Skoolaborate...here we come!

We have decided to become partner members of the Skoolaborate Project on the Teen Grid! There are some details to work out, but, after listening to the PacRimX Team last evening at ISTE, I realize that a private island, with the chance to work with international schools (when the time zones allow!), takes away some of the concerns of hosting our own place on the Teen Grid.

The Skoolaborate Project is well-established and, since we will be bringing in mostly middle school students, the added bonus of having them limited to the island and the non-ability of "strangers" jto jsut drop in, will be a comfortable way to start this process.

We are going to have to think of some creative ways to get items over to the Teen Grid since we will not be moving avatars over, but we can deal with that. I can forsee our group coming up very interesting ways to get our tools onto the Teen Grid (as well as quickly learning how to design good hair!)

I am ready for the adventure since my avatar is already created on Skoolaborate. Now I just have to wait for the Lighthouse Learning Island teachers and their students to show up!

Thanks to Westley and the other partners for letting us take part in the project!

Second Life and Intel 965 Chipset

I am not sure where to post this information, but I found a fix if you have a laptop that has the Intel 965 Chipset and cannot get on Second Life with Vista or XP. I located this fix while working with a student's laptop and it works for him. The Macbook Air has this chipset, too, and, while I can get into Second Life, it did crash sometimes. I have edited the file stated below and it seems to help. It definitely helped the student-- he can get right in now and never crashes!

Find the "user_settings" folder under your Second Life folder that is under AppData or Applications Data. (This may also be under .../Roaming/Second Life/user_settings/) You will also see a folder with your avatar's name. Don't change the settings.xml file in that folder, just the one in the user_settings folder.

Open the settings.xml file in the user_settings folder with Notepad. You will have to manually add the two lines below to this file to disable object occlusion. The lines to add (someplace after the first couple of lines and before the last couple of lines in the XML file) are:

<!--Enable object culling based on occlusion (coverage) by other objects-->
<UseOcclusion value="FALSE"/>

Chose to SAVE AS and overwrite the old setting.xml file, restart the computer, and, hopefully, you will then be able to connect to Second Life! I hope this works to solve the problem for some of you!

Kathy

Moonk! slide show

Get your own Moonk!

This is a sample of a slide show created with Moonk! You can easily create slide shows and videos, which are converted into Flash on their site. You get 500MB of online storage space.

Lighthouse Learning Island PLC Presentations

Following is a video that contains three presentations by the members of the Nauset Public Schools Lighthouse Learning Island Professional Learning Community. These educators took the risk to learn this new environment from scratch and went from logging in for the first time to loading up a presentation board and presenting in Second Life in just 10 short hours!

If you are in-life, you can look up Babette Botha, Kimjoy Fizzle, and Dahling Carling (the three presenters) and the other members who completed the PLC, Raia Schmooz and Hilda Helgerud, and ask then about the experience.

We will be following up with getting the group ready to go to the Teen Grid with sessions on advanced building and scripting.

Nice post about Lighthouse Learning Island

Tom Werner, of the Brandon Hall Research blog, posted some thoughts about Lighthouse Learning Island that made me feel very proud to be part of the project!

Kudos to all of the educators involved and to our school districts who were willing to take a chance!

I am about to embark on phase 2, which involves continuing the Nauset professional learning community and teaching my teachers how to build and create. We hope to have word soon on the availability of funds for a Teen Grid island (Windmill Learning Island??).

The MUVE Game Project

Take a look at this assignment from a Fall 2007 class from SDSU, co-taught by Bernie Dodge, Exploratory Learning Through Simulation and Games. Looks like a great assignment!

Be sure to take a look at the class projects to see some well-thought out ideas for the use of Second Life to support teaching and learning!

Kathy

Session 8: The In-life Presentations

This evening, four of the teachers in the PLC gave their presentations in-life. I applaud them for taking the risk to try something really new, and they came through with flying colors. In addition, the content of their presentations, mostly about SL sites, was pedagogically sound and they came up with some great ideas that they can carry to the Teen Grid once we make that leap! After a bit of follow-up next week, they will be adding their presentations to the whiteboard in the theater in the back of the Nauset Building on Lighthouse Learning Island.

Here are some photos from the presentations, and our holiday photo! The avatars presenting are Kimjoy Fizzle, Babette Botha, Dahling Cahling, and Hilda Helgerud. The other members of the PLC included Pia Klaar, Wang Wingtips and Raia Schmooz.



Holiday Photo