The Story of My “Second Life”

Neat but brief article in today’s USA Today about the role of Second Life at colleges across the USA, leading off with Beth’s own class at Lehigh Carbon Community College. USA Today reporting on Beth’s adventures is hardly new, but I like how she comes across in this piece, her quotes are some of the [...]

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Great, great GREAT article in the May 2007 issue of the ISTE journal, Leading & Learning with Technology. The oddly-titled “Real-Life Migrants on the Muve: Stories of Virtual Transitions” does an excellent job of laying our the story behind the Ramapo Islands build, Peggy’s amazing vision, the curricular implications, and the students comfort in the [...]

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What do you do when SL goes down in the middle of your lesson? Convene as a group to discuss and reflect. For more about this day’s class, including an incredible log of the in-world chat that preceded this picture, see: rampoislands.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html Pay particular attention to the chat log Peggy posted. Look at the interactions [...]

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Well after muffing the announcement time (I SWEAR I read that it was to be at 6:30 SLT last night) I managed to get over to Maggie Marat’s (Peggy Sheehy’s) Educator Show and Tell at the ISTE SkyPark on time last night. It was an incredible show, the first time I’ve seen the SkyPark filled [...]

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Ok! I’ve just gotten word that the below has been cleared for public release by the Ramapo Central School District. It was shot on April 12th, 2007 during my second visit at Suffern Middle School. It runs just under 4 minutes (I wish I had a 2gb memory card!) but captures honest student impressions regarding [...]

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Thought I’d post a direct link to my Ramapo Islands Flickr stream – it’s a mix of screenshots and RL pics. At right, Pierdae Dench (aka Victoria Gloucester in SL aka Catherine Parsons in RL) shares a moment with Digital Mincemeat (me) in the calm before students arrive. -kj-

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What a week it has been … two frenetic and fantastic days with some of the most amazing students and teachers on the planet. Yep, while many of my colleagues were either sunning themselves in some exotic locale or relaxing at home with a good book, I spent 5+ hours behind the wheel (driving like [...]

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I had wanted to get a posting up earlier today with more about my two days at Suffern Middle School this past week … but alas, the need to write lesson plans and do my 2006 income taxes (!) made that somewhat difficult. :) So I’ll be writing the post in my sleep tonight and [...]

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…how about a video? This short clip shows the screen of a student at Suffern Middle School in Second Life for a Literature Circle project. The clip is brief, the student is not identified, and it will only give you a flavor for the interface and interaction, but here it is. If the video does [...]

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Suffern Middle School students have been working in Second Life so long, there are many, many stories to tell. I’ll start with one I heard about yesterday, their recreation of the trial from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I had the opportunity to interview four amazing students (three of whom were on this particular [...]

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