Spent a lot of time in the world yesterday

Longer than normal for me. I went to a lecture about a project called Global Kids. They have an island on the teen grid. THis summer they held an inworld summer camp to teach leadership and political activism. The kids looked at the issue of other children being sold into the sex trade. They created a maze to teach kids on the teen grid about the plight of these slaves. It was an impressive presentation and an even more impressive project. I learned a lot about the Teen Grid - and realized there's a lot more to find out. Adults can't go there and wander around. If you have an island you have to stay there and kids come to you.

If we were thinking of having an island in the world to reach out to prospective freshmen - we'd need to have regular events, things for them to do, reasons for htem to come and to come back. I think the only way it will owrk is if we get some freshmen who are not 18 yet to join and sort of act as ambassadors - to help other students organize events on our space. SO it's not just grownups talking at them. SOunds like the kids on the teen grid want to DO - build, talk, organize. They want to learn things. They also want to be violent and provocative - play acting maybe?

And serious lag - I could hear the talk fine. The audio stream was a neat addition tohte talk. At one point tho - when we were all supposed to get up and do something - my screen froze. more literally my avatar froze - i could turn the camera left and right but i couldn't walk or fly. I quit SL and came back in. The lag was bad for a couple of minutes and then i was ok but all the people that had been there before were gone (I"m talking just a couple of minutes) or their avatars didn't draw.

Then i went to the TeaZers Island looking for a class on how to make an apple. I could see a whole bunch of people on the mini-map. I just knew that was the class. But when i went to that location - loiterally walked over the people on the map - no one was there. SOmeone else looking around suggested i fly up to look over hte roofs - maybe the class was in one of the other buildings. As I flew up i noticed a lot of things int he air - buildings and green areas. I kept flying - and hovering above the land I had just been walking on was a grey cube with a big green open area and a class full of people eating their apples. Rats. I had missed the class but found hte classroom. I waited around awhile for hte next class. We learned how to make Devo hats. I realized i don't know how to do the camera controls right. The layers of hte hat were small (my head is small - duh) and when I linked my layers I missed the top one. Arggh. I eventually got them together and attached them to my hand (I didn't want to mess up my pretty hair) Whew.

The students in my class are supposed to be going to classes this week. I realize now I want to go to more because building stuff in the world is a lot of fun. It also makes me really really appreciate all the work that goes into some of these huge builds. I realize they're probably making htem in graphics packages and importing htem but they have to assemble the pieces and test them and get them just so on the property. Man oh man. A lot of work.

If we get a piece of land for this project with Rachel W. and Austra we'll need to do a little building for the presentation. it would be cool to have some chairs in a semicircle. And even cooler to plan something for people to get up and do - not a straight lecture but some activity. Even a poll. Gotta look around at what kinds of things are available to buy to add to our presentation. I bought a cool whiteboard - gonna try it in class next week - you supposedly just drag textures (pictures) on to it for everyone to see. I'd like to have easels with pictures on them of cool things we've seen. And you touch the picture to get a notecard of information about the project.

More later

I went to a talk in world about space tourism. Good slides and i'm getting used to the text lecture style. Good comments from the crowd too.

playing along

So we're playing the game - people don't seem as excited as last semester. I wonder if it's because I'm not discovering new stuff along with them like last semester when it was all new and shiny. there's still plenty i don't know of course but the basics aren't as exciting as before. And right away we had the big security hack and some folks (me included) lost our avatars. that was kind of off putting. And the game isn't giving them money like last semester so they aren't buying stuff. I think we'll have to require putting some money into the game next semester - if they do it when hthey sign up they get free money. They're kind of frustrated by not having clothes.

The in world small group discussion worked pretty good. Small groups went to one of 4 places I found and discussed some questions i gave them. They weren't good questions however - didn't take people long. I mostly just wanted people to get used to talking which they did but it didn't take as long as i thought it would.

I need to post some pics of my new character. CHanging to a guy is tough - i miss my old male character from before the security hack. Oh well - i'll get over it - ha ha.