HSMF Donation Delivered to Virginia Tech Foundation

On Thursday, June 7, 2007, I went to the Virginia Tech Foundation office in Blacksburg and delivered a cashier's check for $1,200.00 for the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund. There, I met Mr. Steve Clark, the Director of Planned Giving. He was tasked to head up the HSMF gifts, with particular attention paid to "unusual donations" (here's an example of one inspiring story.) What's cool is that I happen to know from tailgate parties before Hokie football games! Steve is the I had already talked about the fundraising effort in Second Life just as it got underway (I wanted to be sure VT was OK with it). Steve knew about the effort and was intrigued by the idea of it. He was very thankful for the donation.


Logistics: It took a bit longer to get the actual check to VT than I had anticipated. All funds had been raised within a month of the start of the fundraiser. The delay happened for a few reasons: A) The logistics of getting funds from SL to a real checking account B) Time needed for a bit of last-minute fundraising, and C) me needing to make the time to go to the bank, etc.


But now it's done - and it feels great. All of you who contributed... thank you SO much!! I will be posting the picture of the Hokie Bird at the VT Memorial in SL, over to the right side.

University of Paisley: MapSeat

An interactive technology on display at the University of Paisley's Second Life campus is the "MapSeat." There is a brief entry about it on the SLED Picayune blog by Dr. Daniel Livingstone, project coordinator.

This tool allows the user to choose a point on a map (of Scotland, at this point) and learn about the object or person represented by the "pushpin." One has a choice of two maps -one that shows where certain inventions were created, and the other about famous figures in Scottish history. So, for example, on the pushpin located in the region of Dumfreys & Galloway, one sees text reading "Pedal Bike with Pneumatic Tyres." Clicking that point gives the person sitting in the map seat a notecard with information about the bike and its inventor, and it also rezzes a 3D representation of a bike created by Kirkpatrick Macmillan in 1839. Another pushpin yields a representation of a telephone. A different map makes information and a pic appear about Robert Burns, Mary Queen of Scots, Andrew Carnegie, and so on. Here are a couple of pictures I took, as well as the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vesuvius/205/183/32

Take some time to check it out, and imagine the possibilities!!

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund update: First $1,000 raised!!

I posted the following "press release" to the SLED Picayune blog and to the SLED listserv yesterday:

"In an effort to provide Second Life residents with a means of supporting the "Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund," SL resident, a RL Virginia Tech faculty member, Milosun Czervik (Ross Perkins) initiated an in-world fundraising campaign on April 19th. Hundreds of SL residents have been donating funds via donation boxes and vendors, where they can receive a Hokies t-shirt to wear on their avatar.

After a silent auction, held this past week on EduIsland (see the Chronicle of Higher Education web report), the goal of raising L$300,000 has been reached. The funds have been converted to US dollars via LindeX, yielding $1,085 US.Once the money has been deposited to a PayPal account and can be accessed, Perkins will write a check for the full amount to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund. Next up? Perkins plans to initiate a new campaign to raise more funds for the Memorial Fund and scholarships that have been started in memory of the victims of the April 16 tragedy."

For this blog, I want to personally thank a number of volunteers who helped make the VT Memorial and the HSMF fundraiser possible (this list will grow as I remember/find more names!)

Lorelei Junot, Abbey Zenith, Katrina Sol, Marston Davids, Penelope Ghia, Perefim Cao, Eloise Pasteur, Dedric Mauriac, Dagmar Kojishi, Ann Enigma, ZeroOne Paz, DianaPrince Carter, Eddie Hagoromo, Robin Linden...

Sculpties test on the Beta Grid

I downloaded the new SL Beta Client yesterday and tooled around with the "sculptured prim" (sculpties). I'm sure this will be big when it hits the main grid; we are likely to see SL come to stand for "still life," as bowls of fruit will start popping up all over the place. What I want to learn is how to make a sculptie texture. The beta client only comes with the APPLE texture as default, so you have to save/upload the banana, stem, plate, cube textures yourself. The link for that is here: http://tinyurl.com/32wfx8




I found some problem though - that a sculpted prim would snap out of shape from time to time. So, instead of being a sculpted cube, for instance, I would all of a sudden see a sphere. I'm not sure if this is an artifact of my graphics card or if its beta bug (my guess is the latter).



http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Sculpted_Prims

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/27/the-advent-of-an-illustrious-age-of-sculpted-prims/

Official VT Memorial now established

After a couple of weeks of temporary locations, I'm happy to report that there is now an official memorial spot in Second Life to remember the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings (16-APR-07). Marston Davids and Penelope Ghia have been exceptionally dedicated to making this site happen. Marston, in particular, has shown his building skills, and has created a place that is indeed respectful and beautiful. He even textured part of the parcel to resemble at VT, and placed 33 trees on it, making for a very somber park in which to walk or sit. Since the memorial is now on privately held land, the griefer incidents have not been a real issue.

To see more photos from the memorial on Marston West, see my flickr.com site: http://tinyurl.com/26yzsl

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund: The initial goal has nearly been met! Only about L$14,000 left to go!!

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Blog entries about the memorial(s): I recently did a Google search on VT memorials in Second Life, and entries about it seem to be popping up all over, though most of what I have seen is merely a recasting of the original MTV article. Some of the blogs have comments about the memorial, not all of which are positive. I wonder if these same people who don't see a role for a VT Memorial in SL also criticize memorial websites that have gone up? My guess is that the critics have not yet accepted the 3D look of the web. I can understand the perception that the "game-like" appearance of SL might seem trite (my very first concern), but I think the environment we've created there is actually quite respectful. I will not be refuting the negative comments on the blogs. Here are a couple of memorial websites, though I'm sure there are many more:

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1) http://rosa.hosting.vt.edu/index.php/memorial/

2) http://virginiatechtribute.blogspot.com/

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I recently met a VCU professor in-world ("Ignatius Onomatopoeia") who blogs for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. His article about the fundraising efforts are found at: http://slbeat.mytimesdispatch.com/

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The SLURL for the VT Memorial site:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Marston%20West/129/121/25

ICT Library website

Over the past year that I've been building and revising the ICT Library, and working on the SLED Picayune, I have not ever taken time to make a proper set of web pages that give people information about it. Why have I waited so long? I don't have a good answer for that, but now it's here, thanks to the ease with which GooglePages allows me to create the site! Though I am fairly adept with Composer, NVu, and some bits of DreamWeaver (and even NetObjects Fusion!), I have long since passed the time when I was willing to spend hours developing sites.

For all my fellow teacher-educators out there who dislike spending time guiding pre-service candidates through building pages, making sure their links are right, making sure images appear, etc., I *highly* recommend GooglePages. One does have to have a Google Mail account, but that can be set up with relative ease. My own students who have used it really like it a lot, though others preferred NVu. In any case, it makes linking and paths SO much easier. Sure, they could use Lectora or some other means - but they all cost money. I like free best.

AECT in Second Life

Over the last week or so, I've put together a "headquarters" building for the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) on EduIsland. I thought of doing this last year - around conference time - but then got distracted. In any case, the AECT leadership, at that time, were not on-board the Second Life train. Now, they are. The building is by no means an award-winning structure, and as time goes along there will be lots of changes inside and out. After all, structures in SL are supposed to evolve! Perhaps we will one day have a towering skyscraper, with each division having its own floor...who can tell!

I recently read a blog that reported the existence of the AECT building (I found this amusing, as I *just* put this news in the SLED Picayune yesterday). It complained that its contents were not nearly as "rich" as the AECT website. First, it's a new build - so lay off. Second, the AECT website is not rich - it's confusing, with way too much information on each page. Thankfully, there is an electronic services committee, headed up by the likes of Dr. Trey Martindale, and they are in the throes of discussing a major re-design. At any rate, I will soon link up with the ESC (!!) to see what kind of SL-related things we can do.

Anyway, I wanted to relate the history behind this building. It started early last week when I tried to call Sharon, the editor of a certain AECT publication. I was looking for information about what my duties as "liaison" might be (and I still haven't found out as I have yet to follow up). It turns out that I called the wrong number - a university where she has not taught for a few years. Now, I know where she is ... but the letters of the URL for the university name are the same, so when Google gave me the URL for her office information, I simply looked at the number and called. Yes, I should have paid closer attention. What happened, though, was that I wound up chatting for quite some time with Sharon's colleague (and AECT president-elect), Dr. Mary Herring. She had just been introduced to Second Life not too long ago, as had the organization's executive director, Phil Harris. We talked for close to 30 minutes about SL, AECT in SL, and all sorts of things. The next day, I got permission from the EduIsland owner (SL's "Lorelei Junot") and my co-manager on EduIsland (SL's "Mari Asturias") to build the AECT structure. Both said they had no problem with it - and so I got right to work! It was a serendiptious conversation, and I've been excited to be part of AECT's first official steps in SL.

A number of AECT members, of course, are already in Second Life, as I learned at the 2006 conference in Dallas. Some members of the community, however, are downright secretive about their work. Learning, then, exactly who is doing what in SL will probably only become clear once certain egos are stroked / satisfied. That might be a bit too cynical of a position, but I don't think I'm too far from the truth. Anyway, being the first to publish on (fill in the blank) seems to be the coin of the realm. This is ironic in a field that encourages students to collaborate. I really need to be publishing more (in general), especially on the educational community-related stuff I'm doing in SL. After all, publications (not buildings or t-shirts in SL) lead to tenure. HA! Wouldn't that be great?? Peer-reviewed buildings...