Thunder

On 27th November I delivered the first training session for educators from WMnet, this session took place at Longton CLC (Stoke on Trent). Prior to the session I liaised with Les the technician to ensure that Second Life worked on their machines and was not blocked by their filters etc.

I arrived shortly after 9am and checked that Second Life was indeed working, and I was happy to see that it was, at this point I didn’t do anything other than login in and move around a little. 10am came and we had 10 educators ready to go, everyone logged on to their machine and clicked on Second Life - this was our first problem, for some reason as we were all logging on using the same account it wouldn’t allow anyone else to run the application. Phil (superstar) Gregory who was a delegate on the course, but also worked at the CLC ran out to the room to find some technical support, the agreed course of action was to create individual accounts for everyone. While these accounts on the RM network were being created, I asked everyone who hadn’t already created a Second Life account to do so, this was the second problem we came up against the filter blocked the webmail accounts people were trying to use!

The network accounts were soon created and everyone was now able to run Second Life, after logging out and in again as their new login. Almost everyone was now able to log in to Second Life, we were waiting for the webmail sites to be unblocked. Once people had logged in to Second Life I invited them to be my friend and offered them membership of the wmnet group within Second Life, as soon as the accepted these invites I was able to send them a teleport request to the WMnet island. The WMnet island is a private island for the use of educators from the West Midlands. 11am had arrived and it was time for a coffee.

At this point our third problem occurred, after random periods of time the desktop machines rebooted themselves or just crashed. To begin with we couldn’t understand what was going on, the technician had now taken up a permanent place in the room and was trying to fire fight as we went along. Bob from Thomas Adams checked out the minimum recommended spec for machines running Second Life and this was when we figured out the issue, the graphics cards in the RM machines were not up to speed. With everything going against us I decided to change direction and rather than the planned hands on course, I was going to model what could be done on the WMnet island and highlight some of the educational benefits of Second Life. After a brief demonstration my machine crashed, luckily lunch was ready - new plan have lunch and go home!

During lunch I spotted a set of imac’s and asked Phil if they were connected to the net, they were so we decided to install Second Life on them and maybe we would be able to have some hands on in the afternoon. On the otherside of the corridor form the imac’s there was a set of Dell pc’s, the centre technician informed me that they had decent graphics cards in so he installed Second Life on them. After a wonderful lunch we decided to give it one more shot.

Everyone was now able to log in, webmail accounts had been accessed. Apart from Phil, Steve and myself everyone had opted for the PCs. I soon had everyone on the WMnet island and allocated a plot of land for them to build and explore the functionality of SL. I now spent the rest of the afternoon moving around working with individuals to get them started.

As the afternoon progressed the delegates started moving from the dells over to the iMacs, was it the lure of the nice large screens or the improved performance???

By the end of the afternoon everyone had a building on their piece of land, was the afternoon successful, I guess the answer will be if people return and continue to experiment in play in the environment.

On a personal note I would like to thank Phil & Les for all their help in making the day run smoother than it would have done without them.

Following on from this post on the Official Linden blog I decided to check out Veodia, Veodia allows you to broadcast high quality live video to sites, blogs and mobile phones (and to Second Life).

I set up a tv on wmnet island ready for my broadcast and popped back to Veodia to start it up, once the broadcast was rolling I copied the url onto the television and I was away..

There you have it Tarannau Wollongong watching me.

This has tremendous potential for running cpd for staff and students, as far as the Shropshire Teen Island and the diploma I see huge potential for using this technology to get high quality speakers from industry to talk to our students.  I will certainly try to deliver part of my next ICT subject leader course using this technology within Second Life.  I am also thinking that I will broadcast our Create IT awards (April 14th 2008) via Veodia in Second Life.

Over the last couple of days I have added several objects to the WMnet island within Second Life:

Sand Box - area for anyone to build within

Freebies - A collection of free objects, textures and a prim rezzer

WMnet Office

My House (from the outside)

My House (from within)

The WMnet island is now up and running in Second Life.  the purpose of the island is to give teachers from WMnet educational institutions the opportunity to investigate the potential of this virtual world for teaching and learning.

This is a private island, if you would like to visit it you will need to send me an email [steve at it4L.org] containing your avatars name, can you send the email from your school address so I can validate you are from a WMnet school.