Friday, February 24, 2006

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.

Monday, February 13, 2006

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.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

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!