With Esme’s help, and that is a serious understatement, I got my Inspiration timeline created at MCGC. She is a marvel. I have vowed to take remedial building workshops to improve my skills. I believe I can learn to build, like the little engine that could. I think I can, I think I can. I realized as she was helping to create the walkway with my timeline that we were working with geometry and algebra. Duh. Just another example of the practical applications for SL in the classroom. Someone like me…who although may appear to be linear (hence the lengthy timeline) is actually a very visual person that likes to do things hands-on to learn best.

Here is picture of the timeline as it resides now on the MCGC Island as well as happily in my inventory. HMMM maybe I will put it on the lawn in front of DY building on LLI.

I am as happy as a clam…so I might just go dig some. Thanks again Esme.

Thanks to TT who was building at the sandbox, I have new clothes for the party. I am exhausted from the process (I did have a little fun he he). He teleported me to Freebie Dungeon and I went a little wild. All the clothes were free, but I could not resist buying some baubles (just like in RL) to augment my dress and shoes that sparkle.

I tried on clothes, lost my hair, changed outfits, lost my hair, tried on shoes, lost my hair, adorned earrings, lost my hair. There is a trend. I kept teleporting back to LLI where I knew no one would see me hairless and in my birthday suit while I got the look I wanted.

Now if I can remember how Esme and the book told me to save outfit so you can switch back and forth.

Here is a sneak look at Pamet’s party outfit. Dorothy your red shoes cannot compare to mine.I feel like I am going to the junior prom.

I just got a phone call from a Tech Director from Moore County Schools in North Carolina. He had found LLI in Second Life and was calling me to ask questions about SL. His superintendent had recently been to a conference and had heard about using SL in education. He referred to me as on the cutting edge. If he only knew how dull the edge was with me a SL. I tried shopping for clothes last night for the last class soiree and failed miserably in my shopping efforts,  But, thanks to this class i was able to give him a lot of information that he did not have about SL. I also turned him on to Peggy Sheehy and Ramapo Island.

What was most interesting about our conversation was that he did not have any idea that kids and adults were isolated from one another. He had found it odd that there was only colleges and universities present and wondered where you would find K-12 institutions which is why, I am sure, he contacted me.

The following is posted from the forums for my personal preservation:

First, I checked the copyright date and was interested to find this was written 2000. A time long before the volcanic eruption that created SL. It is difficult for me to take the wayback machine and think of the community of inquiry prior to my experiences in MOODLE and SL, since I do not have much to base any prior knowledge. My Masters’ work was conducted in world, in the Grad Center, with regular face to face meetings. We had the benefit of synchronous and asynchronous, while interacting with one another during class and the connection of a real time instructor.

I will fast forward to Spring 2008, Teaching and Learning in Virtual Worlds. All three of the required elements, due to the avatars, the class meetings and the guidance of our instructor has being strongly in place. No we have not seen one another but i think we have a pretty good idea of the types of people we all are. Our voices speak in our forums and we can sense angst and uncertainty after difficult tasks. Conversely, we share successes. We have a group in our class actively collaborating on a final project which I hope, we all, can take advantage of using with our teachers for professional development. Jane has asked us all if we would be interested in collaborating with her to better her favs by writing brief descriptions of each of the island to make them easier for the users. We have offered assistance to one another and have developed a sense of collegiality.

I have read posts and had to extend my cognitive presence, I have experienced, “a sense of puzzlement, information exchange, connected ideas and applied new ones.”

The social presence of this world is incredible, if this is not a place to find, “emotion, risk-free expression, collaboration (who of us have not made a friend in-world who has helped us in a difficult situation). This is truly an envrionment where the social presence is rich and engaging.

The teaching presence, was it Jim who counted 500 posts. That is a pretty prolific number. Who has kept the pace, our instructor. She has, “deined and initated discussion topics, shared personal meaning and helped focus our discussion.” This, I am sure, has been a major challenge.

I have just come from a conference regarding technology integration using the many wonderful tools available to educators today. A professional development model was present 23 Things for the 21st Century. Essentially it is a professional development model that gives teachers 23 tasks to complete in 10 weeks to become adept in the world of Web 2.0. The modell is totally online and each student uses a blog to report on their successes and failures with the tasks. I found the idea of having 25 student and having to monitor 25 blogs daunting. It appear to me that for cognitive presence and social presence to exist, the teacher presence would be essential to the success of the online learning experience. The facilitator is key. In the words of Peggy Sheehy, ” A million computers cannot replace one good teacher.”

I went to the NOAA site that was in Esme’s Fav List. I wasn’t too impressed. I think I am jaded because I think there was somewhat of an attempt to emulate the Weather Channel with a plane ride and some other features. None of it was nearly as much fun as extreme action at the Weather Channel Island. I do have to say that NOAA does provide more factual information. if you are looking for a site for students to learn about the oceans and the atmosphere there is information to be found. But compare it to the testis tour…no comparison. Of course, I took a few snapshots. I am finding it interesting that in RL I forget to even bring my camera much less take pictures.

My next few posts are not probably going to be sequential but I want to get some posts made as I get the time. I taught last week and am going to the November Conference in about an hour. Some of my classmates got a little overwhelmed when Esme suggested a flickr account. I have so many Web 2.0 accounts…it is crazy. But I need to experiment with everyone I hear about so I can see whether I can use them with students and teachers. Many of them replicate others so I try to pick and choose the ones I expose teachers to that are the most user friendly and have the most practical applications.

What a disappointment this was. I am not sure what went wrong but I had troubles in SL like never before. My computer crashed several times. At one point I was told I would not even be allowed in SL until about 10 minutes later. I could not hear voice. This was very odd. I have always had the chat box showing who was available to talk and who had the green light that they were talking. That was not showing anywhere. The only thing I could successfully do was IM with classmates. There were times I was prohibited from even moving. I could not fly. Nada! I will be curious to find out what happened to others. I went back in at 8:30 SLT and the meeting space was pretty empty and it appeared that the session had ended.

Oh well…

I have spent the better part of this week at the Weather Island. It is a great place to have fun. It features skiing, mountain biking, a plane ride into a hurricane and surfing.

My first take on the island was….a great place to have fun but was there any real educational value to it. I mean I can do all of these activities but what am I learning about the weather.

This island was created in 2003. That is five years ago. Pretty early adoption by the Weather Channel. I was a little surprised to find the the welcome to Weather Island was done by Stephanie Abrams. Stephanie Abrams is her name in RL. It was funny because I played the introduction last weekend and by brother-in-law calls from the other room, “Hey, that’s Stepanie Abrams.” I was surprised that she used her real name since everyone that I have encountered in SL has another name.

As I said earlier the island has places to ski, bike, surf and ride a plane into a hurricane. This was way fun, particularly the surfing. I was an avid surfer in high school and college and I might as well say thay it had a pretty realistic sensation to it. I even got Esme to join me to “hang ten” as we to say. When I was inside the wave in was a reminder of being in the “green room.” The green room is when you are inside of the wave and it is cresting over the top of you. As for the biking, it was fun, and skiing well I had a lot of trouble getting the boots and skis on. Not surprising because in RL I could never get a pair of ski boots to fit because I have a bad paw. During my skiing experience skiing experience I crashed and burned so much I could not even take pictures. I ended up flying ot of the ski area and landed in the desert! Flying the plane was a hoot. Seeing the eye of the hurricane was great.

As for the Weather Island, I realized after about my fifth visit that the best value the island had for me was learning how to attach articles to me and take them off. I tried some new poses. Learned to follow directions by reading notecards. My evaluation would be that this is a great island to use to learn how to survive in SL but not where to learn about the weather.

I have created a little movie to let other see what an avatar can do at the Weather Island. Enjoy, I did!

This class got up and running faster than our previous one. I think most of us are at least getting more comfortable in SL. Voice continues to be a problem for me. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. Actually, I always get the voice, just not through the headphones. I really want to nail that down. I feel this is a vital skill to have if I ever expect to provide professional development in SL.

This class featured a guest speaker Gus Plisskin/Fred Fuchs from FibreSabre Consulting. He informed us on how we could, as educators use the SL Teen Grid with students. SL has incredible security for keeping adults off of the Teen Grid. He emphasized that if an adult tried to get an account on SL, Linden Labs goes as far as contacting the FBI and report your attempt.

While I considered what of Gus had to say pretty much an infomercial I found it extremely informative. So much so, that when I encountered a Noobie at the ISTE Headquarters looking for Esme on Sunday morning, I was able to tell her things about the Teen Grid and its accessiblity by adults. We even became friends and I promised to email her how to contact Fred which I will do today once I have time.

In the meantime, I have contacted Fred and made inquiries about getting on the Teen Grid. I believe I will get another avatar as suggested and try to participate in an already up and running project in the Teen Grid before I ever consider the purchase of land, etc for my district. I think I can swallow a $2000.00 expense next year. But, before I make this expediture I need to know exactly what project it is and the logistics of completing it with a group of students. I also need to find a teacher willing to take this kind of leap. This possibly may be an after school activity that I organize and work with a teacher to provide.

After Fred left we took a break and then we went into hell mode. Esme had plans for us to break into groups, based on how comfortable we were in SL and the idea of building. We were sent off in different directions to view videos and try to build. Other already more accomplished builders and SLers went with Esme to do an activity around education in SL, I think.

Esme was not gone long! Several frustrated builders were freaking out, include me in the pack. The easy video, building a holiday box, was not showing on the correct screen. We were watching how to make a flag that waves. That is a joke. I couldn’t build the flag pole much less a flag that waves in the wind. We were then led to another video screen but that one showed the same video.

Oh thank you, thank you Eru for being a patient teacher. She helped me and I cannot remember who right now complete our boxes. I will have to go back through the notecard for the class to remember who my equally frustrated partner was. I am still having difficulty with our duel identities. What a lesson in perseverance that was! But we managed to complete our holiday boxes and make it back to the wrap up of class in time.

Esme, as usual, had more planned for us than we could complete. There is a SLOODLE box hanging our there that has me quite curious and a quiz in the forums I am reluctant to take.

Right now what I want to learn the most is how to run a video and ppt on a whiteboard. I feel that will be a very useful skill if I ever want to provide pd in SL for teachers. The verdict is out as to if I will EVER want to build anything in SL. But, I need to practice those skill to be able to make and informed rather than infirmed decision on that one.

PS Subsequent posts in the forums has given some tips on voice in SL. I plan to try them out shortly to try and nail that skill down. I have been a little lax in my work this fortnight as there was the last few days of school and a trip out of town to visit family for a long weekend.