SL

Higashiosaka – NpIRL

MariisLeave a comment

Not possible in real life (NpIRL) group founder, Bettina Tizzy sent a tp to Higashiosaka. It’s a very special sim made by a Japanese designer, Jigoku Landman. Higashiosaka apparently refers to Japans buddhist hell – I actually saw a clear resemblance with the Inferno in Dantes Divine Comedy and I think this type of remediation could be useful in litterature studies .. a bit like the Danteworlds project .. only 3D :-)

It’s difficult to explain what goes on on this animated sim … you need to go there to fully appreciate this experience ..

/Mariis

MILs meeting spot in the air

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Ok, the super-hero look didn’t work for me, so I had to change my looks .. this time with a real hero on the t-shirt ..


L. Cohen near the heart!

To change my appearance privately, I went up in the air to MILs meeting spot.


MILs airbourne meeting spot

It is a less respectful remediation compared to our office on ground, and some students find it difficult to associate this type of rough environment with the MIL education.

It is however good to have a place to meet more privately, and if you right click on the steel bars next to the ventilator the room will change since Dr. Asp build it as a holodeck.

If you fall down you’ll land right next to a beautiful old mill in the outskirts of WD1 ..


There is a reason why it’s called Wonderful Denmark :-)

/Mariis

Relay for Life

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With virtual worlds new opportunities arise, and I think that one of the more exiting ways of using virtual worlds is fundraising. No doubt you reach a different audience through virtual worlds. This weekend Relay for Life is hosting a big fundraiser spread out on 35 Heroes Islands.

A similar event in 2007 helped to raise over US $115,000 in total. It’s possible to monitior this years donations from the RFLofSL event site.

Last night I attended a live concert with Tony Uriza, who apparently lost his mother to cancer, and there was an atmosphere of hope and fight for survival with many avatars holding different type of RLF flags.

Of course it’s possible to donate Lindens everywhere on the islands ..

On the avenue leading to Shea Stadium there’s an exhibition by SL artist Byron Oh


Jethopper



Fishbot

Some of the events have also been broadcasted via SLCN.tv

One of the activities is a scavenger/cancer education hunt, and I found one of these inside the Trojan Horse on Heroes19.

Unfortunately I kept loosing my wig, when climbing the rope …

On Heroes3 I got me a nice horse – it was also a place showing pictures of RL cancer survivors.


Demo horse – only to be worn once


Survivors displayed

At the end of the day, I wanted to try out a super-hero costume …

It didn’t really suit me … guess I’m not much of a hero … and now I’m struggeling to get back into (my) shape!

/Mariis

Gibson Island

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One of the things I enjoy in a more private manner in SL is listening to live music. Yesterday I attended the launch of Gibson Island

Gibson.com writes;

In tribute to the legendary Gibson Les Paul guitar and to Les Paul himself, the Gibson Island is in the shape of the famous guitar body and rises up from the ocean in Second Life. The “island” features humbucker mountains, full theatres, mini-theatres, and other areas resembling pick ups and other aspects of a Gibson guitar.

There was a truly impressive list of musicians playing for 12 hrs.

I especially enjoyed Forsythe and Per … totally different, but equally wonderful!

During my stay (on/off between 9 am – 3 pm) there were between 55-74 avatars, and perhaps that’s why the Island rezzed poorly .. I’m not sure, but I found it difficult to walk around exploring. I did however manage to see these attractions:


The Wurlitzer Cafe


The Acoustic stage


Rob O’guitar :-)

And naturally I had to get me a Longhorn … niiiiice ;-)

As far as I understand there will be plenty live arrangements in the future, so this for sure will be a place to return to ..

/Mariis

SL in the COMBLE project

Mariis1 Comment

As part of the COMBLE project the Danish team is responsible for developing, implementing and testing a course that should help future trainers in blended learning. We recently had a meeting in Aalborg with our Polish partner and decided that in the pilot course there will not be sufficient resources for the participants to meet f2f, so we will combine activities in a traditional learning platform (Moodle) with activities in SL.

As it turns out our Polish partner already has an island, which we can use unless Aalborg University decides to buy land before the course is supposed to be tested (spring ’09). Today I went visiting their island, Second UMCS (University Marii Curi-Sklodowsiej):

The arrival area

The Cinema

The Exhibition

The Sandbox

Intimate Classroom

The entrance to the Old Lublin

As you can see there are plenty of possibilities to both meet and explore!

Next step in the COMBLE project will be for all application partners to meet in-world – usually we use Skype and several Google apps, but none of them really gives the same sense of being there together ..

/Mariis