The walking dead Mitsy

Pieces of Mitsy still floating in Eduserv Ocean: many (spooky)

Realised that profile hadn't been updated in ages (much like this blog) and found that some info was out of date etc. etc. so needed to check pick landmarks. One pick is Eduserv Island and was surprised to find it still there since not sure Eduserv even funded any more. Even more surprised to come across pieces of cloned Mitsy still floating beside the old CILR office. Still some bits which move around and mew. No less spooky than it was six years ago.

Chatlogs, missed meeting

Presentations almost attended: 1 (bad**); Chatlogs put online: 5 (good); Planes cancelled: 1 (bad)
Am restored unexpectedly to broadband internet due to cancellation of first leg of trip back from Australia. Thus am currently in hotel room writing this whilst listening to British F1 Grand prix rather than suspended x thousand feet over some part of the globe en route to London.

Thus have taken opportunity to put chatlogs online and doing most of updating to Second Life part to LTEA2008 conference wiki. This is at http://networked-inquiry.pbwiki.com/About+LTEA2008+in+Second+Life

Whilst in location-before-last where had fleeting access to SL attempted to attend a presentation by Art to RL UCISA conf (see http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/tlig/Events/2008/usersupport/programme.aspx where are links to slides etc.). However due to mistranslation of times arrived as he was speaking to final slide (see pic.) Oh well.

** Obviously mean that was bad I missed the presentation, not that presentation was bad.

Evaluating, education, SL

Chatlogs posted: 1 (good); Notecards published to web: 1 (good); Valentine's cake consumed in SL: 2 slices (good); Calories gained: 0 (v.v. good)
Have finally posted the chatlog of the meeting held on 14 Feb 2008, on Evaluating educational interventions in Second Life, particularly education for information literacy , at http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=234. Also since had made rather lengthy notecard decided to post this as document to the web as well: at http://dis.shef.ac.uk/sheila/evaluating-notecard.pdf
Notecard includes links to material from the Eduserv meeting that attended a while back (and never got round to blogging), since part of notecard summarises some of the points from that.


1st pic shows 14 Feb meeting - can see heart shaped Valentine cake in the middle although not everyone stayed to taste it. 2nd pic shows meeting at Eduserv, alluded to a while back, on Measuring impact of SL in education. Advantage of waiting a few weeks before blogging is that someone else will have already done it for you, in this case Art Fossett with v. coherent account at http://artfossett.blogspot.com/2008/01/
thinking-about-learning-impact-of.html. Also he uses same chatlog function as me and the chat from the Eduserv meeting is linked from his post.

Launch!

Centre for Information Literacy Research launched in SL: 1 (v. good); No of people attending: 12 (v. good); Drinks consumed: lots (good); No. of times computer crashed when about to start welcoming speech: 2 (v. bad)

Am recovering from general hysteria induced by hosting first virtual gathering. Generally counted a success and already some nice coverage of event. Art Fossett blogged about event here on his blog and there are excellent photos from Peregrine Juneau here on flickr

Have prepared press release and since have not said on this blog what Centre actually IS , here is the link to the Centre's website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/is/cilr/ . Centre also launched in RL this week and hasn't physical office, is more a focus for information literacy activity & liaising with other researchers. So to have SL office is v. nice as well as giving justification for designing roof gardens and buying launch-party outfits (although as see in pics in end am wearing old butterfly skirt, though with newish top and latest batch of jewellry).
Good things were that 4 other people from my Department attended, plus Maggie Kohime from the library. 2 people (Art and Peregrine) attended from Eduserv (who donated office space). Also were 4 people from outside including IH. Managed to give speech welcoming people (more on that in a moment), Art gave v. elegant speech and I presented gift box. Then were some interesting conversations. Party lasted about 1 hour which is longer than had thought.

Will talk in future posts about various features that installed in office last night in flurry of activity. One of these was the bear poster (Pegegrine has good photo on flickr) of which was rather proud, which instructed people how to copy freebie bear. Bear (illustrated here) is blue in colour with CILR written on ears, "I love information literacy" text hovering over it and a notecard inside with basic info on the Centre plus some useful links etc. on infolit.

Half way through party when drink etc. had oiled wheels of conversation emerged that in fact must have got permissions wrong as people weren't able to copy bear, thus detracting from its cuteness. Will need to investigate this but couldn't fix immediately as bear is formed of linked objects. Lesson here about perils of tinkering with SL scripting when actually have zero idea of how it works and am merely cutting and amending in line with helpful tutorials found through googling on web.
Other major embarrassment was that computer crashed TWICE, of course waiting until was about to begin welcoming speech. Was trying to paste in lines from prepared MS Word script and machine couldn't cope with all activity on screen plus that. When got back in computer evidently had enough, since was only inworld for 3 mins before got dreaded screen of death.

Was saved by colleague who had logged in computer in lab so was able to continue from there. If am going to organise any other events will have to use that from beginning.

Anyway, have other snippets to blog including Embarrassing Photos of Colleagues, but will save that for another time. Visitors had v. good ideas for discussion topics & people kindly saved transcript of session so can pick through it in detail at leisure.

1st photo shows Ishebel, plus Nigl and Yuxuan from my Department (Nigl's photo is also on the sliddeshow behind him). The 2nd photo shows Art's speech, the 3rd photo shows the bear and the fourth the conversation after the launch.