Managing a Class in Second Life, 3rd Monday

Tonight’s class included a recap of important skills that should be included in orientations for students and/or faculty:

• Teleporting
• Camera position
• Take snapshot and convert to jpeg
• Searching using map
• Finding people/friends
• Creating notecards
• Using voice chat
• Find chat log on hard drive (only if it’s enabled)
• Transferring inventory items
• Unpackaging/opening boxes
• Cleaning up after yourself, land manager and auto return feature
  

We had a guest speaker who uses SL to teach Dante’s Inferno. In Second Life there is a recreation of the levels of hell—sounds, objects, etc. tied into student projects and assessment. We formed teams and were each assigned to investigate a level and report back. I found this difficult. First, I never really collaborated with my other two or three team members. Since the AV’s names are different, I couldn’t even remember who was on my team (I should have asked her to repeat this information, but I didn’t) Plus, I didn’t necessarily see them all on my level. Then I had difficulty navigating in the narrow spaces and returning to the group.

Dante’s Inferno is quite an impressive site, and it can be visited at any time. Our guest speaker said being positive is very important and I’d like her quote: ““If you kick sand up you get sand in your eyes." She is referring to trying the different technologies for teaching and learning that aren’t always accepted by our colleagues. At the end she stated “that we are all like Vergil’s guarding the Dante’s of the future.”

I read Dante’s Inferno in college (as an English major). I would have enjoyed it so much more had I experienced this 3-D world in Second Life. To be totally immersed in the levels of hell is an amazing teaching/learning strategy. Spooky too!