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.

Library tour, marshmallows, cave

Libraries toured: 5 (good); Marshmallows consumed: (well none, actually); Caves created: 1 (same old, same old)

As part of SLEDcc conference there was a library tour. Assembled on ISTE and could take a library hoodie and a notecard with LMs of places to visit. Also encouraged to join ISTE Tours group so that could get group IMs with info on where to go next etc. Good idea except that various Group functions weren't working so in end although managed to join group, still the organiser Corinne (who worked v. hard BTW) had to go round saying "meet in library XX in 10 mins" and so forth (here she is in 2nd pic, while I'm upstairs in McGill's library).

In terms of libraries main thing that came out for me was that I need to do library tours more often. Although there were libraries where ... there wasn't much to be frank, although some of them looked quite cool, are certainly a lot more then when I last toured round and some of them with more stuff, new layouts etc. etc.
Ended up (after various exploits inc. crashing out, reentering as vapour cloud, losing tour etc etc) in Stanford Uni library, which was basically a giant hall of links to library catalogues and so forth (hmmm).

Our tour leader tried to tp to next place and inexplicably landed in strange subterranean area under library. We all joined her, and when we found a hidey hold with a fire and crates, Georgette produced some marshmallows and we had a pleasant social interlude until it was time for the official social interlude at the end of the day.

Decided that would be nice to have a similar bolt hole on Infolit and did TRY to create one, but turned into idyllic rather than grunge - seem to be drawn inescapably to waterfalls, mossy ferns etc. Will have to give self talking to and try again. In fact in terms af getting steep walls have worked out what need to do landscape-wise ie need to start with flat land and raise spikes of land around it (rather than trying to burrow into side of existing hill as did here.

Conference, Dancing

Workshops completed: 1 (good); Librarians carried on virtual bus tour: 16 (good); conference discos attended in RL: 1 (tiring)

Have completed 2nd workshop at LILAC conference. Seemed to go fairly well, and had extra time so was able to fit in tour of island. This was using Mystihud device where you can create chairs which follow you around (in fact can specify that they follow around anyone in vicinity so envisage some merriment in attaching sets of follow-chairs to unsuspecting friends).

Tour guide effect was heightened by fact that Pam, Ishbel and I were carrying lilac umbrellas so that could be readily identified by delegates. Anyway did indeed feel like guided tour as zoomed along towing rows of seats, and only had one real glitch when initially pressed PAGE UP when meant to press PAGE DOWN so almost got lost in stratosphere right at the start. Much jocular talk from passengers of feeling sick, can imagine might feel a bit odd. Though of course when new to SL this is probably just one more piece of oddness.

Was helped by PG student Alane inworld and was only after session was over that realised that hadn’t actually communicated to him fact that had ended. Hopefully disappearance of avatars signalled end but still was rather rude and hope has not soured good staff-student relationships etc. etc.
In session itself had usual issues of box opening, wearing carpets etc. and because of proliferation of conference boxes on ground at one point wasted some time trying to get delegate to copy someone else’s box, felt v. stupid.
At end of day lots more people signed up to Information Literacy Group, hurrah, and have promised to organise more events.

RL conference dinner on previous evening held in Liverpool City Halls, v. grand. As usual included disco after dinner and enjoyed disporting in party frock. Various pros and cons to RL vs. SL dancing.
Pros of RL dancing:
- exercising, therefore healthy;
- general enjoyment of bopping around to beat;
- can make whatever movements you want, within physical limitations, thus expressing individual creativity.
Cons of RL dancing;
- get tired when have been dancing for – well, for not very long, really;
- feet start hurting unless wearing v. sensible shoes;
- cannot adjust volume;
- no dancing and drinking at same time;
- spontaneous synchronised group dancing impossibility unless happen to REALLY be in film version of your own life.

Conference

Conference workshop sessions delivered: 1 (good); No of platefuls of nosh eaten at RL conference reception: 2 (bad; in terms of calories consumed, that is); No of "girl next door" avatars collected on island: 10 (approx)
Am at LILAC information literacy conference at which highlight is of course series of 2 workshops on SL given by Ishbel and me. Maggie cannot be with us for RL reasons. We were lucky that Pam Ribble, all round SL librarian and SL mentor, works at the uni where conference is based. Is all v. strange in that Ishbel and Pam and I are all meeting up for first time in RL and getting used to the different coloured hair, larger waistlines etc. (ahem) of our SL friends.

Also fortunately technology works v. well with faster speed than at own desktop. Had about 22 people in session yesterday, almost all newbies and thus the proliferation of Girl Next Door avatars in original form, but soon participants were donning t-shirts, skirts, boxes, flying carpets etc. in traditional fashion.Were a couple of people who still hadn't managed to get own avatars due to various glitches, which is v. frustrating for them. One person worked somewhere where they weren't even allowed to access the Second Life website, let along SL itself.

Anyway, was v.v. exciting to see all these people on the island milling around in jocular fashion. Session was only 45 mins. in toto and flashed passed. Thus only took a few pics at end and one shows people in various stages of dress and wearing their sparklers etc., and second one shows usual litter left after the session with Conference Boxes (note attractive lilac theme) for me to clear up.

Final compilation pic is me and Ishbel attending to LILAC conference house beforehand but in fact not sure anyone got as far as stumblng into it. Thought that counts though, eh.