Let's Play Second Life

Workshop Bauen in Second Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrZVimd76Ac

Second Life Workshop: ‘A Global Perspective on Gifted Education’

On Saturday 26 March at 8.00PM UK time, I will be leading a workshop in Second Life taking ‘A Global Perspective on Gifted Education).

The Workshop is my personal contribution to the inaugural celebration of the European Day of Talent, celebrated on 9 April 2011, which has been organised by the Hungarians as part of their drive to support European gifted education while they hold the EU Presidency.

The corresponding times for other parts of the world are:

• 9.00 PM CEST
• 4.00 PM US Eastern
• 1.00 PM US Pacific
• 7.00 AM Aus (Victoria) (Sun 27 March)
• 9.00 AM NZ (Sun 27 March)

You can find further details about me and about how to join the event on the website of theBavarian Centre for Gifted and Talented Children which has been organising a series of Global Gifted Education meetings in Second Life, this being the sixth in the series.

Roya Klingner, the Head of the Bavarian Centre, has designed specially for the event a Gifted Phoenix avatar, which is literally the embodiment of the ‘headshot’ avatar I use for this Blog, Twitter and Facebook. Doesn’t he look a fine figure!

So you will be interacting with a hybrid personality, combining the body of Gifted Phoenix and the voice of his alter ego Tim Dracup. (My normal gender-shifting SL avatar Tiresius Draconia is resting on this occasion.)

I want to take a slightly different direction to my predecessors in the series by making a serious effort to maximise interaction with you, the participants.

While it’s fine to come along, take a back seat and watch the proceedings, I’m really keen to get some proper discussion going amongst those willing to take part.

To that end, I’ve decided to share my presentation a week in advance, so participants can see broadly what I plan to cover and so prepare their own contributions. You can find it at:

Second Life Presentation March 2011

As a lead-in to the discussion I shall be relying on a graphical version of my very first post on this Blog, which I have also reproduced below.

We create here A billboard in SL.

Intrcuctions:

1. Get a cube
2. right click on the cube > edit item
3. Choose size X=0.1 y=5 z=3
4. Use rotate botton to rotate the board
5. Use mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
6. Texture tab> texure>pick texture>Library>photo album>asian teahouse-ok.

Whatever happened to Second Life?

It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it’s raking in more cash than ever before

Three years ago, I underwent one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life – and I barely even left the office.

I spent a week virtually living and breathing inside Second Life: the massively multiplayer online world that contains everything from lottery games to libraries, penthouses to pubs, skyscrapers to surrogacy clinics.

Oh, and an awful lot of virtual sex.

Back then, the world and his dog were falling over themselves to “be 
a part of it”. Rock stars were queuing up to play virtual gigs, Microsoft and IBM were setting up elaborate pixellated offices to host staff training seminars, Reuters even despatched a correspondent to report back on the latest in-world developments. 

At its peak, the Second Life economy had more money swilling about than several third-world countries. It had even produced its own millionaire, Anshe Chung, who made a very real fortune from buying and selling property that existed only on Second Life servers.

Three years on, and the hype has been extinguished. Second Life has seen its status as the web wonderchild supplanted by Facebook and Twitter. The newspapers have forgotten about it, the Reuters correspondent has long since cleared his virtual desk, and you can walk confidently around tech trade shows without a ponytailed “Web 2.0 Consultant” offering to put your company on the Second Life map for the price of a company car.

But what has happened to Second Life? Have the hundreds of thousands of registered players logged off and found a real life? Has the Second Life economy collapsed? And what’s become of the extroverts, entrepreneurs and evangelists I encountered on my first visit? There’s only one way to find out. I’m going back in.

Where is everybody?

The first thing I notice upon dropping out of the Second Life sky once more is how empty the place is. On my first visit back in 2006, I couldn’t walk through the training level without clumsily bumping into the throng of fellow newbies. Now, there’s enough room to swing the contents of Noah’s ark, let alone a cat.

I walk and then fly around the landscape for ten minutes or so, but can’t find a single soul to shoot the breeze with. Well, except for a smattering of Second Life bots, which is the intellectual equivalent of striking up a conversation with The Speaking Clock. 

I decide to seek out Second Life’s tourist hotspots, using the game’s search engine as my guide. I check out an amazing Gothic castle, which must have taken someone half a real life to painstakingly cobble together, but I’m the only one admiring the architecture.

I dash off to a shopping mall, listed as one of the most popular sites in the game, and yet it’s only me perusing the countless fashion stores. Admittedly, it’s noon on Saturday in Britain – making it an indecent hour for Second Life’s US-oriented audience – but finding people was never this hard back in 2006.

So I change tack, and search for live events taking place now. Surely, the person who organised them would bother to turn up? The first draws a blank, the second likewise. Finally, I find a huddle of people at a “disco”, a good 20 minutes after I first completed my re-entry into Second Life.

I’m suddenly aware of French accents seeping from my laptop’s speakers. It takes me a few minutes to realise what’s going on. I vaguely remember reading that Second Life had introduced voice chat a while back, providing an audio accompaniment to the text-based chatter we used to make do with in “the good old days”. 

Second Life is...

Exploring and Discovery

Travel with friends to thousands of beautiful and exciting places — all created by the Second Life community. Join Now

Filled with Friends

Millions of people have already joined Second Life. Chat for free using voice or text with folks from around the world who share your passions and interests. Browse profile

Self-Expression

Dress up and design a new 3D you. There are thousands of designer items to explore in ourMarketplace where the selection is as endless as your imagination.

Endless Fun

Every day there are thousands of new experiences and events created by the Second Life community. Visit the Destination Guide to get a peek at some of the action.

Artistic Bliss

Discover your artistic t a lents and share them instantly with friends. Take beautiful snapshots, create machinima videos or build something from scratch inside Second Life.

Second life part two