More educational places & Helping newbies

I continued searching places for educational purposes, used SL's search window and found an interesting place called Academy of Second Life, which offers lessions for free forexample in Scripting and Building in SL. One sujects is also Teaching in SL. They do hire new teachers who get a 500 L$ stipend per an hour for their lessions. There are usually 1-3 lessions in a day between 7 AM to 10 AM SL time (17-20 o'clock in Helsinki).

After red some information I teleported myself in "Audiocourses.com - Online audio production and music technology school" and there was a big auditorium in there and some tools for audio production. Seems to be interesting place and needs some more visits.

GQ - Village for new people (newbie) - freebies
I teleported in sort of little village for newbies and found there some avatars. One was a volunteer instructor who helped other avatars. After listening the free lession I met a newbie, who asked if I could help her because she could not unpack boxes. Some items have been packed into boxes so that several items fit in a small packet. I helped her and she learned first how to drag a box to the ground, so that it could be opened and how to copy the contents into the inventory. After she left I got one thing that I should have told: it is not allowed in every spot of SL to drag items on the ground. The owners of the land have usually restricted what can be done; for example flying, building, using the scripts, voice chat etc.

She was gratefull and I turned in good mood. She offered me friendship but I declined it. Insted of it I gave her my Note Card and told her that she could send me an IM (Instant Message) when ever she needed any help. I told her also about the GQ Village where newbies can ask anything and get some important information from instructors and other volunteer SL avatars around the village. I have four friends already in my friend's list, and if I make friends with just anyone after a short conversation, soon my friend's list is totally mess up and I cannot remember who is who.

Well, luckily there is a profile window for each avatar where you can write some free notes about each avatar. From the profile you can always check also the personal information that has been written in some tabs of it.

Then I started to rearrange my own inventory that was a total mess because I had bought lots of free items such as all kind of clothes (shoes, dresses, full costumes for the ball and so on), animations (for example for dancing and for hugging) and objects (for example buildings, plants and vehicles). I tried to figure out what was the purpose of the object because they are not always so clearly titled nor include any instructions.

I found an object called "Screaming MIMI!" which seemed to be sort of rocket. So I sat on the seat in it and it started to give flames and strange increasing noise. Then I touched the rocket and it just started to move with increasing speed. Soon I was high in the sky above the clouds and more...until I reached the atmosphere and sort of space...an there was night time and all the stars were shining. It was beautiful but I was afraid how could I get back to the solid ground.

Luckily you cannot get killed of low oxygen in SL as far as I know. Well the space trip was nice experiment but I decided to stand up so that the rocket just continued its flight and I started to drop down my hands moving all over. Finally I met the ground, my avatar just raised up and shoke its body and all the mud from it and started to smile again. It's so easy in SL to change the mood after the shocking free jump.

Then I started to practise with animations and one newbie saw me dancing and moving my avatar like a maniac. She asked if I had some animations to give her and I gave her several. Then she offered me the friendship and I told her the same words than the other newbie just before. So that is what SL is...trying to make friends with nice avatars/people and learn how SL works. There is lots to learn about. On thing is how to decline all the friendship offers without making the avatars get offended. Personally I just need some more time to get known of other avatars, and expecially the real life people behind them, before making friends...

Seeking info about eLearning in SL

I decided to search some information and places about eLearning from SL. I found some places but stayed longer in Info Island's ICT library. There were lots of info (notecards, tutorials, web links and other items) about using SL as a tool for educational purposes.

I was buying some free scripts for future purposes from the ICT library when I met Madragal Poppy, a student who needed to get to know about the library as her homework assesment. She was very humorous and and clever so we chatted for half an hour this and that, mostly joking about everything. Sometimes it is nice just to relax with funny avatars and real persons behind them.

After she had to leave me beause of her lunch time I wandered throught the library when Gvak Latte said hello. He introduced as a Building Technology Coordinator and teacher in a middle shcool in Anchorage, Alaska. It turned our discussion rapidly focusing on the challenge of education in virtual worlds. We thought about it from both teacher's and student's perspective, agreed that students has grewn in ICT world and got involved about ICT techniques even virtuality already from their childhood, so it is the teacher who has the most challenges to get known about the new possibilities and try to use them with not so good skills.

Gvak had noticed that the interface of SL and the virtual world's many atractions will cause easily a lack of interaction with the learning goal itself instead of focusing on the irrelevant issues. It is not so easy to concentrate when there is happening a lot around your self. It is like this expecially in the first visits into SL when everything is new.

There might be some ways in this gap. One is to restrict the places where one can go and other environmental things, what one must face and must not. Keep it simple and always keep the goals on your mind. It would be a good way to get through some of the orientation islands cause there are good tools to study and learn about interface of the SL with a group or only by oneself.

In Anchorage, Alaska, snow was falled down on the ground at the same time as in Helsinki. As we added each other as friends we noticed that there were "only" 11 hours between us what comes to the time zone differencies. So I might not meet him again for a while in SL. Luckily Instant Messages can be sent also if one is not online.

Some useful information about education in virtual worlds:

• http://ictlibrary.googlepages.com/
• http://www.virtualbridges.net/
• http://www.simteach.com/
• http://www.simteach.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6
• http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life:_Guidelines_for_Educators

Beyond SL & Genoa & Live Concert

My dear friend Toni Cao logged in SL and I contated her at once by SL Instant Messenger. I invited her in Rome and we had an extremly nice conversation about recent issues in SL and real world. Toni is a RL journalist and has a carrier in new media genre for an service that spreads ICT articles all over the Italy for newspapers and online magazines. She uses a lot of her time to be aware about new trends in digital and collaborative medias such as SL. Actually she get paid for living in this virtual world: what a job she has!

Toni brang out a detail of highly respectful Gartner research. It has been estimated that 80 % of world wide internet connected population will have an avatarby by the end of 2011. So why wouldn't we spend some time to get known with these new possibilities of learning and collaboration and - for god sake - living!

Toni is interested in my "sort of research work" about my journey in virtual worldof Second Life. She suggested that she might write an article about my experiences regarding the notes I will make if I only could write a short description about my goals so that she could first show it to her boss. What a wonderful person she is! I promised to think about the nice idea.

She was terrified about the news from Finland. Some of the Italian news papers and web magazines has picked up the kills of eight people in the Jokela high school in Southern Finland. Usually all those news from Finland had concerned about positive issues such as Nokia mobiles and educational Pisa researches. What a sad day on Thursday indeed. Well, life continues but our minds carries now a painful part among the others, more pleasant. This deals somehow with virtual worlds and societies regarding the authorities' statesments because the killer had at least some contacts and had played shooting games in the internet.



Toni lives in Genoa, North Italy and wanted to show me virtual Genoa in SL. We teleported in there and she told me there was a very well detailed old harbour of Genoa in 3D. It really was amazing. Some italian men introduced themselves to us. They were avatars from a group that had a project going on of builing the historic centre of Genoa in SL. They presented us the area and we took a boat and saw nice buildings and sceneries all over.

Later on the guys started to flirt on us! Well, it just was so predictable: it is so italian. Toni is very social and good looking...and I am a blonde myself... no wonder (lol)! After all they got an idea: wanted Toni as a guide regarding to her knowledge of local places and journalistic skills.

After this session Toni wanted to go listen to one of her oldest SL friends, Luigi DiPrima, who was playing guitar and singing in a live concert on the stage. The end of the evening (and maybe half of the night) ran in really nice way listening nice tone of Luigi's voice and fluentguitar playing. I think the audience got what it had come to get: I assume Luigi got tippd quite well. Thatbrings to my mind that I did not have any Linden dollars cause I was still unimployed in SL and did not want to buy any currency. Then Toni just gave me 100 L$ so that I could give 20 L$ as a tip to themusician. The rest I will waste on "free" items. :)

Sound in virtual world. Yes, it really is possible. Not just audio feeds but also live concerts and conferences. Of course avatars can use voice chat also to speak out their thoughts. The quality of sound depends most of all on the capacity of client's computer. In some parts thevoice disconnected while Luigi was singing for an hour. Afterwards he jumped off from the stage, hugged Toni and chatted with us. Very pleasant evening indeed!