Saving Isis: Critical Thinking with Rezzable's Open Sim Tut

Location: Rezzable's Valley of the Kings in Open Sim

On my first tour of Rezzable's Heritage Key site dedicated to King Tut, and when the entire project was quite new, I was taken by the South Wall of the young king's tomb.

It was an immersive moment; I felt that I was as close to the actual site in Egypt as I'd ever get.

Anubis and Hathor greet Tut as he enters the other world, but Howard Carter had to destroy a figure of the goddess Isis (to the left of Anubis, in the image above) as he and this team made their way into the tomb. This struck me as a tragedy that might have been avoided.

With modern technology, we might have been able to plunder (there's no kind word for it) the tomb without destroying Isis' image. So I've decided to let my writing students have a crack at this. They'll work in teams to solve the problem, if they can. And to make their writing "count for something" beyond a grade, I'll have readers I invite vote for the strongest solution to this archeological dilemma.

Read the assignment here. Projects are due Oct. 29 and I'll provide updates and may open up judging the projects to readers here. Meanwhile, my Heritage Key avatar will be bumbling around virtual Egypt, trying to look like the poor man's Indiana Jones...

CANVAS in Scotland: Students Display Artwork in Open Sim

Location: CANVAS Web Site

Scottish students and their teachers now have a new canvas for their projects: CANVAS (Children’s Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland).

This Open Sim virtual world will provide learners a space to display art projects while avoiding the administrative difficulties associated with other worlds blocked by school-system firewalls. The Consolarium of Learning and Teaching Scotland partnered with virtual-worlds developer Second Places to develop the showcase for student work. All 23 Scottish local authorities will have a virtual gallery for both still images and digital video created by students. Children using the virtual world can earn currency to spand at the gallery shop, where they can buy items to cusotmize their avatars' appearances. CANVAS also houses seminar space in an auditorium and a building where students (and faculty) learn about good behavior in virtual worlds.

Educators often encounter resistance when proposing that they employ open virtual worlds, and some, like Second Life®, do not permit minors on their main grids. This initiative, however, allows administraors and teachers "to create our own bespoke virtual world that can be hosted on our servers so that we have full control over whom we allow in to view and interact in the world." With this technology in place, students ranging in age from nursery to high school will be able to log in and work on projects with their teachers and invited guests.

This type of behind-the-firewall solution provides more evidence that educators and administrators can work closely to devise solutions that encourage multimodal projects in virtual worlds. Today my wife's kindergarten students do podcasts that are sent all over her county; tomorrow, perhaps, they'll be building content in limited-access virtual worlds like CANVAS.

Do avatars dream of electric hillbillies?

Location: In the freezing cold

Oh well, where shall I start? Its difficult, since the reasons for taking a break are numerous.
LL is definately not innocent here. The experience using SL worsened from month to month while at the same time nothing has been done to improve it. The lag was constantly killing me and SL became more and more a graphical chat client.

Losing my ability to explore took one of the foundations of my time in SL from me. Additionally I had to cut short on my expenses and so had to give up my land and lost the ability to build and experiment. Even if I could have continued to maintain it, I guess that LLs current unwillingness to give the major part of developing resources to the improvement of the user experience would have spoiled it anyway.

But the main reason in fact was, that the social interaction on the grid turned in a way that made me do that last step back to the meatspace.

A friend of mine noted once that the pace of SL roughly equals five times the speed of the meatspace and I think he is right with this one. The consequences out of this are on the hand.
People pop up and vanish from day to day and the fact that you have build up a connection to them doesn´t make it easier. Losing friends (and I mean real friends) that way is a hard loaf of bread and I think that Iggy is right here, when he states that people can become friends in SL. What makes the essence of a friendship? Its surely not the physical closeness, its far more. And this essence can be transported via SL very well. So losing people at 5 times the speed of normal life can be a very sad experience. Things even turn worse, when when the friendship becomes intense and from one day to the next you get to know that the person on the other side of the monitor tells you that it was discovered she has cancer and will die in a few months. SL is surely not a game, and people saying so, haven´t understood it.

When I came to SL it was filled with people that were very like minded and that is surely the "fault" of the big hype around SL in early 2007 (no wonder it made me curious myself). Many of those have long gone and today I meet less and less avatars that have mastered more then the two sentence "wanna fuck?" conversation. Additionally the vast growth of the grid has dispersed the avatars over virtual square miles and traveling to find a person sometimes is as hard as back in those frontier days.

Those whom I am still in touch with I connect mainly via external sources now, rendering the SL client useless. IM and Mail are still very potent ways of communication and I intend to stay in touch with every single one of them.

To refresh your memory Iggy: We met when a Hillbilly started working for you as a guest writer. That charming do no good constantly asked me to meet you and write as well and the rest is history ;) as is Pappy Enoch I guess, since I haven´t heard of him in months.

[Iggy's note: Pappy is alive and as well as he'll ever be, though he's not in-world as much. He can be found as a "Pullet-Surprise Winning Reporter" for the Alphaville Herald. He's being paid in virtual chickens.]

The one that has to say "thank you" is surely me, since the experience you offered me with mentoring your classes was awesome and I would surely haven´t had that opportunity in meatspace.

I don´t know whether I will return some day or not. It will depend on my lust for SL to return which could happen. I haven´t deleted the avatar and it can be reactivated any time. So rumors about my death are hugely exaggerated.

Take Care everyone,

Logging out for now,

T

Sleep Tight, Tenchi

Location: Blue Mood

I read this at Tenchi Morigi's wiki last night:

This unit has been shut down and is in cryogenic stasis. Tenchi Morigi undergoes major rebuilding and alteration for a possible return to the grid. Any important matter can be directed to her digitally connected cortex via known procedures.

My good friend and class mentor is calling it quits, for the time being, in SL. She's not alone.

I hope she'll write here about her decision; I know she's reading this. Amid the chaos of the start of the academic term and the ungentle demands from many people, I wanted to take time to thank Tenchi for all she's done and been for the past two years.

How on earth did I meet her and Cynthia, my two German SL friends? My memory is spotty on this, but they are memorable ladies. Cynthia, also a skilled builder, is spending less time with SL. So is my long-time buddy and advice columnist Dianna Defiant.

When someone as talented and witty as Tenchi leaves SL, it makes a hole in one's life. She was never loathe to show up at Richmond Island to help students, to show off a new outfit, to recommend a place I simply had to visit. Mostly, however, it was her ability to share in practical jokes that were friendly and clever. Her and Cynthia's (also hibernating) blog "Absolutely Amazing SL Discoveries" is full of that brand of wit.

And any wag who claims that SL friends are not "real" friends can go straight to hell on the horse he rode in on.

I'll miss you a lot, Tenchi. Sleep well and dream often.