LLL3D

Second Life Goodies

Andy Powell of Eduserv has a Second Life avatar called Art Fossett who write a blog.

In recent posts Andy/Art has made available two packages that look interesting and are free:

A meeting pod "a small, floating, meeting room with 8 scripted seats and a hand-raising, automated chairing facility"

Second Friend tweeter this works with his Second Friend package to send out bubbles of tweets

A workshop in Portsmouth

From the UK Higher Education Academy (HEA):

The Higher Education Academy Centre for ICS in conjunction with the University of Portsmouth is running a workshop on Second Life in Portsmouth on 10^th June.

This hands on workshop is aimed at colleagues who already have avatars and some experience of the environment but are unsure of where to go next! The plan for the day is to learn form more experienced practitioners and to hear how others are using this technology in teaching.

As this is a lab based workshop numbers are limited, so if you would like to book a place, please follow the link;

http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/events/eventbook.php?id=199

Latest “snapshot” of Second Life development in UK universities and colleges

There is a post on the JISC email list summarising the latest EduServ sponsored "Snapshot" of use of Second Life in UK universities and colleges.

There is a link to the report at: http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/sl/uksnapshot052008.

I haven't yet read it in detail but it would be interesting to know why these chose to limit the study (or at least the title) to "Second Life".

NMC Virtual Learning Prizes

The New Media Consortium are offering US$ 100,000 worth of prizes intended to create a collection of innovative open-source learning experiences in either Second Life or Wonderland. This looks a great way to get support in developing a small idea (you get $4,500 worth of development).

Paper Review: Sun Services White Paper January 2008

Paper Review: Sun Services White Paper January 2008 Current Reality and Future Vision: Open Virtual Worlds For some time now the lack of a more general overview to work together with the more detailed considerations of emerging MUVE technologies has impacted upon the ability of researchers and designers to consider the place of 3D worlds in the [...]

SL Master Class

Copied from an email list: The Higher Education Academy Centre for ICS in conjunction with the University of Portsmouth is running a Master Class on 2nd Life at Portsmouth on 10th June 2008. There is considerable expertise at Portsmouth on 2nd Life and its use in Education. The format of the day will be very much hands [...]

Beginner’s info for the Second Life

Second Life (SL) is the name for the virtual reality world that you can enter and explore for free. You move there in space and over the beautiful landscapes in the form of your representative in the virtual computer world.This representative is called the avatar. He or she walks on the computer landscape as you [...]

More Hamlet in SL

Just seen this announcement: “On Shakespeare’s birthday, the SL Shakespeare Company invites you to witnesss a special advance showing of our upcoming Hamlet miniproduction. Please join us at the SL Globe Theatre on Wednesday, 4/23 at 6 PM SLT., for a self-contained Act 3, Scene 2, a.k.a., The Mousetrap SL Globe Theatre: http://SLurl.com/secondlife/sLiterary/23/13/23 http://playbills.SLshakespeare.com“6pm SLT on 23rd April is [...]

April Events on jokaydia

There are a number of events on the Second Life island of: jokaydia over the weekend on 18/20th April, everyone is invited. Jo Kay is based in Australia, but she has organised some of the events at Europe friendly times. For more details visit: http://jokaydia.com/jokaydia-events-calendar/april-events-on-jokaydia/ If you don’t get chance to join the events it is still worth [...]

Second Life and Graphics Cards

There was recently an update to Second Life, this is a "required download" (that is you must download it to be able to get in-world). I have now downloaded it on to each of the 3 computers I use regularly, and am about to make a request that the download is done on our lab machines.

Second Life now moans about the graphics card on two of the three computers, and suggest that I would like to upgrade, fortunately it does continue to run, and I haven't noticed any significant difference.

However such changes could be the source of a problem if you were wanting to run a class for 20 people and discovered that your computers were not good enough. It would be good practice if providers were to offer to give you 12 months notice that their worlds were going to require you to upgrade your computer.