)

Today was host to UK Educators "Second Tuesday" meeting, this being (unsurprisingly) meeting of UK educators that happens on 2nd Tuesday of each month. Had dithered about where to host it, but then opted for Farradane Centre, since felt had not shown off glories of winter wood to enough people, plus it has enough space to do SL tool demos.
Therefore prepared space by:
1) Installing hot chocolate cabin;
2) Removing Floral Bench;
3) Putting more chairs, cushions and cardboard boxes round edge of platform;
4) Cleaning aquarium and feeding fish - nothing more offputting than arriving at a meeting and seeing a tank full of floaters.

As witching hour approached had usual tension as to whether anyone would turn up, but in end was respectable number, including Csteph, who I had "shouted" at in Avatars United about the meeting. So, a use for AU, if only one so far.

Serious bits of meeting were about ideas for the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education conference, and Graham doing useful demos of 2 tools. Unexpected theme of meeting was vegetables, since emerged early on that Silversprite was balancing his Mac on his microwave whilst chopping vegetables for a stew (as pictured here: http://www.twitpic.com/129tuo - the titular parsnip is at the bottom of the picture).

Was much banter which seemed v.v. witty and amusing at the time, and in fact STILL seems at least v. witty and amusing when read the chatlog, however it could be one of those "you had to be there" type of things so will not reproduce it here. At any rate, banter extended to demonstration of wiki tool and Graham's Story Machine, since the nodes in the wiki became parsnips (or to be more precise, pasrnips, lord how we laughed at that typo), onion, butternut squash etc. etc. Discovered that Anyone could alter nodes by clicking on them, so wiki morphed into strange pulsating object, which Graham has kindly left behind so can show it to students this Friday as example. Will have to decide exactly WHAT it is example OF.

VWBPE conversation is in fact mostly being carried out in Google Wave, which deserves a whole post to itself, should I ever get round to it.

2nd meeting was Virtual Worlds Educators Roundtable in which was merely passive audience member whilst - to be v. frank - was processing pics from UK educators meeting. However, meeting was in Voice, so could listen on headphones whilst resizing, adjusting Brightness, uploading to Flickr and adding pictures to Groups and Sets. Did check back to look at local chat, but main questions had to be channeled via Google Moderator, which works quite effciently, but not sure about it as a combo with SL yet. You can add questions, and/or vote on other people's questions so most popular ones come to the top.

I happened to be logged into Blogger as Dimitrova at the time (finishing off a fashion post), so logged into Moderator as her too, and tried to vote on some questions, with mixed success (wasn't always sure why vote hadn't registered).

Until just wrote that down, hadn't really thought about how was logged into 3 different things simultaneously, well actually 4 since was also logged into the university portal, and all with different userids and with 3 different identities.

However, is all me, in the end.

Moving in circles: it's time

Educators meetings attended: lots (good, if circular); No. of these meetings starting at 10pm or later: all (bad)

Have not organised any meetings since Christmas, but have tried to get back into swing of things by attending the Virtual Worlds Educators Roundtable meeting more regularly, and also organising committee meetings for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education.

Unfortunately former start at 10.30 pm on Tuesdays and latter start at 10pm on Weds and Thurs, so means that am getting late night habit again. Broadband reception on mobile stick has also been v. variable, so means that if want to be sure that can actually attend meeting have to go into office (rather than stay at home, attempt connection, login and rez v.v. slowly, catch a few minutes, crash, then stare at little light on mobile stick til it turns requisite blue colour again, indicating some minimal connection, so whole cycle can start over again).

First pic is from VWER meeting on 12th Jan. Unfortunately am now totally unable to remember what topic was, am sure it was riveting at the time. [Added later: I just checked. It was "The Future of SL and VW through the Eyes of M. Linden." I think my contribution consisted of suggesting making it easier to add metadata to Objects. You can't get much more riveting than metadata, can you.][Added still later: realise that had already blogged this in previous entry. But am too lazy to take it out of this one]

2nd pic is from the VWER this week (2nd Feb). This was a talk about ethical and legal isues in SL. This was also revieting, obviously, but am afraid that chief memory is that one of the speakers was wearing a demo skin. Could tell this as it had DEMO written on it in various strategic places. Was distracted into wondering whether this was a mistake (you may remember I spent some time wandering round with demo eyes without realising), or some sort of anti-consumerist statement. Anyway, you can find all the VWER transcripts here: http://vwer.podbean.com/
3rd pic is me at a VWBPE organising committee meeting. This looks v. similar to other pics, except there are less of us. The VWBPE organising committee is chaired by Zana, who is a wizard person, being hardworking, well organised and pleasant. Actual conference is 12-13 March. This pic was taken at around the point when felt compelled to volunteer to do more work, viz being one of the leaders for the poster stream. Unfortunately this has set me up for yet another post-10pm meeting tomorrow, Saturday i.e. starting at 11pm. Hey ho.

On another note, have just seen irritating new essay by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in which they propose doing various things that quite a lot of teachers have been doing for years, as if these were new ideas and they were lone radical voices. They include v. large number of dubious generalisations about collaboration, as if was always Good Thing That Students Love (evidently THEY haven't done much teaching). Not that am AGAINST collaboration, far from it, hasten to add, but is not solution to all world's problems, by any means. Essay is called Innovating the 21st-Century University: It's Time! Lord knows in UK can't get away without constantly Innovating, or at least producing Annual Reflections and Strategic Plans and so forth that say that you are. Perhaps is different in USA?

Was going to link to essay, but then thought, they have publicity enough, why give them another link. If you are v. keen, just copy the title in Google, and up it will pop.

Retreat, Mirror, Sheep

Retreats attended: 1 (v. good); Mirror presets discovered: 1 (amazing); Hours spent taking pictures with mirror presets: 2 (at least) (bad); Information Literate sheep created: 1 (ok, could do better)

Today was Educators Coop retreat. We gathered at the Mesa on the Educators Coop, and then were told to teleport to sparkly new Educators Coop 5, which will be official HQ with breakout areas, auditorium etc. Agenda can be seen in the picture. After brainstorming ideas of what we would like to see, went off to breakout groups.

Inevitably tp-ed initially to WRONG breakout group but then had useful chat with North, Larry and Pirate on cool palm shaded island. These palms are by same person as made the new treehouse on Infolit iSchool. Have in fact just invested in palm trees by this person (Tobias Novi) myself, since are only 2 prims for clump of 4 trees plus you get animated palm tree shadows. Not cheap but is copiable.

I had ideas about creating individual exhibitions for each coop member, and also mentioned the Swine Flu project. We also talked about pooling our induction stuff, having area with freebies, and doing an Educators Coop conference.

After this went back to plenary and chewed over ideas some more. Finally had individual time in which to take picture and make notecard about self. I created a poster (which have now also put up on Infolit) and also a notecard. Rx, who is ace builder etc., put the textures from us all into a slideshow and I show mine being displayed. We talked about research collaboration and Lorri and Mummer both expressed interest in working on virtual/digital/information literacy. So all good stuff.

Yesterday followed up SLED post to discover blog entry which explains how to make the Linden water reflect like a mirror: http://zonjacapalini.wordpress.com/
guides/mirror-water/. Was immediately bewitched since Infolit island looks v.v. cool, with all the trees, bays, hills etc. Will have post just on that, but can see effect in pic of Educators Coop 5 at the top of this blog entry.

So on to the sheep. Spent very end of day (or should I say early morning) adapting a sheep I had received as a carrier for a notecard for some event or other. It was full perms, so retextured its coat back to wool, lowered sound and frequency of baa-ing (since baa-ing is only really cute for the first 5 mins you hear it) and created a notecard with some information literacy definitions.

Sheep now stands outside Centre for Information Literacy Research and will either give notecard on touch or (I hope, must test it with Dimitrova) you can buy sheep/notecard for zero Linden.

Plan whole flock of these with different notecards in. I am calling it Woolley the Information Literate Sheep.

Visit, learning, conference, time passes

Visitors from GFU: 6 (good); Conferences volunteered for: 1 (good - I think); GIS objects created: 4 (v.good); Dawns watched over Educational Informatics Island: 1 (at least)

Gosh, see that is nearly 2 weeks since last blogged. My how time flies when one is dashing around trying to do RL learning, teaching and assessment whilst maintaining one's SL wardrobe at the cutting edge of fashion.

Have been putting almost-finishing touches to Educational Informatics island, and one evening had to collapse exhausted into a hammock to recover a little before rising refreshed to face a new day of shopping. Island (in sky over Infolit iSchool) is for the RL class Inf6011 Educational Informatics. Idea is that each member (there are only 11 of them) will claim a house. In each house is a poster board with a landmark and notecard giver in it. People have to find an educational place in SL, take a pic of it, and also put in a landmark and write a notecard with an educational critique. They will talk about this in a Show and Tell session after Easter.

A few more of them have already been into SL, and the thing kicks of properly next Friday. In the meantime I was able to show it off as the final destination on the tour of Infolit iSchool given to educators from George Fox University, led by Robin. Maggie joined us for this last bit, and people seemed to enjoy it (2 middle photos show visit).

There is a tutor's room, where North (who is doing a session for us) will probably put up a link. Also installed Graham's Story Machine which people liked. Am sort of hoping that one of students will want to get to grips with it and do something interesting, as is embarrassingly long time ago that was given a demo by Graham.

Have drifted into organising committee for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference being held in March - turned up to one meeting and was struck by lack of Europeans so felt should get involved. Have volunteered to chair one session and also suggested a couple of keynotes, one of which (Jackie) was agreed on, so that introduces a European element at least.

Also have gone to some Educators Coop meetings. With RxTopGun's CSI Austin made mistake of going home and logging in from there. Meant that couldn't see starting video properly, got stuck etc etc so didn't have full experience. Is pity, since is v. cute activity: first you enter a film theatre & see a video showing someone going to a rooftop bar and keeling over dead. Then you go THROUGH the film screen and fall down to the entrance to the building where the crime took place. You tp up to the bar where the woman died and there she is in a dramatic spotlight. Clicking on a board takes you to a website where you get different bits of info and then to have to answer some questions about what happened to her. Should have said earlier that is pharmacy course, so you can see the CSI connection.

Last meeting was more successful as logged in from work. Gadget gave demonstration of kits used in SL labs for a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) course (see picture). Very cool, and Gadget said that some students had commented about SL enabling them understand more through touching the objects they created with the kits.

Discussion, hotness, changes

Educational meetings attended: 2 (good); Teleport signs reset: 3 (bad); Attempted pick-up lines: 1 (bad)

Attended 2 meetings tonight, namely regular Tuesday meeting at Montclair Uni and (for first time) Educator's Coop meeting. At Montclair, Fleep and Kitty were talking about SLCC conf in Tampa and SL in September. Have had paper accepted for inworld version of conf., obviously v. good, and one referee said was excellent proposal, so must remind self exactly what it was I proposed, ahem. During session had busy time IM-ing Robin and Zotorah about their contribution to Infolit discussion series.

Tomorrow is exciting event on island, since Jackie is Inducting colleagues from School of Education. Tp-ed back there after meeting to sort out a few teleporting boards, which had taken it into their heads to unset themselves and teleport people to apparently random locations on island.

Whilst loitering on Regent Plaza was accosted by strange avatar who started conversation with "UR hot" opening gambit, one to which was not able to respond immediately in desired brisk and chilling fashion since laginess meant that was in fact bumping into admirer in manner that could be misconstrued. However, eventually managed to get a few statements out in which stressed age and attempted to say things in proper sentences hoping thus to indicate dullness and general un-hot nature.

Was slightly disconcerted when, photoshopping pictures from Montclair meeting, noticed same avatar sitting round discussion table. Was he then another educator? Are these meeting secretly treated as pick-up events? Hmmm. Rather unwilling to change into trousers and high necked shirts just on off chance that fellow educator will mistake display of leg for virtual come-on.

No such probs at later meeting in Educators' Coop, which am very pleased to have been invited into. Interesting discussion about what other people plan (the others have land in the Coop itself) - lots of variety plus a couple of people specifically interested in information literacy which is v.v. exciting indeed. Ended session with North doing a chicken dance, but unfortunately missed the photo opportunity.

SLCC conference (2)

Days of conference attended: 2 (good); Info science lecturers contacted: 1 (good); Freebie dresses picked up: about 50 (baffling); Freebie academic gowns picked up: several (v. good)

Started this post totally alone in Muriel Cooper Coliseum, on NMC (New Media Center) conference island, listening to first session in today's Second Life Community Convention conference. The slideshare tag is http://www.slideshare.net/tag/slccedu07 (though not everyone used it). Link to proceedings is http://www.simteach.com/slccedu07proceedings.pdf. There was audio-only broadcast in SL, and at least today you could hear it. Wondered if people in RL in conference centre could see me (turns out, not). ppt of 1st talk is here - experiential learning with different activities.

More people came along for 2nd session, about the Nutrition Game. People took a day's virtual meals in SL, and the food had nutritional info on it. At the end of the day the participants were told the implications of their diet and asked various questions e.g. whether they had learnt anything (answer: they thought they had). The paper is in the proceedings and there is a wiki which has info on this, and on the subject of the third session, the Appalation environmental game.

With third had curious experience of listening to a video being played to people in Chicago - some clear description but quite a few pauses while people in Chicago could watch things on screen. Quite soothing and we were given web address for the video, namely http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPcXOgANdyc. Sneblen Dagger and Desideria Stockton did a grand job of trying to find slides, web addresses etc.

"Gosh, this is cool" (I wrote at the time) "I'm listening to a transmission from Chicago sitting in my Cossack Jacket and First Blush dress with others from different parts of the world" Well, mostly different parts of the USA. An alternative view, of course, would be that I was one sad person sitting at my computer on a Bank Holiday Sunday afternoon.

The fourth speaker talked about Violence Prevention in Second Life: creating a simulation of a violent city area in the USA so that people training "violence interrupters" in RL can give these people opportunities to train without exposing themself on RL violent streets. Their SL island is CeaseFire Island. They use voice - that's probably quite important for this application. There is also a full paper from them in the proceedings.

One of the issues that was touched on in questions and backchannel was when you needed to create something tailored and contained, and when use what was there in other parts of SL already.

Crashed out a few times, including annoying interlude during question session after these 1st set of talks, when decided to log back in using computer with superior graphics card in student lab, but had (v.stupid) forgotten they have no sound at all so experience became just a bit TOO soothing i.e. sitting in virtual conference centre where is no movement or chat. Even stupider, then tried to log back in on other computer and was ejected for trying to log on from 2 places simultaneously.

When finally got back in, was talk on Salamander project (see ppt here), aiming to index educational objects, builds etc etc in SL, with people joining in on this, indicating what the objects etc. a useful for and evaluating them. It builds on Merlot which has been a project to archive, index and evaluate educational resources in the real world. In fact think that I have something nominated in Merlot, but to be honest have not used it myself. Am always a bit sceptical about this "reuse of learning objects" business. Is interesting to look at what others do, but have not found much would want to reuse directly (mean more generally, not just Merlot). The actual wiki is at http://www.eduisland.net/salamanderwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page I wondered whether library and information professionals were involved, and someone said they were.....

During questions from this session it emerged that North Lamar is also in an information Dept. He owns TWO islands and has a blog at http://educatorscoop.org/blog. I offered him Friendship and he accepted. In fact remember he presented at the conference the other day, plus I think I might have looked round one of his islands. Will make contact after conference as looks like could have common interests.

In the break I zoomed round the area near Ishbel's and Citril's looking at the possibilities and what sort of neighbours there were. Some looked promising, some ..... possibly didn't e.g. the owners who mostly seemed to belong to sex groups.

Anyway, back at the conf. it was the session on SL library and Info Island. Barbara Galik, Bradley University, US (RL name) talked about what they have done for students and staff at her university, where it was sounding like they have been pioneers in their institution & have got a Dean involved in SL. Dewey Jung (SL name) talked about his involvement including with school librarians. He mentioned the Elven Institute "The ELVEN Institute's mission is to assist preK-12 educators and librarians to envision, construct, and use engaging virtual learning environments in order to demonstrate and document their value in increasing student achievement and growth." (http://elveninstitute.org/ this didn't have anything except a home page & list of board members when I looked)

I crashed out in the final session and just came back for questions at the end. Some people in the RL conference said that the conference had seemed rather transmissive (though that not actual word used) and that interaction with SL would have been good. I said I thought that there could have been more in SL perhaps with participation from those who couldn't attend RL conf. Also thought afterwards that ideally would be reciprocal - some sessions in RL where they observe/hear SL sessions and engage us in discussion. Would have to be short "presentation" part, though. Would seem odd to be in SL conference session where can't immediately zoom off to web or indeed zoom off for coffee or a RL chat without anyone at the conf. noticing.

Apparently there was no coffee at the conference. Cannot conceive of conf. in UK being organised without tea/coffee breaks, riot would ensue. Not saying this is good thing, of course, but golden rule for organising events in UK is to make sure refreshments turn up on time and preferably exceed people's expectations.

After conf. was finished flew round NMC conference island. Interesting, lots of nice inlets and mountain paths, would like to have similar on my island. Means there is less usable land, but think make sit lot more exciting. Discovered there was the Darumi Picnic "A capella" artwork installed (see pic with coloured objects). This is the 3rd place I've seen it, it gets everywhere. Also v. good conference shop with immense no. of freebies making up for lack of SLCC conference bag. Took one item with innumerable dresses, and another which included female academic gown (see pic, think I would look cuter in academic gown if had blue hair like this). Think can only get on island if at conference, so took copies of male and female academic gowns for various Friends, can have fun parading round in them. Wonder if Ede and Ravenscroft exists yet in SL (this is UK firm with gown monopoly in RL).

Left this freebie-grabbing orgy to meet Harumi (in Luna - see 2nd-last pic- , then Bedfordia after we got trapped in the basement of a sinister looking factory) and then have chat at Ishbel's house. Ah, the social whirl.

Fixing things; Visit; Fashion

Guided visits: 1 (good); Items fixed in Centre for Information Literacy Research Office: 2 (good, but could do better); Outfits bought: 1 (unless you count the leggings and shrugs in which case it's about 20)

After orgy of SL activity leading up to CILR office launch have tried to spend less time in SL and more in catching up with RL work backlog plus enjoying fact that this seems to be week in which North of England has its summer.

Was some essential SL work, namely fixing copyable bear that noone could copy and suggestions box in which noone could leave suggestions. Main prob. was issue of Permissions which appear complex and not entirely satisfactory even when know what you are doing, to judge by various posting and tutorials found.

In terms of bear have enabled people to Buy it for zero Linden Dollars which appears to work. In terms of box, have replaced Potlatch Box with simple 1 prim box in which people can drop notecards if members of Information Literacy Group. Aim is to collect suggestions on future events in Centre and MK has already suggested 2 ideas, hurrah.

Do not point out in box's instructions that can obviously join IL Group briefly in order to drop suggestion and then unjoin from IL Group once suggestion dropped. Hopefully people with constructive suggestions will work this out and spammers won't. Suppose it is rule of Life that if anything will be other way round i.e. people wanting to cause trouble will do so.

Other big SL activity since last writing was visit to meeting space (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wasp/74/31/86/) of Australian educators, with guided tour from Jokay Wollongong and Sean McDunnough. Jokay and Sean have excellent Second Life in Education wiki at http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/. AF was there too, always nice to have someone you know turn up at these events. Was amusing incident with broom in hairdressing salon, also whilst everyone sitting professionally in conference forum think outsider intruded to perform dance on stage and fart but everyone ignored politely and continued listening to Sean talking about educational approaches. Believe this behaviour called Griefing.

Event useful for learning movement and conversation skills as well as learning about education. Shown various info boards, conference hall & also sim of hairdressing salon for use by hairdressing students to learn communication skills etc. (see second photo) There are some more pics of this event by Jokay on flickr e.g. this one (that's me with the blue hair and long black skirt)

Finally could not get through last days without usual shopping excursions have found good place to buy leggings and shrugs, staples in any wardrobe, from Frustrated Inc. Discovered this place through Closet Crisis, v. good blog at http://www.closetcrisis.com/

Last photos shows self in consumption mode.

Invitation, freebies

Invitations received: 1 (good); Freebies gathered: 3 (good); Opportunities missed: 1 (bad)

Receive IM from UK Educators Group "You are invited to join other educators and friends for a gathering on MCLC 1 and 2 on Thursday evening" (19th): Gives detailed timetable e.g. at 12.45 would be "looking at re-imagining education in light of what we now know about learning and using the new emerging tools and technologies." Alas in RL will be on travels at that point so will not be able to join discussion in Pit or party afterwards as promisied.

Am obviously failing to get into information loop as notice that was discussion in Bloggers Cafe 2 nights ago that looked v. interesting but did not know. As information literate person (allegedly) is naturally v. distressing and must rectify.

Decide to sus out Blogher venue. Travel to Hyperstring Island and pick up exhibition freebies, namely bunch of flowers (see pic) and also 2 business suits for $10 each. Bunch of flowers does not go with outfit. Pity.