Wandering the NCI pavilion in Second Life early in my Second Life resulted in a chance to get to know an interesting young chap. I had just sat my avatar down to process some of the inventory I had gathered, when another avatar with that half-baked newbie look approached and took a chair across from me.

Creven Alonzo had recently registered in SL Mature Grid (MG), having reached his real life (RL) eighteenth birthday. He mentioned his recent transfer out of TG, and soon commented that he was bored. I did the math: newly emigrated TG user plus bored MG resident equals…

opportunity.

We chatted about and avatars, freebies and virtual hang-man games. A curious complacency was obvious in his chatter. Previously, and without exception, all of my conversations had been with folks of two types: New like myself and so excited about all there was to explore and learn, or more experienced and in a hurry to move on because there was so much to be done.

This guy was unimpressed.

It grew late, so I asked if I could add him to my friends list (he accepted). Waiting several weeks before contacting him, I saw Creven pop up in the grid once in a while (entry and exit of any “friend” is announced to every user).

The wait gave Creven time to explore, and afforded me time to learn about the metaverse and more importantly, to come up with a project. The iDP needs content, how about a content set for the teen transfers? Maybe Creven could help to fill out a list of SL locations, capture snapshots, get landmarks and even write the descriptions for locations that would interest new immigrants.

That is no joke. The young people who have been removed from their adventure in the TG apparently experience emotions familiar to any who have moved from one town to another, leaving the life they came to know—and the friends made—behind. He had been deported.

Creven has since remained in contact, has submitted over a dozen snapshots from the grid, and even created a weblog. We have had several conversations about image composition and resolution. I suggested he start a weblog, because I—for one—would be interested to read his observations of this, his second second life, the one in the MG (hopefully sprinkled with anecdotes from the TG). Occasionally seems like a teacher-student interaction.

What he may not know is that I may be learning more than him in the process.

Cheers, Creven.

Kathy Schrock is in the house! I just walked into the ICT Library in Second Life with a celebrity. Started a conversation with an avatar, just a simple “Nice shirt” to open the channel. She was wearing the ISTE long sleeve, one of my favorites. She said she liked it, that I could get one too, and after a bit of chat she she posted her URL in the chat box.

I am not so aggressive with the acronyms, but found the letters “O-M-G” jumping out of my fingertips. She explained that it was only her second visit into the grid, given her first visit had brought a grief attack (watch those public spaces!). When she expressed her skepticism regarding user-generated content, I should have said “Nice shirt” again. Instead, I mentioned Curriki. She then brought up her stance regarding Wikipedia…

So, here was another lesson from the metaverse:

’tis a level playing field.

(Should have grabbed a snapshot. Doh!)

A Second Life resident generously spent much of last night with this ol’ fart. Having emigrated been relocated from the Teen Grid (TG), he has been in the Mature Grid (MG) for just over a year.

Did not know what was meant by this last bit; but, it came up again later. Appears that Linden Labs provides an area of transition for those immigrating from TG - sort of an Ellis Island for the youngest users in the grid. Likely several sims are devoted to this purpose; and, it seems to have worked for E…he has land, building privileges, and is quite removed from much of the traffic.

On reaching an eighteenth birthday, each user in the TG is packed up and relocated to MG. Seems that E has mixed feelings about this. (E has just mentioned a number of TG friends, says he misses them.)

Virtual reality…”physical contact.” Like many things in first life, Second Life is what you make of it.

Visiting E’s “shack” (as he calls it) encourages me. Having visited just a few virtual homes and offices - all of them furnished with end tables, and bookshelves (with a texture of eight books that do not do a thing) - it was interesting to see E’s sparse arrangement; only what is useful, little included for the sake of appearance. Every item — it seemed — was interactive, and the room uncluttered, and have a different feel than the RL suburban simulations I just mentioned. Certainly E’s RL clubhouse or tree fort, if he had one four or five (RL) years ago, may have had this same look…But that would have been due to RL constraints; in Second Life, E has chosen to create a spartan space.

A multi-user dungeon (domain), object oriented (MOO) interface stares back from my browser with READMEs and Intro button eyes. A few weeks into my Second Life, and real life (”RL”, to an avatar) is moving at the speed of light. I received my demonstration Moodle account (with accompanying class to create) only last night; yet, the need to test drive that interface has been nudged right off the list, maybe tomorrow I’ll Moodle.

Connected.

I am connected to people with an efficiency and productivity that is astounding. Case in point: That last sentence was punctuated by the appearance of w0nk0, the educator in Australia who invited mooved me into this MOO environment as a SysAdmin. Ten minutes later, and I have already traveled through three or four rooms in the sim, learned a bit about interacting, and now “see” a haggard cabinboy as water lasps lazily and an Albatross calls from above. w0nk0 logged in, saw that was idle in his virtual reality, and offered instruction.

Nice.

w0nk0 explains that “a MOO requires you to use imagination a little more” [than a 3D sim], and offers this excerpt:

It is substantially easier for players to give themselves vivid, detailed, and interesting descriptions… in a text-based system than in a graphics based one. In McLuhan’s terminology, this is because MUDs are a ‘cold’ medium, while more graphically-based media are ‘hot’; that is, the sensorial parsimony of plain text tends to entice users into engaging their imaginations to fill in missing details while, comparatively speaking, the richness of stimuli in fancy virtual realities has an opposite tendency, pushing users’ imaginations into a more passive role. I also find it difficult to believe that a graphics-based system will be able to compete with text for average users on the metric of believable detail per unit of effort expended; this is certainly the case now and I see little reason to believe it will change in the near future.

Pavel Curtis, Mudding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities
(Submission to the 1992 conference on Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing, 1992)

“Believable detail per unit of effort expended”. Interesting, indeed.

But I digress (at light speed, these days)…One educator has formed a group of educators and educational gaming professionals withing the SL community, called Gaming and Learning. He also had the foresight to create a companion Google Group, “Gaming and Learning in Second Life” (GaLiSL), as a hub for communicating within the group “out of world” (in RL). Seeing the potential for edge-seekers in education [Azwaldo Villota avoids temptation to juggle a cute play on words], I test the water with a few comments, edit a Page, and even open a free wiki.
The number, even the variety of experiences (and, more importantly to me, the number of ideas now percolating in me wee brain), have me wondering…

What have I brought to the dance?

Quick post: Too much to do in Second Life, too much to learn actually, to spend time dropping breadcrumbs here lately. Here is a link to a promotional video made by NMC (an educational consultancy) about the 3-Dimensional Virtual Reality called “Second Life” (SL):

NMC Campus: Seriously Engaging

And, a link to one from Ohio University:

Ohio University Second Life Campus

And one of the most intriguing videos I have surfed into lately:

3D morphable model face animation (remarkable technology)

Now, it’s back to the grid…

Remember your earliest visits to a video arcade? I do. Mostly what I recall is never having two bits. But, the first time was a revelation. [Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 1972.]
My brother had explained a new game to our mother, convincing her that we could be set loose (at the Saginaw Mall!). “Stay with your brother!” she called out. I knew she was not talking to me.

Suddenly I was running, trying to keep up with my big brother, weaving and rushing until we found it: Alladin’s Castle.  Then, roaming down a long aisle of tall, strange boxes with knobs and dials that reminded me of Mom’s new dishwasher.

My older brother urged me along until we came to about a dozen kids standing shoulder to shoulder; the small crowd with mouths agape, huddled behind a boy facing up against one of the appliances. I wondered what all the hurrying was about. Why were these kids interested in appliances?

And, then I saw it.

A small television screen flashing bright colors out of the front of one of the washing machines, and the boy tapped frantically at buttons on its console, his body tense with energy, dancing with the body english we all used at a pinball machine. His ducking and jerking seemed to guide a small spaceship, darting about among a sea of rocks hurtling in every direction, slowing only now and then to blast a rock to pieces.

Asteroids.

After that, much of what I remember of video arcades involves hanging around, leaning against other kids that didn’t have any quarters, either; all of us watching as someone blasted metoers into galactic rubble, hunted colorful dragons, or mounted an attack on magic aliens. Sure, I went on later to spend a fortune in paper-route and lawn-mowing money on Donkey Kong, Tempest, and Breakout. But those early days found me content to stand shoulder to shoulder, watching a foreign world being conquered.

Even that was entertaining enough to keep me coming back.

Sitting in a desk chair, the notion surfaces once more that I need a more comfortable chair. Not just a chair, but a working platform, a helm; yes, I am thinking something more like a dentist’s chair. Padded, tooled-up, with a motorized reclining feature. Of course, my (new) dual monitors will have to be mounted - or better, suspended - from above so that I can continue to do what I am doing this very moment, which is interacting.

Because I am going to be here for a while.

If young learners are to be guided, perhaps escorted, within a learn-on-demand campus such as Second Life, then there will need to be training camps for the mentors. Maybe even networked teams of roving avatars (think social media). How is this different? What are the features of this place that serve the big picture? What in Kimi’s tutelage is unique when compared to Education 1.0? One difference, it feels like friendship.

Look at what we have now. In just under four days, I was been able to learn to build, script, explore, and even dress myself. Granted I had spent many hours with SL:TOG, but still, a motivated learner has all of the information available to get going, moving forward. Look at what I am doing now, no word processor or application suite. I am writing a note that can be posted to anyone in the world, drawn from as content for another application, even e-mailed out to the outer grid (snapshot the note, select e-mail to friend).

I have created and designed.

Regardless of the debate (see Scoble’s threaded discussion) over whether this is an OS or not, what matters is this: Will we find what we need to communicate right here, at our fingertips.
I write this entry after having spent two RL (real life) hours in a dance club. The visual stimulation inspired me to come up with my own acronymious teen speak (You know, the short abrev/fonix type words that young people are text messaging and IMing while some of us (those who remember rotary dial telephones) wonder if they may be doing it just to be obscure.)

IO

IO = information overload. There was so much going on; music, dancing, costumes, chat text, IMing, that i could hardly take pictures of my new friends (all my SL friends were there !). At times I had my browser open with a blog or wiki to learn about SL, or about how to SL, or whatever else i might do on the WWW. But in this case, my virtual self was doing some salsa dancing with my mentor, Kimi. Later, I would actually jump up onto one of the floating pedastals myself, and earn a bit of kipper while the music thumped. Dancing actually freed me up to do more of this that I am doing right now - generating content.

WAW.

(What A World.)