Second Life and Lunch Wrapup for 11-4-2009

We continue to have multiple problems with the new Second Life client software. Still unable to call the group chat I relied on the fact that I have added members of the group as friends and was able to IM members who joined us virtually today. I hope that things will be back to normal soon. One good thing I'm able to get out of this is a laundry list of "what to do when things go wrong" that will be used for a Second Life and Lunch session in the Spring. At least there are workarounds.

This Thursday: Tell the President Your Thoughts
I want to remind you of the educational event happening this week if you are able to log into Second Life from home. An 18-person team from the federal government have taken the time to create avatars so they can log in and participate in a live event Thursday night to take place on ISTE Island in Second Life. The team is looking for input from educators to update and revise the National Educational Technology Plan (NETP). They pose the question: "If you had five minutes to tell President Obama what is most important about edtech and why, what would you say?" For more information about the event and it's location, see the earlier post on our group blog here.

Still Time to See the College Fair
There's still time to check out the booths from this year's Second Life College Fair. Find out how other colleges are using Second Life as a platform for teaching their students.  SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/International%20Schools%203/173/218/21 - this link will open a map page with a teleport button. Click the button and your avatar will be given a landmark so you can teleport to the location. The booths will be up until Friday, November 13th.

More Changes on the Kirkwood Island
The building next to the sandbox with a collection of educational locations in Second Life has been expanded to 11 floors! With this additional room added there are more locations soon to be added to the collection.

Building Contest
There's still time to enter our Build a Snowman contest and you might win 500 Lindens! Create anything you like as long as your build is a snowman. Go to the Kirkwood island and touch the sign next to the Sandbox to pick up your entry form. Turn in your completed entry form by Wednesday, December 2nd. Judging will begin on December 3rd with the prize awarded at our final Second Life and Lunch of the Fall Semester on Wednesday, December 9th.

Next Week
Next week at Second Life and Lunch we will be touring a "pilgrims coming to America" educational game created by a professor at Indiana University. Details to come.

That's it for this week's Second Life and Lunch.
I hope to see you at next week.