A Techno Teacher’s Second Life

Check out this great Doonesbury cartoon passed on by Claird Loon.  How funny!

While I was not able to attend NECC in person this year, I did thoroughly enjoy attending the SL session at the ISTE aquarium.  I know it would have been better in person, but it was still fun!

Here’s the RL Instructional Technology trio in SL…TigerLilly, Penguin, and Tyna.  TigerLilly joined us for a short tour of NOAA at the beginning of June.  We hope to see more of her!

School is out in real life, and I have time to finish all those half written posts just waiting to be published!  It’s embarrassing to look at them, actually…especially the one about Best Practices in Education that I never published.  But alas…no more excuses.   I want to catch up before NECC…which I will be attending virtually this year.

The NOAA is another must see! Once again, you can quickly imagine the possibilities of using a place like this in the classroom. There are quite a few things to explore at NOAA (it’s taken me three times to see everything!)

• Fly Through a Hurricane
• Experience a Tsunami
• Explore Oceanic Life on a Submarine
• Climb a Glacier
• Ride a Weather Balloon
• Stand on a Real Time Weather Map of the USA

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meteroa/177/161/27/

I discovered the Genome Island after being in SL for only a few weeks….well, I shouldn’t say I discovered it. A random person flying by my apartment landed on the deck and gave me the landmark. I’m sorry to say I don’t remember his name, but I do appreciate the tip!

The Genome Island was created by Max Chatnoir, who was on hand to give me a tour of the place! It is a Fabulous exhibit on gene related science…

A few things you can do on Genome Island:

• Explore the Abbey of St. Thomas and see historical displays about Mendel
• Visit the Greenhouse and Orangerie to play Guess the Parents and the Mating Game
• Visit the North or South Garden to explore dominant genes or text cross with flowers
• Explore a 3-D cell on the Terrace
• Relax and Enjoy the Ducks at the Gene Pool
• And much more!

Max has put a ton of work into this island, and visiting it quickly helped me see just how wonderful a virtual environment can be for education! It’s a must-see!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Genome/127/128/49/

It all started with the Groucho Marx noses. That should have clued me in: this was not going to be a “sit behind a desk and answer questions politely” night. I have to say…out of all the evenings I have spent in SL, this one finally overwhelmed me completely. It was a good thing, don’t get me wrong…I like challenges. But I did have to turn off the computer for awhile when it was over to recover.

I thought I was supposed to be working at 7pm SLT. But, when I arrived, Laelia Laval and Knowclue Kidd were there already on the job. I was an hour early. Thank goodness…I got to work with the pros for awhile. Knowclue passed out the groucho noses, and Laelia convinced everyone present to try out Skype while in SL. (It didn’t take much convincing. We all jumped at the chance to try it out.) I had only skyped once before when KJ Hax trained me to be a docent. People kept showing up at ISTE and joining…so we had about 6 women talking on Skype and chatting in SL. Talk about multitasking!! And I thought ISTE socials were hard to keep up with! Hopefully I’ll look back at this night in a few months as old hat…but boy….it was absolutely crazy!

I owe Knowclue BIGTIME for sticking around through my shift to help me out. And also for the cool nose. Now all I need to find is a permanent partner for ISTE docenting…any takers? I’ll give you a free groucho nose!

In real life (RL), my dog is my side kick. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something in second life (SL)…so one of my very first purchases (other than hair, which was a total necessity), was a dog. Like my RL dog, he’s a miniature schnauzer. He’ll sit, stay, lay down, heel, and speak. He always listens, unlike my RL dog, but I’m still bummed I can’t really pet him. I got him at Penny’s Pets, Ramos Isle (163, 102, 24). Isn’t he cute? The best part…if I leave him somewhere, say in midair (by accident, of course), he’ll send me messages until I can come find him!

I lead two lives: Instructional Technology Resource Teacher by day; Avatar, Tyna Catteneo, by night. My goals are the same..to find ways to integrate technology into classrooms. As I explore Second Life, I thought I might write about it on this blog. Maybe you’ll read and find it funny, maybe you’ll learn something, or maybe you look me up in-world! Hope to see you there!