Week 1 and Week 2
Week 2 - 15th February 2017
Still finding our feet in this strange land, and learning to walk
without bumping into things. We are still testing microphones and sorting out
other teething problems. Glenn did a technical support class yesterday evening.
We are learning the protocols in a class group situation and can see who have
their microphones on at any one time.
We are learning that it is necessary to give definite cues in
Second Life e.g. Yes, No, as one of the group participants may have briefly
walked away from their computer.
Have only just learned how to sit down: by clicking the object and
then sit.
We read Stephen Duncombe’s introduction to Open Utopia based
on Thomas More’s Utopia.
We were then lead onto the balcony by the course leader and
experimented with the light controls. One image from the class and two from the
balcony are shown below.
WEEK 1 - 8th February 2017
I joined Second Life and was baptized Amarcordcat, a nod to my favourite
Fellini film. I was under the misapprehension that we were to remain anonymous so chose a suitable ‘disguise’
as a young female avatar. A few days before the first 8.30 pm class on Wednesday 8th
February I watched the Youtube video that Glenn had linked to his email. A
number of fellow Sherkin Second Lifers had mentioned the Blarney Stone Pub so I
put that in the location search and visited there while learning to manoeuvre the avatar. The
place was pretty sparse and had five or six ‘cool dude’ avatars hanging around. It
would have been clear to the other members there that I was just learning how
to move the avatar. I was a bit surprised to get a message in my email from
someone in the pub asking ‘Do you like Guinness?’ My avatar had ‘pulled’!
We had been sent the link by John showing where the class was to take place. When
the class started at 8.30 John and Glenn introduced themselves. It was fun
trying to guess who was who. It was then I learned that each avatar would be
identified with the student. I decided to stay (semi) anonymous for one class
and gave name as Marcella and asked in text what time the Maths class started.
One of my fellow students kindly answered that it was a DIT BA class but her ‘Ha
Ha’ at the end indicated that she knew I was joking, but did not know ‘who’ was
joking.
The class the tested each microphone and we each became ‘friends’ with
the other group members. I look forward to seeing how it will develop on
Wednesday next. Two .jpg images of the lecture room taken during the class are shown below.
