What’s new on Community Island
January 30, 2009, 10:34 am
Filed under:
secondlife,
Virtual Campus News | Tags:
architecture,
audra magermans,
cobl,
ctl,
second life,
stc,
the center,
vesta dreamscape,
virtual campus,
welcome area
The area of the BGSU Virtual Campus known as Community Island has been growning over the last few months. The Center for Teaching and Learning build is nearly complete. Visit the CTL tree and click on the apples to receive various notecards on teaching and learning.
Teleport to the Center for Teaching and Learning in SL!
Architecture Instructor and BGSU Virtual Campus Co-Administrator Audra Magermans (Vesta Dreamscape in SL) has designed the new build for the Center for Online and Blended Learning (COBL) which will completed by May 2009. The building has been built in-world by Elizabeth Osterhues, a BGSU Virtual Campus 3D Environment Developer.
Teleport to the Center for Online and Blended Learning in SL!
The Archricecture Department at BGSU now has an office on BGSU Community Island, also designed by Audra Magermans.
Teleport to the Architecture Departmental Office in SL!
The Student Technology Center will also open later this semester and will feature a “Welcome area refresher course”. Using slides, notecards, and videos StudentTech will offer a range of support for faculty and staff who need information on University supported software, the Laptop Loan program, workshops available, as well as navigating your avatar and the Second Life user-interface (UI).
Teleport to the Student Technology Center in SL!
SL Education Support Faire
Yesterday marked the start of the SL Education Support Faire. Information about the faire can be found here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Education_Support_Faire#Monday.2C_January_26.2C_2009
The Ohio Learning Network has a booth at the faire where BGSU has a box for distributing our “Island Features” notecard as well as BGSU T-shirts.
Click here to teleport: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Olde/96/84/29
Representatives from SLoodle (http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/), the SL Moodle LMS mashu-up, were also at the faire.
Conference opportunity
Mardi Gras Conference 2009
Virtual Worlds: New Realms for Culture, Creativity, Commerce, Computation and Communication
February 19-21, 2009
Sheraton Conference Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
http://www.mardigrasconference.org
Although the concept of virtual worlds has deep roots within the world of networked computing, it is only within
the past few years that virtual worlds have captured the imagination of so many in such diverse fields as art, music, business, philosophy, psychology, sociology and mass communication. Moreover, there have been very few events that have tried to organize a broad interdisciplinary perspective around virtual worlds, their adoption by various constituencies, and their use by artists, musicians, historians, designers, educators, archivists, computer scientists, gamers, businesses and entrepreneurs.
The 2009 Mardi Gras Conference will bring together individuals working in this broad area in an attempt to foster
information exchange, enable community building and project future trends across the multitude of disciplines
that have engaged this technology. Following the conference, a true New Orleans Mardi Gras experience awaits–
the Endymion Parade.
INVITED PRESENTERS INCLUDE:
Noshir Contractor – "From Disasters to WoW: Understanding & Enabling Networks in the 21st Century"
Tony O’Driscoll – "Avoiding the Routinization Trap: Leveraging Virtual Worlds for Strategic Differentiation"
Benjamin Duranske – "Virtual Law for Non-Lawyers: Justice on the New Frontier"
Eric Call – "Improving Aesthetics in Virtual Worlds"
David Noah (Workshop) – "Virtual Worlds and Education"
IMPORTANT DATES:
Early-bird registration closes January 8, 2009
Conference lodging block closes January 19, 2009
See tentative program at: http://www.mardigrasconference.org/program.php
The Mardi Gras ’09 Conference on Virtual Worlds is sponsored by the Center for Computation and Technology,
Louisiana State University.
For more information, visit www.mardigrasconference.org
Invitation to attend Gajjala’s class (and yes a deliverable for this LC)
Hi all,
You are invited – but if everyone actually comes – standing room only;-)
Needless to say I am excited about the businesses my IPC 411 class groups built on Secondlife this semester as part of their grade for the course
on “Performing Digitally Mediated Identities”.
Important to note is that most of these students absolutely new to 3D virtual worlds
(when I asked who among the class had ever even played computer games I only got about 2 or 3 hands raised)
and non-exposed to anything technical and software related. But you wouldnt know that to see their projects.
MORE importantly – most of their group analysis, blogging and the group business plans show that many of them do understand the literacies
and digitally performative and cultural skills that go into such building of virtual/real businesses. I would say the best of the groups in the lot learned
about virtual economies and their the virtual-real communicative and material interdependences of such economies quite well:)
Thanks also goes to the various graduate student researchers who worked with me to help and record the process as we all together work to write up reports and publications based on such building of identities.
The winning team has also been awarded a slot on the facebook application called Cyberdivalive Creations. Feel free to gift your friends on facebook.
An additional note that select creative and hardworking the students from this class engaging the Gender and Race frameworks will be working with me on a women’s studies History month Narrating Cyberselves Project to be presented in March 2009 at the Women’s Center.
Here is a link to an image of a Swim up bar that one of the group’s built (the other groups did a great job – but visually they are not all as showcaseable in 2 D images). Click on the link below.
Swim up Bar on Secondlife built by a Student group in IPC 411: Performing Digitally Mediated Identities
News about Mac OSX
I received the following announcement via email from Linden Labs last night. I would like to point out a solution to the problem that I have used previously: MacBook Pro Graphic Freeze Workaround
We here at Linden Lab want you to get the full value out of your Second Life experience. We wanted to alert you to an incompatibility between the video card driver software in OSX 10.4 and Second Life Viewer Client that leads to a crash rate of over 50%.
You are receiving this email because we show that your account has logged in using a machine that has been running OSX 10.4 within the last 60 days.
There is no current timeframe for a client side workaround on this issue, but we are aware of it and are continuously working to bring the crash rate down on all of our Second Life Viewers for all operating systems.
We have found that the crash rates on 10.5 drop to around 15%, which is currently our median. Updating the OSX version leads to a significant stability improvement over 10.4.
We’ve created a Knowledge Base article with tips on how to improve performance on the Apple Macintosh. You can find the knowledge base article using this direct link:
http://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=3997
Thank you for your time!
MJ Linden
Proactive Initiatives
Linden Lab / Second Life
