ekral’s IPC411 class blog

This concludes the secondlife adventures. The finished project is done. The completion of the paper and business analysis was turned in. Now, the only part left is to present the project. Our group will try and work together to achieve a 10 minute power point.

Well, our store in secondlife is finally complete. It has been a very long process and a lot of work has been put into it, but it is done. Its interesting how far I have come in learning so many new things. There was a lot of things I struggled with on secondlife. One example of this would be the incident with our land. We actually had to be relocated several times to try and find the right land to build on because of the amount of parcels aloud on that property. This was a crazy moment I remember, because it took at least 4 class periods of emailing and blogging on secondlife to find out that it was up to the owner of the property to allow it. I remember I emailed CCJewel and they had no idea how to fix it. This created all sorts of confusion, so when I discussed this with my instructor, she was able to supply us with a piece of land from her property which was wayyyy better.

I was able to build and have a ton more parcels on this property, which meant that we could build and put more pieces of art and furniture in the store. As time progressed, I was faced with more issues like how our building kept on disappearing off the land when we had put furniture in it already. I learned that we had to be in the secondlife rad cybergeeks group in order for this not to happen. This whole experience has really taught me how to be patient, and take one thing at a time. When you have so many people involved in one project like the land owner, secondlife avatars, and my instructor… it makes it so much more complicated to try and work every little problem out because you have to make sure all these things are on the same page.

We started off just downloading secondlife and trying to find a bald head to we could apply hair to our avatars, and now we have a store that sells art and furniture! I have come a loooonnngg way since the start of the semester. The only thing that I wish we would have done in this class, and I think I mentioned it before in a previous blog, is that we should have visited other classmates businesses. That way we could all buy and look around like a real business. I guess that part will be up to other avatars in secondlife once we are dont with this class. I actually am exited to do the business plan. It will evaluate the entire process with every aspect available.

Like I said before, I have learned a great deal from this course. Not only through tasks of secondlife, but the overall picture of critical thinking. I enjoyed this class. It was way different from any other course I have taken at Bowling Green State University, but productive and interesting. As I graduate in approx. 13 days, I will take with me my experiences from this course and try to apply them in my career. Technology is everywhere and its important to stay up to date.

Until then,

ekral ( elizabeth kral)

The past couple meetings in Secondlife have been about finishing up building and organizing our businesses. This is the exiting part because all the hard work and frustration that we have been through in this semester has paid off…we finally get to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our Art and Furniture shop has evolved from a single lot of land to a large place to embark on shopping and looking. We have several different places in our store. There are “room setups” which are separated rooms that entail a great deal of furniture and some art. They are almost set up like individual rooms with their own personality and feel. I find this a great asset to our store because we each get to bring our own creativeness into selling these items. We work very well with each other and give each other in our group the thumbs up when something looks great! Its been a really long journey, and our group has definitely learned a great deal. We have learned these differences through the struggles we have encountered in this virtual world.

Its really neat to see how far we have come as a group, not only by ourselves, but as a class together. Every group seemed to have some sort of struggle, and we have accomplished these tasks through hard work, dedication, and research. Secondlife is a very unique place, with a lot of possibilities. I never knew at the beginning of the semester that we would have come so far as to build an entire store. It took a lot of class time and hard work and cooperation, but now as we are approaching the end of the semester, it seems to be paying off. The experiences I have had in this virtual world will carry with me as I go on into the real world. The readings correlated with the events that were happening in secondlife-which was good. Although, at first when we started out, I would have wished the book was more of a guide to help us navigate than readings about conceptualizing and context, but that was all a part of this class.

I look forward to the finished product, and have learned a great deal of things in this class…I guess the next post will be titled ….”finish line”…because we are almost there!

Until then,

ekral (elizabeth kral)

Today, Wednesday the 19th of November, almost our entire class showed up in the music lab to work on our projects and to gain attendance, but there were problems. One of the problems being we didn’t know until we read the email that our instructor had basically cancelled class. Another problem was with second life. There was no way I was getting on. There was a message in error that kept on presenting itself every time I would try to log on with my username and password. This was frustrating because its a very long walk for me to come to this class and its freezing outside, and then the program does not work. I have a class after this one, so I guess I`ll just leave after writing this blog and hopefully it will be working on friday.

Today in class, I found out several new things. We now have a new location to build on since the other location had problems that could not be fixed. The parcel amount is much bigger at this new location which enables us to build on the lot, and add more art and furniture to the store. This was awesome because after all the troubleshooting, our group can now assess the real project in which we look forward to doing so. We started out by putting a nice building on the land. Then, we all took different rooms in this building, and started to make out own unique set ups and put them up for sale. Its cool how I can mix and match my set up in this room…personalize it. It took a while for me to get a hold of rotating and positioning the furniture and art, but after practice, I now have the hang of it. I feel like we are really making progress!

It is taking a little longer than usual to get our store all set up because theres so much to do…picking the right set ups.. positioning them.. putting prices on them for sale…making sure everything is close to perfect. Its hard and challenging, but rewarding once the final project is complete..which is around the corner.. hopefully soon! I just hope we can actually sell some stuff…I propose that after we are done setting up the place and building, that some form of marketing technique must be in order. This will allow people to come to our location and at least check it out. What I propose is to have a class day where all our class goes and teleports to each others locations and buy some stuff…etc. That way other people are at your location, and your at theirs and everyone is gaining experience and knowledge…just an idea I suppose.. but I think it would be interesting.

I definitely look forward to the completed store and hopefully its success, because this has def. been a difficult process for our group, but I am learning a lot.

Until then,

ekral (Elizabeth Kral)

This is just one of the messages given when trying to add more furniture or art:

 Can’t rez object ‘Candleholder silver and candle’ at { 41.8998, 249.877, 64.9675 } on parcel ‘CC Jewell’s Spot’ in region Saena because the owner of this land does not allow it.  Use the land tool to see land ownership.

Over the past week or so, our group has been faced with many different problems. The first of the problems on secondlife deals with our land that we have. There were several implications that we cannot build on certain areas of this land. Through conversing with the land owner and research, we found to alleviate this problem by extending our land property to a bigger area. We ended up extending the property to fit more into the space without the red property lines. Another problem that we still need to figure out and one that consistently continues to be an issue is the moving/deleting of buildings and furniture. So far, if someone of the group adds something to the property, they are the only ones that can delete that item, or move it around the land. This proposes a big issue because sometimes not all the group members are in class…actually a lot of the time not everyone is here, so its hard to get organized and set up things when you cannot move and delete the items that day. We are still working on how to fix this problem. 

One last problem that is the most annoying and has been an issue for a long time would be the parcel problem. At first we had no idea why we couldn’t add more furniture to our land, and we didn’t know what parcels were. After another class period of time, we found out that we could only put so many things on our land. So this proposes a big problem because we need to be allowed to add as much as we can fit because items and art and furniture are a huge part of our business. This has been quite the complicated process. We have tried to add different buildings to see if that was the problem, but it was not. Another way we tried was to just build on the land without a building, but the same problem existed. So to try and solve this problem, I contacted the owner of the property, CCJEWEL, and asked if there was anything they could do to try and solve this, but they replied and said we should try to fix it on the website. 

I went to the website, and with the help of my instructor, I went and posted a forum. This forum basically said that we need more parcels to add more things to our land, and we dont know how to go about this, and asking for help with this situation. Hopefully someone out there can help us cause this is frustrating.. but educational at the same time.. I am learning a lot about this. 

Until then,

ekral

In the past couple days my group and I have been doing more research and having more adventures to find out more about our land and building. There has not been anything out of the ordinary so far, or new things as far as building goes, but I have been trying to find things to put in the store. Its hard to pin point exactly what to style and what goes where with more than 3 people in a group, so the difficult part is going to be working together to achieve the end result…an art and furniture shop. 

I worked more on my little display place and I will continue to look for new things that I might be able to use in the store. With a limited amount of space, we are going to have to work really hard to utilize this capacity in which we were given. I look forward to continuing on in hopes of the end result. I`ll make sure I blog about any weird experiences that come forward in this project! There has been only one thing that I cannot and do not like about building. When I put something in our store, only I am aloud to delete the item or move it, no one else can. So say for example one of my group members put a large piece of furniture in the store on Monday, and come Wednesday he is not here in class to move it, we are stuck with this furniture in that area until he can move it. I`m still working out the details on this mishap and hope to conquer some kind of fixing in the near future. 

Until then,

ekral

I apologize that I have not written lately, but I have been overwhelmed with exams, papers, and meetings so I havent been able to dedicate some time to blogging, but this post should make up for what I had been missing.

So in the last week of Secondlife there has been a lot going on. The art and furniture group in which I belong to has finally found a property to start advancing our store on. At first, I didnt feel like this was a big enough space to provide the type of store we need to be able to express what we planned on doing, but with the help of other classmates, I found it to be a great spot. CCJewel has given us land in which we can build on. This was the starting point. In class, since I was the only member there, our instructor gave us 300 linden dollars to work with in hopes of obtaining important pieces in secondlife to help and strengthen our store.

So now, we have land to build on and some money to help us get started on the hard part, building. I went to several locations to try and find a building that would fit the area in which we were given. I found this cottage-like place at first and put that on our land, but found that we needed something else because this was not sufficient enough…at least thats what I thought. So I continued to look for buildings and actually found one that worked PERFECT! It was basically a 2 floor blank canvas building that will give us more and more space and flexibility to put our furniture and art into. This was exiting. When I put this building up on our property the land was not even, and there was grassy mountains inside the building. I tried to change the texture of the land to make it flatter so that we would start putting things in it, but I was unable because I found out it was up to CCJewel to do this task.

I emailed CCJewel to let them know that the land needed to be flattened and that I could not do it on my own but needed their assistance. They wrote back saying that they would do it which was nice on their behalf. I was pleased with the quick response. So in this last class period, we had made some great progress with out lot. I started to make a little showcase anyway just to see what I could do with the things I already had. I actually really enjoyed setting up a little place within my store. I made a little scene. 2 couches, rug, tables, fireplace, and a picture. It turned out nice and cozy.

I went on to show my group members how to become members within the art and furniture group so that they could also start building and getting ideas for this project. They also found it interesting. We stayed past the class time not on purpose, but because we got so into playing around with our store and all the things we could make it into. I was pleased with how much we have done thus far. We still have a ways to go, but at least we are doing well at this point in time. I look forward to the end result. I`m learning new things everytime I `m on secondlife, especially because we are building now and  we are past the setting up stage.

Until then,

ekral

My latest experience on SecondLife was very interesting. In class on Wednesday I experienced some things that were foreign to myself. I went exploring to different neighborhoods and houses and apartments for rent in different locations. This was to gain insight on the popular styles and set ups of furniture and art that avatars were actually living in on SecondLife. I went to several locations and found no one in these homes and apartments. I found places that looked like the description one would give in the real world…

Like brooklyn in new york, usa.  It looked like an actual place in new york. There were street signs and all sorts of things you would find in a city like signs and lights and stands. I tried to get into some of the apartments located in this place, but they were all locked and people were not answering their doors to let me in and look. Oh well…

The last stop was a neighborhood where there were houses on different islands and water with dolphins separated them. I went up to a couple of houses, but could not open the doors. Then I went to this one house that let me in…all of a sudden something popped up on the screen saying that this was a private area and I needed to vacate the premise  or I would be booted off in 60 seconds. This was new to me. I had no idea that avatars had security systems. I got booted off the place and then ended the class period.

Until Next time,

Elizabeth Kral (ekral)