Graphics Programs Reference
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club and also to her virtual wedding, to be held
in SL. With these invitations, the students quickly
learned that there was more to the virtual world
than just aimless wandering and exploration.
As for the scavenger hunt, almost all of the
students completed it successfully, achieving all of
the points for the assignment. While I did have to
walk around the classroom and render assistance
to some, the students generally found the naviga-
tion in SL easy enough. My walking around the
RL classroom lessened through the semester, as
students became more self-reliant in-world.
assignments translated into course points toward
their grade, I then rewarded each student with
100 Lindens (or L$100), the currency of SL, to
spend in-world as they wished. (A URL for the
webpage that documents the building class can
be found in the reference list.)
It may be worth noting that, as with many
active learning projects, some of the students
“got it” before others had finished, and were left
standing around, waiting for the end of class. One
particular student, Justinn, decided to play with
some of the free Star Wars objects that he had
collected in his travels. In order to keep everyone
focused in the space, I pulled out my Jedi light
saber and Justinn and I mock dueled. While of
course teaching and learning is a very serious
business, the momentary distraction of the pony-
tailed professor avatar Jedi-fencing with a student
put things in a different perspective—that perhaps
the process of learning, and the environment of
SL, could be fun.
The other guest speaker, Fairylights Ewing (aka
Katie Haegele), is a journalist in Philadelphia, PA,
who had interviewed me for an article on SL poetry.
Because of her interest in SL, I suggested via email
that she be a guest in my class. Her response email
indicated her hesitation, concerned with the cost
in time and money of RL travel, but I suggested
she be a virtual guest instead. She agreed, and
visited with my class in the Greek Theater. The
students' next task was to be a search for in-world
events they would find interesting. As a prelude,
Fairylights spoke (that is, she typed in the text
box, since voice chat was not yet reliable at the
time) about some of the activities in SL she had
witnessed, including some with interactive objects
that she found quite imaginative.
As virtual environments are inherently theatri-
cal spaces, and users role-play with their avatars to
interact with others, my students found themselves
“acting” the traditional roles of students when re-
lating to these guests, especially Fairylights. As she
addressed them, they sat quietly and absorbed what
she had to say. (I glanced around the classroom, to
gUeST SPeAkeRS AND
ROLe-PLAYINg
One very useful element of Second Life is its
connectivity. We can easily bring experts and
guest speakers to our classes without worrying
about travel expenses. For the Theatre Technol-
ogy course, I had two guests visit during the
semester, as well as having employed the aid of
Meghamora Woodward (aka Meghan Moran, a
Master's student in Communication Studies at
San Jose State University) as a teaching assistant
during some of the more chaotic class meetings.
One such chaotic class took place in the Greek
Theatre. Zayante Hegel of Santa Cruz, CA, met
with the students to teach them the basics of
building. The assignment was relatively simple:
create three basic prim (or primitive) shapes: a
cube, a sphere and a cone. Once created, they
would choose a color for the objects in the editing
window, stack them, and link them by selecting all
three and choosing “Link” from the Tools menu.
This is easily checked by selecting the unit, and
moving it back and forth; if all the steps have been
accomplished, the entire piece moves together.
While the final step, attaching a graphic (texture)
to the objects, was not required, some students
did attempt this option, and Zayante alerted me
to each student's completion of the assignment to
her satisfaction. Because not all of the in-world
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