Sail Wozniak, named after my University and one of the founding fathers of Apple Computer. Sail’s been slowly changing for about a year now.
I think it is important to keep a fairly consistent look when you are a teacher. She kind of looks like me only thiner and younger. (Aren’t they all?) I have a very causal look, and usually wear clothes that I would wear to work.
Sail is my “teacher” avatar, I do have a “play avatar”, but she is a recluse.
The first time I starting changing my avatar, I searched for 2 hours for professional clothes. Why does Second Life clothes have to look like we have another professional (: that is not teaching?
Avatar appearance fascinates me. I introduce 15 – 60 students every month. Most of my students cannot do much of anything else, without first customizing their avatars. Just like in RL, our appearance is just as important to us as in SL. Since we don’t ask our students to buy anything, I have found some freebie stores that they can find clothes in.
I wear very causal clothes, a nice shirt and blue jeans. This is what I wear to work. I do have more professional clothes, in case I am giving a presentation.
This is also something I teach. In future classes my students will be giving presentations. I ask them to look professional, just like they would if they were in RL. But apparently what I feel might be professional is not to them. I think we need to teach our students about being professional in SL. We need to look at their outfits and be able to tell them if their outfits are not appropriate.
I have a second avatar, whose name only a couple of people know. I call her my “play” avatar. There are places in Second Life that I don’t want my students to find me in. Being anonymous is one of the greatest things about second life. Why can’t I have a fun life too?
I have been thinking about this a lot. Not only for this assignment, but my University is about to get their own island. I hope that we can create Orientation activities around the different departments in the University.
I introduce students in our program to Second Life and I would like to create a more interactive, and helpful Orientation activities. One of the problems is some of my students feel that just visiting some educational places in Second Life is not enough. They feel they need to do more activities. But our classes are very intense and short in time, so I cannot have to do too much either. In future classes they will be presenting and creating more in Second Life.
I have created my own tutorial. And now hope to create videos out of these activities. I believe that you need to show students visually how to do something in Second Life. Especially the new ones who know nothing about Second Life. I would like be able for students to watch a movie in Second Life and also have access to the videos from a website, and then be able to complete the new activity. And it defiantly has to be fun.
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