The Story of My “Second Life”

Ok, yesterday was a whirlwind that started late, 3:20 am (I overslept, ha) … I actually had a weird dream right before I got up, a premonition perhaps, involving reading my email … I definitely recalll seeing my inbox and a ton of messages, more than usual … and sure enough … when I got up, there it was: an email informing me my Faculty Excellence Grant proposal was accepted. Walden University is giving me enough money ($10,000) to take four to six months off teaching (I’m a part-time instructor in their School of Education Master’s Program, in the Integrating Technology in the Classroom specialization). I plan to dive into Second Life (SL) with both digital feet … documenting the process … and everything I discover … in the hopes of helping other educators learn about SL and the difference it can make with their students.

I immediately created a new avatar – KJ Hax, because although my prior one (Digital Mincemeat) was fun and quirky, I didn’t think it was … serious enough. (As if that matters.) It was weird being called by my first name of “Digital” or by my initials, DM. So, he’s been put in stasis. Maybe he’ll be back.

An upgrade to Premium ($72.90 – my first real world expense) became my first objective, so I could own land and buy things … including items that would make my avatar more realistic. Then I was off to school for the day, and not able to get back on until the evening.

Signing in early after dinner I happened upon Kittygloom Cassady (a.k.a. Jennifer Ragan-Fore) Director of ISTE‘s General Membership Program. I answered ISTE’s recent call for Second Life volunteers in the hopes that I’d be able to make my ISTE involvement a big part of my in-world experience. I’m psyched to say that looks like it’s going to happen. :)

Anyway, Kitty brought me to a place to get some items for my avatar … I selected a more realistic skin that cost me $250 Linden dollars – a quarter of the $1,000 I got when I signed up for the premium account. I was shocked but Kitty said she paid $1,000 for hers … wow. She’s already helping me get the most out of SL. Thanks Kitty!

A little while later I attended the ISTE weekly social in SL … but will write about that later. I’m stilll finding it awkward to move around and talk to people, interrupting conversations, it’s not like in real life where you can just walk up to someone and use body language to indicate your desire to have a conversation. You just sort of stand there and then start typing … as everyone around you does the same thing. It’s taking a little getting used to. :/

Anyway, that’s all for now, I need to build more of the structures here. I actually went over to Blogger.com and started a blog there (I was one of the first people to use Blogger back in the day) … Kitty gave me a neat item I can use to blog from within SL itself (it requires Blogger.) I spent about an hour getting the blog set up just right when I realized it just did not have the power, features, functionality and coolness factor of WordPress. So, I created THIS blog (my fourth, I think? Fifth? But who’s counting?) becuase I want to make this space into something truly powerful and special.

I’d better. Walden’s paying me $10,000 to do it!

-kj-