Research Presentation in World

Austra and I presented the results of our research on religion in SL tonight. We had a few people attend. They asked good questions and gave us lots of encouraging feedback. It was really stressful tho - whew. You don't get clues about pacing that you might get in RL - like polite coughing and foot shuffling. Everyone looks attentive (and young and beautiful) in SecondLife.

Austra - a senior about ready to graduate - is getting to be an old hand at conference presentations. She presented her own research at a state level conference, this research at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association, and now this in world presentation. She answers tough questions well. She dressed up the area with a slide show of pictures of churches, and a collection of items she's collected at churches through out SecondLife. We put together a landmark laden notecard and a notecard dispenser. We need to add some text to the notecard for people who come to the display when we're not around.

I hope to get the students to do more of these presentations next year - and not wait till the end of the semester when everyone is stressed. I think the students in qualitative research could do presentations about their observations. And in audience research - it would be interesting to get them to present about their companies in world or about the pros and cons of different media - and invite folks from different marketing companies.

We have 2 more presentations on Tuesday. I'll post about them Wednesday and put up more photos.



And - the last picture is one i took of Austra's avatar buried in the dirt - it should be labeled "when terraforming goes horribly wrong" - ha ha! Our benches kept sliding down a little hill. I was trying to raise the land up just a little and smooth it out. Poof - I buried Austra up to her neck when she was away from her computer!

Dr Dobbs Life2.0 Conference

I got to go to the conference a couple of days last week - I do love live events in SL - chance to hang out with people from all kind of companies and backgrounds. This one had great speakers too - Mitch Kapor (creator of Lotus 123) and Philip Rosedale were keynoteres. There were tours of interesting builds, sessions with scrpters and builders. All designed to give people a better understanding of what's going on in world.

Check out my Slide Show!

Another live event

We streamed a talk onto the island today from the RL auditorium. David Macauley was there. What a great speaker. He is famous for his architecture books like Castle and Cathedral. He's working on a book about the human body. He held everyone's attention for over an hour.

A few people came by the Park Communication island to watch part of the talk. We wanted to see if the stream would stay up - and it did. One thing we need is at least 2 computers - one for the broadcasting software and one to use to run SL to interact with visitors and help them get hte video stream going. If we every got a lot of visitors it would be nice to have someone greet them, give them a welcome pack with notecard about the event and maybe an event tshirt. The greeter could offer people Teleport links if needed and just generally answer questions.

We're learning a little more with each presentation. We reached out to a few groups - we'll do more of that in the future. I need to get things on the schedule early enough we can try for some blog coverage - like being in New World Notes and their calendar post each week. I know that's where I find neat stuff to do.

Streamed a presentation live

Saturday morning, David Spiegelman from New Line Cinema gave apresentation to about 25 students on campus in Ithaca. We also streamed it live on the internet and into Secondlife. Here are a couple of pictures. It went pretty good. We had 4 or 5 people come by, including one from Australia (it was 1:30 Sunday morning there).

Thursday 4/26 at 7:30pm EDT (4:30 SLT) we're going to stream author David Macauley. Stay tuned for more details about that.

Do these people think they're funny?

I was trying to explain SL to someone the other day (grown up, academic) and they're first comment was - oh i already have too much to do in my first life. FOllowed by the equally weird comment - but it's not real, why would you do that?

This happens all the time. I point out that movies, music, tv, books - not real. And we pay for those - - for the experience, for hte mental pleasure. And that SL is the same way except instead of following someone else's story, you get to make your own. You control what happens, you build stuff to suit you and your interests.

DOes anyone else get this type of comments? Any ideas how to address them - short of snorting in disgust and walking away (my first instinct)

Cool stuff coming up

I figured out how to make water - and made 2 fountains. (pictures will be here the next time I"m on SL) I didn't add any sound yet. There are scripts for making a texture move to simulate moving water. I used it on an umbrella I built too - very trippy. One of hte fountains has a waterfall. I want to make a creek too - just to see if I can.

We're going to have a lot of stuff going on in sl over the next 3 or 4 weeks. We have a couple of guest speakers, the students will be presenting the results of their research, and we're having a reception for faculty to show them SL. I hope to get our experimental film festival into sl too - to show their movies if nothing else but to get them in to talk about their work and hopefully meet sl people about their movies.

Went to a conference to present our religion research - which still needs a lot of work - and quite a few people were interested in SL. I hope to hear from some of them soon - see about getting projects going. I'm also talking to folks from Mansfield University about projects. They were into podcasts to promote their school early on - I think they will be good to work with.

Virtual Worlds Conference

I got to go to the 1st annual virtual worlds conference in Manhattan in 3/28-29. The coolest part was seeing people in rl that I'd met in sl. I got to meet Greeter Dan from CNET and Adam Reuters from Reuters. I met a couple of LIndens, a couple of folks from Electric Sheep, saw Aimee Weber. Exciting!

Then there were a ton of panels - some got repetitive (maybe a one day deal?) maybe it will take a bit of time for the market to grow to include more companies, more builders,more folks with cool projects that they're willing to talk about (that was an issue this time - companies were like we have this cool projects but we can't tell ya how much it cost or the traffic - talk about aggravating!)

One thing to consider is the variety of virtual worlds - they have different target audiences, different concepts of openness, different economic models. Gotta understand the range better before recommending any one to a client (that was one big take away message)

I'll be writing up my notes - trying to make some sense out of all the talking and projects.

first griefer attack

on our island. What a jerk.

He built way way up - like over 500 meters. The only way i could get up there was with my jetpack. THen he was throwing out self-replicating items. That made a really awful noise.

I had to call for linden help. They showed me how to ban him from all the estates (property) I own. And how to return all his crap. Good to know for future disturbances.

To be on the safe side I turned off building and scripting for awhile. Hopefully he will get bored and go elsewhere (he = male avatar)

This is why I love SL

SXSW (a conference about music and new media down in Austin Texas) has a track this year on videogames and virtual worlds. I can't go in person. But I can go in SL. The folks over at Electric Sheep Company are streaming it live on their island. So i get to sit in a comfy auditorium, talk to other interesting folks, and watch the panels. I've taken a lot of notes to bring the info into class. The only thing we don't get to do is to ask questions - but it's so crowded at hte real world panel that the odds of getting to ask a question are pretty slim too.

Check out the big sheep - that's the log for Electric Sheep Company - look at hte feet. It's such a cool logo.

Here are a couple of pictures:

classes in sl

my audience research class had a guest speaker today - in SL. It went very well - took folks about 15 minutes to find the amphitheatre and get seated but considering that was their first time as a group on the island, that wasn't too bad.

Smiddy Smalls from Text100 was our speaker. The company works with many technology companies such as IBM adn Xerox. They help the customers know where their customers are and where they're having conversations by looking at peer to peer media. Text100 sees SecondLife as the next big thing in peer to peer platforms - they've been in world since August 2006. He sees companies using SL to solicit feedback on new products. It's good for education and thinking/communicating in 3D. It's even good for group meetings. He mentioned that the Rochester office met in SL when they were all trapped at home in a recent snow storm.

Companies are in SL for a variety of reasons. One is to get included in press coverage of SL. ANother is to connect with their customers. Text 100 wants to help their customers get into SL for hte long haul - planning events, not just one shot deals.

He offered some advice to the students as they think about their futures. He encouraged the studnets to become well-versed in new media and consumer generated content. he said it was vital to know about wiki's and blogs and lots of social networks.

Here are some pictures of the event. We are sitting in the outdoor amphitheatre on the Park island.

Our Island is coming along

We streamed video from a live event into SL from our auditorium. It worked pretty good - we used my little consumer camera for the live stream and picked up audio from the speakers in the booth. We also taped the event to post later to test on demand streaming. So lots of audio/video fun times.

Students are building - some up in the sky.

My avie is healthy - no flu or colds or bronchitis in SL. Man i wish that was true in the real world.

we've gone international

Check out http://www.rawlsandme.blogspot.com/

A guy from Sweden visited the Park Communication Island while the qualitaitve class was online - we were trying to take some pictures of us in our Ithaca tshirts - so he posed with us for the photos. And then blogged about it on his blog.

Small world

Tshirt in SecondLife

Jeff Tatanus (Jeff Waldman in SL) put together a great Ithaca tshirt for us to give out on the Park School island. He says it's not hard to do - but he did a great job and took time to get the details just right.

here's a pic:

new home for the Park School

Ok - not in real life, but in SecondLife.

We've moved the Park School building up to the top of the mountain on our island. There are two small amphitheatres and a good sized lobby for mingling.

We're still working on the textures and colors inside. But the basic building is looking great!

Here are some pictures:

Hmm - the edges of the SL future are fuzzy right now

Theyjust announced a new access policy. If hte network starts to be overloaded (like it's been doing on the weekends lately) they're going to restrict logins to people who have premium accounts, or have some other financial relationship with the company (like accounts that have purchased money through the linden exchange.

Lots of discussion on the SL Educators list. What if you have a class meeting in SL and all of a sudden they kick in the restrictions and half of your class can't get online? Is SL less atrractive if you have to pay to use it (buy a premium account)?

Interesting questions. One of the coolest things about SL is that students can get started with no monetary investment. Whatever money they want to spend they can give to buy things in world; money would go to designers and builders and artists rather than to the folks at Linden Lab.

We'll have to see how the access problems work out. In the long run - Linden lab needs to figure out how to scale up - it may require a rewrite of the basic structure of the world. That will not be an easy task.

I'm still a big supporter of this virtual world. The opportunities still seem to outweigh the problems. Students can be media creators, and own the things they create. People get recognized for skills in SL that might not be recognized in their real world lives. There are concerts, ballets, lectures, live music - - and lots and lots of conversation. You just have to find what you like or start something on your own. To me - this is something worth pursuing.

I'm worried (heck - i just spent almost $4k of the school's money on SL) but not ready to cut and run yet. It's a limitation we'll have to deal with int he future. Like building restrictions, and figuring out who can schedule events - we'll just have to figure out how best to set up new accounts and how to communicate possible shut downs to new users. right now i think the problem is the unknown - we don't know how often it's going to happen or how long hte shutdowns will last. Exhale folks. Keep your fingers crossed. And enjoy SL.

Really really the park school in SL

One of the students involved on the island, Matt SeGall, decided to start building a model of the Park school. Here are some pictures of his work so far. The textures aren't final - he just threw some in (especially in the auditorium) to mark off different areas.

Some cool events in SL

I'm amazed these days when I go into the Search -> Events list. there's so much to do these days.

On wednesday 2/14 I went to a ballet performance in SL - with custom animations and original music and gorgeous sets.

On the Roma sim on Thursday (and I think friday) there's a big celebration with some big event each night at 9pm (est). Definitely sounds worth checking out.

On Saturday at 7pm (EST) there's a basic machinima class

And - this is the coolest - on Tuesday night at 11pm (est) there's a talk at the International SL Space Museum by an astronomer who was part of the team that found evidence that the universe is expanding. COuld be very cool.

SL - It's not just sex and shopping anymore

More scenery

Here's some shots of sunset on the park island




These views are one reason I picked the island design with the mountain - there are magnificent 360 degree views of the water, of the sky - we just need to get some hot air balloons!

Our second island is here!

It's for the Center for Independent Media - a new center being set up at the Roy H. Park School of Communication. It will be run through the Journalism Department.

Here are some pictures. We're thinking log houses, forest views. Nice lake boating. Quiet and peaceful. That should be an environment that stimulates a lot of discussion of the ways individual people can and are creating media - blogs, wikis, websites, podcasts, video podcasts, channels on youtube, and so on.




And here's a picture that shows how close together the two islands owned by the Park School are. We want to build bridges between departments - and between the islands.

The Roy H. Park School island

Our first island was delivered a couple of days before the semester started. Big dilemma - finish class prep or tour hte island; read one more chapter in the textbook or scatter some houses i built around the island to play with. I did both - but let me tell you - i wanted to play a lot more in SL than i did in those first days.

And I still don't get to play as much as I'd like - 4 different classes, 2 brand new. And a bunch of independent studies with kids that want to do stuff in SL. Gotta get them motivated and moving before the semester gets too far along.

Here are some pictures of our island when we first got it:




We bought an island with a mountain. Why? WHy not. Actually tho, the top of the mountain has a great 360 view of the ocean - well so far of the water. There will soon be 2 other islands visible - one of ours and one from another college. The possibilities for a drive in movie - ok - you can't actually drive in, it's on a mountain top. But it will be a great presentation space. We may put a welcome area up there too. And we hope to build an open air amphiteatre into the side.

So far we've just been trying stuff out, trying to set permissions so the independent study students can build and leave things on the island, trying to convince other profs they want to try it out.

But right now - we're waiting for SL to come back online. Darned ol biweekly updates.

Lots more to do these days in SL

One of the happy by-products of the increase in SL residents is the huge jump in the number of things to do. There's still yardsales and show us your skin nights at strip clubs of course. But there are a lot of other fun things to do.

I've just recently noticed art galleries in SL. They have gallery walks - guided tours with one of the featured artists or the arg gallery owner providing information about the pictures on display.

This week I went to the opening of a new island owned by a university in New Zealand. They had a submarine (forgot to take a picture - I"ll have to go back) where you could look out under the water and see fish (well - i saw a fish). THey had a camp fire, beaches, swimming pools - lots of spaces for small group discussion and just hanging out. At their opening they had incredible fireworks displays. Here are a couple of pictures.


The conversation was going on down on the ground, up in the air, on the mountain tops. IN SL you can use camera controls to move your point of view around while you stand in the crowd.

I also went to a brief interview of Howard Rheingold (big name in the study of virtual communities from way back) by GreeterDan over at CNET. They have a cool auditorium for the interviews, comfy seats. And great guests - in the past they had Esther Dyson, Anshe CHung, and now Howard Rheingold. There's always a chance to ask a few audience questions at the end. Here's a pic of that space. It's a bit of a closeup - i'll try to get a pic of the crowd next time.


I also went to a tour of the iVillage loft sponsored by a new group of PR people in SL, to a discussion on how to combine the real world and the world of SecondLife, a discussion about how public libraries in the real world are using social networks (their example was MySpace because it is a huge issue with librarians right now). I visited a giant art museum called the SL Louvre with paintings and sculpture. I went to classes on building in SecondLife, how to shop efficiently (including what to look for in a good skin), and Sunday there's a talk by the StarFleet Academy on the Universal Translator.

Something for everybody - real, fantasy, skills, news, talk, information. I'm overwhelmed.

Building more

I built a 2 story house - but small to fit my little plot of land. no room for stairs so i built a 2 story column to fly up to get to the 2nd story. Not too slick but it worked. Kind of like a fireman's pole(g)

I've been playing iwth textures too. I went to a class to make a trampoline and it was all done with textures. Very cool. The legs were one texture that was mostly transparent iwth a slanted line for hte legs. The top was another texture with a colorable middle and a black edget like a trampoline. Very cool. We got a sound and script to make us bounce too. I am going to try putting that script in a chair(g)

Here's a picture of an earlier house - the one with the curved class atrium. That's me in my fancy party dress sitting up in the air. I was trying to build a dome (for an observation dome on the top of a house but that didn't work out yet)


And here's a second picture - me standing on the wall in my party dress. Do houses really need roofs? or floors?(g) I bought this holiday dress because of the skirt and train. They're huge and they move - it's almost like they're alive. Very cool. And very unlike how I normally dress in SL - leather pants and jacket, tshirt and boots. Wait till the students get a few of me in my party clothes!

I've started building

I started out just building big twisted pieces of art. Now i'm into buildings. Multi-prim builidngs. Here's a pic of one of my first one's - i love the window textures



On my little plot of land - i can get one building at a time. So i build, put it in my inventory, build again.
Next I made a big gallery type space with 10 prims including a window wall and a frosted glass bump out room.
Here are some pictures of the glass bump out room - I put in a little rock garden with pink flamingos. I built a couple of chairs and put them there too.




One of the IC students came by to check out my work - and noticed that my house had no floor - whoops It doesn't have a door yet either but that's ok because it doesn't have a roof so you can just (literally) drop in. I'm going to build a dome to go on the roof. So i have got to figure out doors - they involve scripting. I'm thinking of making a flexi cloth door - i think you could just walk thru it.

bought the island

well - placed the order anyway - for the school of communication. We hope to involve lots of folks around campus.

I thought 16 acres was huge - but it is NOT. Oh man. I wonder how big our real campus is? Anyway - i think there's room for a couple of buildings, sandbox. We can build things in the air - that will be cool.

So i thought of hte first thing I want students to play with - what's the meaning of classroom in a world like SL where you can fly, you don't have to sit in front of each other to "hear" and where text is mostly delivered by text.

I've been playing on my own land too - i upgraded to a premium membership so i could own just the smallest chunk 512 sq meters. Talk about tiny. But i can build and leave stuff around. I found a beach house that fits on my land - turns out my land isn't flat so part of hte house is buried in the ground and part is hanging in the air. I like having part of the floor buried - the grass shows. If i can find a small tree and some plants i'm going to make an indoor garden.

I created 2 groups - IC Students and IC Faculty. I didn't make them open - so people need an invite - there has to be a better way but i wanted to be sure the people were actually from IC. We will use the lists to control access to the island while we play around and terraform.

ok - now I"ve done it

I admit - I"m fixated on SL right now. And i'm probably driving folks around me a little batty talking about it.

So what's my reward/punishment? The school is going to buy an island and we get to play on it. I may get time off to play on it - free toys and paid play time. Man I'm in heaven.

I'm also terrified. I have to convince people from across the campus to play and to put in time to stage events and build cool stuff. And to work it into their classes. I went to Middletown - a build for a class at Ball State - I was so jealous. They did a great job! And I have to convince students they want to do stuff in SL - I hope they take to it as excitedly as the folks at Ball State.

What was I thinking??!@!

The island orders are way backlogged - so we have a little time. I'm going to buy some land with another little grant I got to play on - we can use that for some early projects. And we can leave stuff there - like a dispenser of notecards about upcoming projects or art that students build. My dream is to build an opaque ball wiht a door. Inside are images/movie screens. You can walk around, move the ball, and the pictures move. So you could walk one way and be standing on the movie screen - move a little the other way and the movie screen is on top of hte ball. Like a private screening room. Or we take the opague balls - make little transparent slits - and use them to play bumper ball(G)

I've got to get my hands on a server too for streaming media. We get lots of great speakers - i would love to have a SL spot for presnetations - stream video from the real world, have avatars for the speakers, take questions from the SL audience, port the SL view back into the real world. Not anything different than a lot of conferences has done - but a way to shae some of the really cool speakers from the real world wiht the secondlife world. Maybe alumni could come to the SL home and keep in touch.

Down the road it would be nice to take some of the stuff we learn about sl to the teen grid - it would be a great place to recruit prospective freshmen who are into technology. But that's down the road.

I can't wait!!!

lots of events

Maybe it's because there's so many more people in secondlife - or maybe i've just been more diligent at looking at the events list in hte Search Menut - - but....

there have been just tons of events and there have even been a lot of educational events in SL recently.

i think events are a good way to introduce new people to secondlife - lots of people to talk with and something to talk about (other than the typical intros). Like going to a movie on a first date (ha)

the big drawback to events tho - if ya have a good one and do good promotions - you get so many people that lag attacks and no one has a good time (like some recent Townsquare presentations by Linden Labs and the new shows at the SL Planetarium). Or you attract griefers (like at the recent big brother opening). So - now that i think/write a bit - - maybe events aren't a good way to introduce people to secondlife.

either way - i'm excigted about all the new fun things to do and see in the world - i'm not the most social person on the planet so thinking of SL as just a 3d chat room was never very appealing. As a destination tho - i think it has a lot of appeal.

spent more time in the world lately

I haven't had time to play till recently. I just decided to make time and not do other things like grade papers

I started tgoing to classes to learn how to build things - i made a picture frame, a box that gives out notecards, and flowers. It's really cool - you can put scripts in objects to make them do things. Turns out there are tutorials on building and scripting at hte Ivory Tower so I'll be spenidng more time there this weekend.

The flowers were fun - but hte ideas carry over to making other things. You make a transparent very thin box, put the texture on first hte front and hten the back (not hte sides). Then ya copy that shape, rotate it, copy the new shape and rotate it so you end up with 4 copies of hte original flower all interlocked. When you wlak around it it looks 3D and solid. I wonder if that would work with other things. I"m going to try it with some other images

I also made a clear glass ball - actually i made it transparent and put stained glass on it as a texture. I dimpled it to make an entrance. I wanted ot make like a gerbil/hamster ball so i could run around the world inside it. But it is really amazing to stand inside looking out. I made a box with a transparent side, hollowed it out and got to stand inside it too - i floew up and then down the hollowed out spot - with boxes it hollows out fromt eh side, with the ball it hollowed out from the inside. Weird different. I'm going to keep working on the gerbil ball idea - that would be a lot of fun - could make it like a diving bell to go under the water! That's my goal.

Like a dummy i didn't take any pictures. But i put stuff in my inventory - so look for photos really soon.

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.

So many changes over the summer

Over the summer secondlife changed - a lot. There are a lot more people with accounts and a lot more people logged on simultaneously. Still not as many as World of Warcraft - but it's growing.

A lot of real world brands are moving into the game. A PR firm, Toyota Scion, tennis shoes, a hotel chain - and that's just what I remember. The projects are giving inworld designers a lot of visibility which is cool.

Another thing that happened this summer is that some big names from other parts of the internet established a presence in the game. Robert Scoble. Adam Curry. and Joe Jaffe.

The last thing I noticed over the summer is all the conferences and meetings that were held simultaneously in world. It was very strange to see my avatar sit (they sway ever so slightly in their seats) and watch a live video stream on an inworld screen in a room full of other swaying avatars. We could chat and have side conversations while we watched without disturbing others. The people on the screen could ask and answer questions from the inworld crowd too.

There was more media coverage of the game too - including a podcast from Business Week.

How will that affect our experience inthe game? I'm not sure yet. There is more to do . There are more brand names that students will recognize. The new developments may make the game seem more legitimate. It might also seem less wild and wooly and so students will be less willing to play around. I will be interested in watching their reactions.

the class went well in the spring - now over summer break I have time to make some changes. I also have to figure out what ITS did to make it impossible to get the game to run in our computer lab in the last week of school (arggghhh). And I have to see if i can run it at all in a new lab in a different building (it sucks being the low man on the room reservation totem pole since I"m new in the department)

ideas for qual in the fall
- collect data for a magazine article about educational possibilities of SL - collaboration, draw of "fun" for new researchers
- readings about some basic topics we want to discuss in the game - place, time, gender, fun, flow, games - organize by topic, mix of academic and popular articles
- need more writing practice, more editing practice, more specific practice with bibliopgraphy stuff - finding articles, writing bibliography, intext citations. 
- need some specific practice exercises in the game, need some notecards, collection of stuff to play with, specific locations

- writing requirements - gonna be strict about a bibliography style, no right justify, more writing on the wiki

One of my students wants to create a version of the Family Feud television game show on our student-run television station. He needs to gather up data to make the questions for the first episode.

If you have a minute - could you take the survey?
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=591502025808

Thanks.

One of my student's is doing an independent study of television viewing habits. She has a short (2 minutes approximately) survey online. It would help her out if a wider variety of people took the survey. Please giver her two minutes and take the survey.

The URL is http://vista-survey.com/survey/v1/survey.dsb?ID=7787779685

Thanks!
Kim

I think the students have finally gotten comfortable enough in SL to do some interesting projects. They started out with observations of their own reactions to time in the world. Those were good papers for the most part. Their second project (due Monday) had htem analyzing content around the game - forum posts, blogs, websites, things for sale on SLexchange. They seem really excited about all the conversations. They seem fascinated by all the people who spend a lot of time and money and energy in the world - the designers, the people debating whether players should keep getting allowances from LL, why people build things in the sky. They seem excited about doing interviews int he world - that's their third people. We practiced IM'ing and saving chat histories today. And went tothe welcome center to talk to noobies to ask them some questions just for practice. Lots of chatter in the room about what folks were typing to them. Still some folks wandering around off task. But most people were getting things done. I'm pretty happy about the game for class right now.

at GDC

The folks from Linden labs had a session about giving the users creative control and ownership. Cory Linden did the talk. He pointed out how many SL-ers create stuff and write scripts - even tho the script language was very difficult to use.

I really liked when he described how a user figured out how to make a kite - and the developers had to go ask the user how they did it.

Philip Rosedale - head of LL - had one of hte keynotes on Monday. It's gotta be a scray position right now - do away with subscription revenues, give away basic accounts and hope people convert to property owning accounts that cost money each month. I think he said they take a little cut out of the linden buck exchnages.

And - in the other MOnday keynote - Jesper Juul talked about goal less games - Ithink SL might fall into that category. They hav eto have lots of things and lots of actions - the user creates those "nouns" and "verbs" anyway they want. and the more combinations that are possible the better. I need to read his book Half-Real

He pointed out that GTA and The sSims have some things in common - including that both are playable as goal-less games - you can just wander around GTA - practicing your bike skills, driving to see scenery - with no penalty. You sort of make your own goals. He talked about how he wanted his Sims avatar to eat a lot - but instead the kitchen caught on fire and his avatar went kind of crazy so that the doctor came. He "failed" nominally since the avie didn't eat as much as he wanted, but the failure was interesting. A lot to think about in his speech.

then - as my students tell me - it's weird to try to define games - they just are and ya know them. Maybe that's true. Gonna make for an interseting final exam question.

press coverage

There's a story about SL in Wired magazine - actually about the Second Life Herald - a "newspaper" that covers SecondLife and other MMORPGs. The writer is sort of an embedded journalist. He covers the good, the bad, and the very pretty (check out the Post 6 Grrls)

URL http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/second.html

The herald is a good source of news and would be good to analyze over time.

avatars

the avatar dressing and modifying - seems to be an important part of the game for the students.

Yet - some are finding that they want their avatar to look like them as much as possible. That was their first assignment and they didn't like it at hte time. Now they have total freedom with how they look. They tried out different hair and skin color and clothes and shapes - it was overwhelming for some of them with all the choices. Then they're slowly going back to the original look.

I wonder how true that is overall. If the people flying around in Jedi soldier uniforms or pikachu costumes are relatively new and over time they slowly change back to normal too.

And then do people stop playing? Once the character is "normal looking" - is the excitement of the game over?

That's the question for the rest of the semester...

arggh - slow hardware

I know how some of the students have been feeling - they have slow comptuers or slow connections.

And now so do I. My laptop died so I had to fall back on my desktop machine - which is about 5 years old. It's a G4 but i'm seriously lackng RAM and processor speed. SL starts but - oh my goodness it is slow - gray rectangles everywhere, avatar won't move. Man it is irritating.

Especially when I really wanted to kill some time playing the game, looking for Robert Scoble's volcano and softwre company, and the peach computer store.

Oh well - guess I"ll do more homework. I wonder if the students ever say that!

Observation Papers

My students wrote their first papers about SL - based on tehir own personal observations. We'd been reading personal ethnographies and they were supposed to write in that style. Most did a great job.

We're all wondering why people spend so much time building houses and neighborhoods and yet most areas of the world are so incredibly empty. One person commented that early members had to pay to join and so SL might have attracted people who wanted to build. They also noticed that people have different views of what SL actually is - a sandbox to build and create, sex, gambling, chat.

We ran into some technology problems - slow connection speeds in the dorms and apartments, slow wireless connection in the lab; the frequent updates meant I had to tke the lab over for an hour several times to load all the machines; avatars reverting to default modes; and the strange fact (g) that students don't want to read the notecard instructions sprinkled liberally around the world but rather want to just do (and want things to just be transparent and obvious - a want that I think might make the game a bit less fun).

And we're having an ongoing discussion about whether it's a game or not. One take is that it isn't. ANother that it provides space for people to play games. It's a discussion we'll be having hte rest of hte semester - it will probably be a question on our midterm and final to give them an opportunity to apply what they're reading about definitions of games.

I added a dashboard widget from Google that supposedly lets me post right from my desktop - this could be cool.

Monday we're going to go play games in the world. The students have an observation paper due Friday - their observations of their time in SL. 

The biggest problems so far - hardware, hardware, and hardware. Some kids don't have the newest machines. Some have slow internet connections. And our labs - with faster connections and needed drivers - aren't open that much. Annoying. And we discovered that our wireless network is too slow to run the game. That kills that plan for hte future.

Can ya sell drugs in SecondLife?

That's what a student asked today in class? After they'd discussed briefly one students idea to become a prostitute to make Linden bucks. Another student lost all his money at blackjack and another played Slingo for 3 hours. Going to be a fun semester.

next time we play - we go to the museums and library - gotta show off the cultural side of the game.

ok - now i know what they mean by herding cats

you remember that commercial a bunch of years ago for EDS (Ross Perot, Superbowl - - -but I digress) about cowboys rounding up a herd of cats - house cats, not big ol' jungle cats. The cats were all over the place.

Or there's the phrase nailing jello to a wall

In other words - things that are just not easy to organize or accomplish

That's how i feel after a week of tring to get a group of students started with SecondLife. They are all eager to get started - how do i do this or that, look at that guy - where did he get that cool shirt. And so on. In a lab where it took us about 30 minutes out of a 50 minute period to download hte software the first day! In a PC lab when I have experience using hte game on a mac - i forget about right clicking stuff.

But i think we're over the hump. They are playing with their avatars - all named for the most part something-or-other Fluffy. They are learning how to teleport and fly. We went to the junkyard to look for free stuff. I gave people some of the free stuff I had - wings and clothes and sparklie bits. Good chat comment - I get college credit for playing video games - how cool is that.

Next week we can actually do something I think - that will get them going on what they need for their research papers (which they don't know about yet.) We're moving beyond playing a game to studying playing a game. Hopefully it will stay as much fun. ANd the SL servers will stay up. ANd there won't be a new version ever 30 minutes.

Keep your fingers crossed - we're going in!

a site with a word game

secondlife://Sutherland/187/145

free now - but will cost money in the future

a word game - combo of scrabble and boggle - fun - but hard to play only because i couldn't figure out where to stand so the letters were clear and that weird name above my head didn't cover the letters up

(notice - if you have second life loaded, you can put a link on a wepage to a site in second life)

Games

We study games in class - second life is a virtual world which i'm goiign to call a game until we have the big class discussion on what is a game.

Anyway - we need some games to play.

I think we will play hide and go seek. And tag. Maybe in the sandbox - then there's be other people who might play with us and things to hide behind. And as my studnets got more confident - they could quickly build something to hide behind

There is supposedly a game-within-the-game called DarkLife. It's a MMORP. that could be interesting

A class we can attend

Bob Bunderland (SL name) has a weekday class for SL newcomers. It is very cool. It's a question and answer session. Bob has a shoutcast server so he streams his audio of the course. the students type in questions and comments and he gives answers, suggestions, tips. He walked us thru creating a default avatar and then gave us some costumes so we could play with them without losing whatever we were wearing originally. I learned that one avatar can give another avatra something by dragging it onto them. That will come in handy in class. And you can ecome someone's friend (makes IM easier) by right clicking on tehir avatar and doing the make friend option. I have to figure out the whole notecard/greeting thing. I got some good newbie tutorials too.

This is a picture of the class - they have a great amphitheatre for their class. And it is available for anyone to use. We could have a speaker there - and put it on the event calendar for SL to attract other people.

And then - there are signs to click that teleport you to a pool area and in the evenings (aboout 8 our time) they ahve a pool party with a dance machine and piped in music and free swim suits. and free beer too - but not during class time.

Turns out there are classes on building too and animation. That would be good for students after class activities are over if they want to stay in the world. Those classes would also be a good way to meet people who are after a different experience in the world - and would give my students a chance to see more of the SL culture.

A cool thing I found

There are some museums in SecondLife - here's one under construction about space exploration. Could be pretty cool.

It would be fun to help develop the content - write info cards for exhibits, program some music for background while exploring. that kind of stuff.

Some More Ideas for Class

I think we'll start by making our avatars look as much like our real world selves as possible - we might as well look familiar while everything else is new.

We have to go thru all the steps in the orientation island because ya earn Linden bucks - but only the first time you go thru

We have to go to some events - there's one that happens pretty frequently for new residents - that should be cool. I found some spaces where hopefully we can have a class meeting online - there's one in the building for hte educators in SL group. ANd one cool one that of course I forgot to bookmark. So guess I"ll have to go find it again The spaces have seating predefined -very cool. Otherwise we will have to just stand around.

We have to have a class in the sandbox - build stuff, play with textures, talk with people, check out the avatars
Same with the welcome center - lots of people just hang there talking

Then - we have to experience SL as something other than ourselves - if i can figure out how to save the first look. I would like to see people become the opposite gender - but becoming an animal might be interesting too.

Then we have to take a "grand tour" - here are some places to visit mentioned in the second life forums - places with things to explore, potential for in world games and role playing, interesting scenery, interesting malls, etc. - maybe we each take a place and write a travel brochure style description on the blog as a way to help others see what the world is about/what's possible. Or we each look at 3 or 4 places and try to come up with some commonalities and description of what SL really is/SL culture - here's the list of places so far:
Nexus Prime - like the world in Stephenson's Snow Crash - very modern and cyber-techy
Devils Moon - another cyber-techy city
Midnight City - a big city themed area - like NYC
Akasha Village - underground area to explore, a cemetary
Amsterdam - like the real city
Vail Art Museum - an art museum - this could be neat - I'd like to see a video wall with videos from park students - imagine iCTV promos running
Island of Dragon moon - has dragons!!! and a cave with cave paintings and lots of places to explore
Anango Island - supposed to be danger
Isle of Bliss
Disco Inferno - 70s themed disco
Nerd Emporium - low prim furniture
Serenite
skydiving in Abbotts
Rizal - has Linden made games including laser tag
Parrot Islan - has jetskis
Big Easy
Blarney Stone
The Forest of Kahruvel (space ball)
YadNi's
Mars Japanese Gardens
Clementina Park
The Scurvy Pier
Ambertown
Pop's Roadhouse
Megabux Games Rides Fun (182,37,123)
Lost Gardens of Slosser
RIverwalk
Telador Island - a recreation of hte land from the game Myst
Eldamar - an elven island
Lauk's Nest - has ruins of a Mayan temple to explore
Miyajima - a japanese themed sim
Taco - cartoony colors
Castle at Verloren
transylvania nation/vampire empire - vampire land
ALchera Winter Wonderland - has ice skating
Silver Island has a race track for cars called hte Silver City Motorsports COmplex
Tompson - quiet, place to sit and think
Portage - ditto - just pretty scenery - quiet
Chaos - has underground tunnels - lots of streat noise

and since we're media people - we need to seqarch out the media in the world - the infohubs, movie screens, radio, there's supposedly a newspaper (maybe slboutique.com is sort of that newspaper)- i wonder if this is something we could get involved in - making media available to places to improve dwell - we get artieK to DJ, how about some instructional podcasts, interviews with residents, machinima travelogues (i like that idea).

so how do these things fit in with qualitative research - part of that research is understanding culture - and part is understanding the different between observation and participant observation, part is interacting with people for interviews and such - and one of hte things I want peole to learn/get better at is writing in lots of different styles - for academic journal articles, for newspaper stories and for online venues - - so i think these things still fit - - and if one of our goals is to figure out what is or isn't a game - then playing more indepth in SL might help us make that definition

Some photos

Interesting - SL has daytime and night time. I wonder if there are different things going on in the dark as opposed to in the light. Now - get your minds out of the gutter. I'm not talking about that kind of stuff. I'm thinking about things like dinner and walks on the beach in the moonlight, and dress up dances.

Winter/Holiday Themed scenes

I saw a post on another blog about all the themed areas dressed up for christmas/the holidays. So i checked them out tonight. There are some incredibly talented people in SL. Makes me want to start learning how to build and animate. That's one of hte things I want to do over winter break from school.

old and new (for now) me

This is some ghoulish makeup and skin time - yuck!

WTF???

Ok - I'm cruising around, looking at SL christmas decorations (pics in future post)

and then i decide to look at popular places - went to IceDragon's Playpen

they have these dance pads - they animate your character for ya and you dance, and dance, and dance

and get paid - $3L per 10 minutes.

I can't figure out what the deal is - it's not like a party, people aren't talking.

Then i remembered sites with big "dwell" get money - so they have these dance pads to help you earn a little and they earn more

Odd - there's a character there dancing who's been there more than an hour dancing - he's made about $20L. I'm going to dance my 10 minutes to get $3L just to see what it's like

You can go off and leave your character tho and they keep dancing so you can multitask

They also have music - streaming music with a DJ - can't tell if it's recorded or live. Bu it's definitely not my kind of music.

some ideas for class

I saw a presentation by a male student who's been palying in SL as a female and thought - hmm -0 i wonder why he thought of doing that? And then at an online conference about edcuational gaming, someone mentioned doing this gender switching too.

People always say - on the net you can be anybody. But can you really - or can you just be a stereotype of people - how you think they act/think instead of being in their skin. that's not very clear. I think guys can act like how they think girls act - but they can't act like a girl.

However, what was interesting was that people reacted to the girl avatar like it was really a girl. Going by appearance alone, or maybe the stereotypical actions and speech are all we look for online?

I think we will play with this in class - gender issues are interesting and I think it would give us some different insights into the culture of online games.

info

I have to remember to point student to the SL forums. There is a lot of good discussion going on there. And tips on scripts and textures.

teleporting

Ihave to admit - I like teleporting - it's like star trek. You get to a major place near where you want to go and you can check out cool stuff - fly toward the beacon which would be more fun if the land underneath you appeared more quickly. Maybe it's not the quickest method of getting places - but you see some territory, see some new stuff that might be fun.

I guess if you were going to an event and were running late, you might not want to have to fly or drive to the actual spot from the teleport hub.

Land developers have built up the land around the hubs and invested time/money. I wonder what will happen to them iif the hubs go away?

Why bring this up - there's some discussion about a proposal to do away with the hubs. Instead we'll go right to the place when we teleport. I guess that makes all parts accessible. Does it weaken neighborhoods tho?

Tied in with this discussion I read a chain of forum posts on privacy and how in SL there's no privacy. People can walk into your house without knocking. YOu can get doors that lock, doorbells. You can type "knock knock". But most people can walk right in. I wonder if people can teleport right into your house?

pictures