This is gonna be a few busy weeks. We’re finally starting our final projects, which we’re being allowed almost two weeks to work on. We have the main premise down, a fantasy baseball field exhibiting the physics of a homerun. It’s been tough within just these first few days due to some group conflict, but I’m just hoping that will all flesh out ok. I have the best of expectations because I think once we all get on the same page and have it laid out in more detail we’ll be able to capitalize on each group members’ skills. In the meantime, I’ve been doing some more exploring, and a couple of days ago I met one of the educators on the island in the adjacent educators coop. He had a small plot of land that he was using to build a model for his pharmacy students. It was a whole play off the CSI show, which I thought was really cool. He had it set up so that there were things that when you clicked on them they gave you clues to the mystery, which in this case was a baby with indigestion problems. He followed me through the whole scene ad helped me out along the way. Of course me not being a pharmacy student and not knowing a thing about toxins, besides what I see on the actual CSI show, didn’t really help me solve the mystery. Needless to say it would’ve been perfect for his students. Which is why I thought it was so awesome. If his students get to learn through Second Life like this, I think it will be more engaging, fun, and interactive. And doing a new mystery each week will keep students interested. This only makes me wish that we were getting around to this kind of technology use within my major, history. In most of my history classes it’s the same old, lecture/power point deal. Although the information is different, the presentation is not. I think it’s about time to start investing time and effort into new information mediums if possible in each school. Oh the fun. ..lol.

Builds

How many times can you say that you've been in a WWII war zone, a private lagoon, and a downtown bar scene all in less than a couple of hours? I can now officially say I have done that today. Each of these scenes was the site of a build exercise. And after experiencing it all, one of the reoccurring problems that I've noticed is how accommodating and accounting for so many people in a single space is a lot harder when they’re actually there. This happened a few times as in the teleporting problem after dying in the battle zone, or just the high volume of people in small spaces like the gazebo at the lagoon or the club downtown. But, for my organization sake, I’m going to walk through what I liked and didn’t like about the two builds that I was not involved in designing, since I have already blogged about my experience in building our lagoon. First up was the WWII themed build complete with bunkers, exploding tanks, and planes circling overhead. I was particularly impressed with the boat ride over to the actually battle zone and the attention to detail concerning the buildings. I loved the whole capture the flag idea, which brought back numerous childhood memories and was very reminiscent of playing a James Bond game. I already mentioned one problem, which was when you died you were teleported all the way back to our home condos and thus had to fly back to the designated area. Another thing I disliked was the fact that there was no tutorial on how to use the guns, so I almost felt like I was a Russian soldier headed straight into Leningrad without the slightest clue as to what I was getting in to. Since this was the case, I think they should have taken us to the shooting range first or handed out a note card just so we could have been somewhat prepared. Lastly, the sixth street look alike was impressive for just the vast amount of things to do, such as the hookah bar and rooftop dance scene, and also for how easy it was to navigate. The way things were set up, with the street in the middle and buildings on the side, made it simple to pick where you wanted to go and get in and out. On the downside for me, I felt like there was a lack of continuity and an overall randomness involving certain things. But, I should probably keep in mind that that is almost the equivalent of a downtown scene lol. Until next time.

Where Can I Find This?

This week we got the assignment to create a place on our island to present to our classmates. The tour would have to last about twenty minutes long, which in Second Life, is a good while. So my group, only me and one person at the time, decided to build a lagoon. We basically began with the terrain to build a large cliff with the hope of having people cliff dive off of it and then a slide going down another part of it. To be honest, I didn't think that editing the terrain would be so time consuming when in reality it took up most of our time the first day. It was difficult to get the land to look just like you wanted it to with parts going up in spikes instead of flat and even harder to carve out a place for a slide within the cliff/mountain. The day after that all of our group was there and we split up to go and buy the stuff that we needed and I was in charge of the water things. I bought some coral and rocks along with an animated dolphin and a jet ski. Again I spent a lot of time editing the terrain just so the coral would look natural at the bottom. After our second day of group work our lagoon was actually looking like a lagoon. Now we're still working on completing it within the next few days, but I have ran into a few road blocks. I have bought a ridable tiger that I won't get until the owner comes back from vacation. Also, I have tried to find animations so that people can dive off the cliff, but have come to find nothing yet. I think I'm going to go to the help island and talk to some of the residents and see if they have any suggestions about places to look for the animations. Each day though our place looks better and better.

Teamwork

This last week we had the assignment to find a place, somewhere interesting, to take the class on a tour to. We weren't set to meet until the night before the assignment was due so the entire weekend I spent just exploring for places that the entire class would find fun. I used the search option on our main screen and then searched under showcase for hotspots in world. There were a lot of cool places, universities, clubs, etc. I randomly selected some of the ones I found interesting, and after visiting I thought most of these wouldn't have necessarily appealed to my entire class. Finally I came across a place where you can ride seal sleds on a predesigned course. It was very reminiscent of MarioKart. I can't lie, but I knew this place would definitely appeal to the guys that make up the majority of the class. I kept the place in my inventory until the night designated to meet up with the rest of my group. As predicted the guys in my group liked it a lot and when we took the class there everybody had a lot of fun riding the sleds. I noticed that some of the girls opted out of "driving" their own sled, and instead rode on ones with other male classmates. I didn't know if this was because these specific girls didn't like doing activities like this or if it plays into the whole stereotype of men driving women around or if it was something entirely different. Of course the stereotype doesn't apply everywhere and to everything but I just found this interesting. I also wanted to expand a bit about navigation within the place we went, Southaven. Besides the arrows on the course, I think one thing we didn't discuss in class was the surrounding environment. It's basic but the all the hills and mountains sucked you into a vacuum that pretty much made up the course and the arrows told you where to go within that space. Until next time...

A Constant Tour

It amazes me just how much you can do in Second Life, and I think that that fact alone is constantly surprising me. I decided in the last few days to follow my interests, which, in this case, included history and Lord of the Rings. I searched for all things dealing with the Holocaust and found myself at the Anne Frank Musuem. When I was navigating the house and hideout replica I realized just how much work I still needed in manouevering even though I wanted so badly to blame it on the lag. On my way out I was able to talk to a Rabbi from the church next door and he told me to go to Help Island. I teleported on over and then went from there to the Welcome Island. I met a Resident there who teleported me from there to her place. Real life interrupted my tour which was extremely frustrating, but I now have a friend outside of the classroom, besides Kimmie, which is very refreshing. So I've promised her I would return to finish the tour asap. The next day I searched for all my favorite Lord of the Rings places and teleported to Rivendell. Can you say gorgeous? All that was missing were the elves, especially Legolas and Arwen lol. Although there were guards there and one night I might see about the houses they have for rent on the property. Finally, I've continued my search for free things, especially clothes. I found a new place for newbies that had free clothes, gadgets, cars, skins, and so much more. I think that if I want to use the cars more, like my Flintstones one, I'm gonna have to learn how to use them more efficiently instead of just running over everything in sight lol. In the next few days I look forward to exploring more museums.

First Experiences

I'm almost certain that during my first few times on Second Life my main concern, I'm sure like most others, as a newbie was working with the avatar itself (i.e flying, walking, etc.) and using the toolbox to create things. Learning how to put things on and editing those things you do create became a little easier each time and I imagine they will still be a little shaky until this class is over. But I know the one thing I was eager to do was explore Second Life to find those things I needed to decorate my condo, and for cheap. Thus it was nice that I had some help from one of the student assistants who pointed me in the direction of Yadni's Junkyard. Described as a "newbie's paradise," it was just that for me. I was able to find some really cool stuff including most of my furniture, some ripped jeans, a cool Ramones tee, and a lot more. I even got a Batmobile! It was nice to know that even though we may have to spend money on some things, there were places out there where you could get so much of what you need and want for free or cheap. Besides the junkyard I went shopping for a real life replica of my husky puppy. I was able to find one and it was easy to buy. But, I am still facing some troubles because no matter how much I feed her, she is still 80% hungry and 15% tired. lol. I will just have to keep working at it, but giving her other commands/tricks was pretty easy to grasp. All of the things that I'm experiencing in Second Life so far do nothing but excite me for the future. There are still so many things to be explored and I plan on doing just that.

Chase