Hello all:

During the previous several months, several of us have been investigating how Sloan-C can use Second Life (SL) for helping our membership interact and for delivering workshops. To begin our investigations, we leased part of an “island” from the New Media Consortium (http://sl.nmc.org ) in order to establish a presence in Second Life. The purpose of this memo is to tell you a bit about what we have discovered, invite you to visit the island and, if possible and if you are interested, to help us staff the site on the island.

John

------ Details and instructions below ------

First, Second Life (SL) is a 3D virtual world that is entirely built and owned by its residents. Second Life provides a unique and flexible environment for educators and organizations who want to use this venue for collaboration, training, distance learning, new media studies, marketing and corporate training. Many colleges and universities have established sites in SL. Some sites replicate the home college campuses (for providing tours for prospective students); others actually teach classes in the venue. While not really mature yet, SL still seems to have the prospect of provide superior online teaching venues in which asynchronous and synchronous methods can be mixed while providing superior social presence. Many people around the world have tried SL, and the numbers of educational institutions committed to using it appears to be growing rapidly.

Second, if you would like to try SL, you can join free, as follows: Access the link http://www.secondlife.com . Click on join and register, you will then be directed to create an Avatar. Once you become a member, you should take the training that is offered (self-paced interactive). Once complete, log on to SL and teleport to the Sloan Consortium information booth as follows:

Open the map located at the bottom of the SL screen; on the right side of the map enter the word Teaching in the pull-down list designated as “search.” Press the search button and several items with “teaching” in them appear. Select “Teaching” from the list. Then enter: 57.96.22 in the location category below labeled “location” and click teleport. You will arrive at the Sloan Consortium booth located on the “Teaching Island 57.96.22.” When you arrive there, please add the location to your landmarks. Create a landmark by clicking “World” on the SL toolbar, scroll down to create landmark and select. If you would like to make this spot your home (i.e., you appear at Sloan-C each time you log in), you can do this under “World,” by clicking “set home to here.”

Hopefully a Sloan-C volunteer is there to assist you. In any event you will automatically receive some general information. Take a look around and see what has been created. We have not yet completed the Online Learning History Museum and Effective Practices Museum. There are places to meet and talk. Once audio is implemented, we will have a really fairly robust place to hold meetings. You are invited to look around the island. You will find various colleges on the teaching island and adjacent islands. Interns from Monroe College (also on our island) are helping us staff the booth to help answer questions.

Third, and finally, we are asking our members to help us spread the word about our work at the Sloan Consortium by volunteering time to be spent at the information booth. If you are willing to help out, please email gail.sullivan@sloan-c.org. You will be added to a shared Google calendar, where you can sign up for a time slot. You will work at the information booth chatting with people who stop by to find out about our work at Sloan-C. I’ve found it very interesting hanging out by the booth – lots of interesting people stop – who I would have never met otherwise. Seems that a wide variety of international folks stop by. If you are willing to help, spend an hour or two sometime – your presence will help Sloan-C. We want to recruit more members to Sloan-C – I’ve found all the folks stopping by do seem to want to join.

There will be different time slots, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day (well, probably we won’t staff it all the time), for your convenience. After you sign up, you will be provided with an information pack to get you started. It will include gifts and information to provide to visitors.