In real lile I would describe myself as shy, maybe those who know me would disagree but it really does take a lot for me to approach someone new.  I just realized that I have turned into a shameless networker in Second Life – begging for access to restricted sims, emailing people that I find on blogs to be guest speakers, etc – pretty much anything that will help the students in my organizational psychology course.  As I sit in a hotel room at the National Educause conference, searching the web for more information, I have suddenly become very reflective on the community that has formed in Second Life – it is truly a vibrant community of practice.

What is unique about this community is that the “experts” are hidden behind avatars.  I meet people at the teachers buzz sessions and other events in Second Life but have no idea about what they do in real life (and that they are truly experts in their fields).  My recent campaign to get access to the LearnLand sim is a great example.  I literally went down the names in the group, IMing anyone who might take pity on the this non-consortium member until finally Mark Oehlert, Booze Allen associate, responded and (I am sure it was his influence) shortly after I was added to the LearnLand group.  Mark – if for some reason you stumble upon this post, would you ever consider being a guest lecturer for my class in Sl as well???

What I was really hoping for was for someone from this project to speak to my students about how virtual worlds are being used or how they might be used for corporate training.  I stumbled upon Brent Schlenker’s blog and his posting about LearnLand and asked him to be a guest presenter (keeping my fingers crossed that he can make it).

Digging around even further and after reading more posts on both their blogs I think I might have met them before in world at various NMC events (LOTS of credit to the work that NMC has been doing, especially these events!!).  Who knew that Mark is ChuckNorris and Brent is Rightbrain?  It is really a small world!

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My official new “personal” project is to develop an online portfolio using my media wiki space.  I have to admit that it is not as easy as it looks; I have tried to get rss feeds into a wiki page (see delicious link below) only to be totally confused my magpierss, tried to get the slideshow from slide.com to appear in a wiki page by installing flashow extension but still do not have it right, and tried finding a medialwiki skin that I like but they all all too plain.  I am sure I will have some time at the Educause conference to play some more (maybe someone can explain magpie to me)

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Even though I belong to several listserves, I only have time to closely follow a few.  One is the SLED (Second Life Educators Forum) because of the work that Heidi and I are doing with my class and NMC.  I have managed to put that in its own folder, saving my inbox from tons of posts.  The second list serve that sneaks into my inbox (just because I have been to lazy to set up a folder) is Online Faciliation.  Usually the posts are too corporate for my needs but one recently caught my interest.  The author shared a link that discusses the idea of a personal wiki – an idea that I have been meaning to explore for some time.  Dennis Kennedy writes:

And, even though this goes against the grain of the “collaborativeness” associated with wikis, I’ve long been interested in personal wikis. They seem that they could be a tool for personal knowledge management.

My sense for wikis is that you need an “easy enough” wiki tool and, most important, a project about which you are motivated or which gives you a clear personal benefit for which a wiki makes sense. Ideally, this would be a small and simple project where ongoing changes are required. I could see doing a book project, certain research projects…

The author makes a good point that our “bio” or “about me” page is often out of date, sometimes by 2-3 years.  The easy editing feature of the wiki (and blog) will allow our web presence to stay current – see Rick Klau’s CV as a great example.  Another great example is Jo Kay’s wiki (another SL resident) – I really like what she has been able to create with a free wiki tool. 

My problem is that I have 3 server spaces with content about me (here, Columbia, and Seton Hall).  I would love to combine them all into a wiki space for an online portfolio – my problem is how to make mediawiki, which I just installed, to look nice.  I have to carve out some time to play – as soon as I get something presentable I will be sure to share.  Still have to work on a new snazzy banner…

October 12-14th – the Alliance Library System and Second Life Library/info Island Grand Opening!

Proposed Scheduel of Events:
Thursday, October 12 – Virtual Worlds and Education:  The Cutting Edge – 4 pm sl – 6 pm sl – Speakers: Pathfinder Linden, Kitty Paul, Puglet Dancer, Professor Boliveau, Lorelei Junot and Maxito Ricardo – Puglet Dancer and Kitty Paul will cut the ribbon to begin grand opening ceremonies at Info Island open air auditorium (Info Island 143, 82, 34)

October 21st at 4pm SL time, Troy McLuhan , from the International Space and Flight Museum, will present  on “life on Mars?” at the NMC Library. 

I was hoping to be able to post this to the NMC Campus Observer but that would have been the second day that I posted the same day as someone else.  Is there some kind of a collaborative blogging etiquette *smile*?  Lori Bell has joined the NMC blog and has posted important info regarding an upcoming event at the NMC library – I’ll wait until tomorrow before taking over the “prime real estate” at the top of the blog.

I did want to thank Blaze Columbia for her generosity (I met “her” in “her” female form but it was explained that sometimes she takes on a male form).  Heidi Trotta (TeeCee in SL) and I are preparing to bring 13 undergraduate students in SL on Monday for several activities.  I saw a posting about Blaze’s SL shop on a fashion blog (can’t help myself – so many talented people in SL) and decided to take a visit. 

After making a purchase (a little to sexy to wear around students) I bumped into Blaze who immediately said hello.  After a bit of chatting and compliments on her designs, I explained to Blaze that while I loved the outfit I just bought I had to be conservative when students where exploring SL with me.  I told her that we were bringing in 13 new SL users this Monday and the very generous Blaze provided me an outfit for all of my 11 female students and an outfit for all 3 of my male students.  It is this kind of generosity that makes SL such a special place – this is sure to make my students feel more at home in SL to know that someone provided something special just for them.  I hope to be able to include a field trip to Blaze’s store as part of their team building project so they can meet her.  Be sure to visit her store at Triumph and checkout her fashions at Blazeblog (lots of great men’s fashions too!!!).

Monday was a very busy day in Second Life for educators – in the morning the NMC Teachers Buzz session featured scultures based on mathematical equations.  I got the rare opportunity to talk about this visit with two math faculty today as we plan to really investigate the SL environment for teaching and learning (more to come).  But the real treat for me was the talk given by Dr. Bransford on his work with LIFE.  I have already blogged about it on the NMC Campus Observer – so be sure to visit my post there. 

I have spent a considerable amount of time this weekend adding content to the side column of my blog – my next step is to start on my wiki (so proud of myself that I was able to install mediawiki on my web space).  I am always on the look out for new features to add for my blog and started to notice a links generator popping up on some of the sites that I visit.  Check out the NMC Campus Observer and Managing the Grey (CC. Chapman’s Blog) for an example.  After a bit of investigation I found the code for this on a blog authored by a Berkeley student – Trapped at Berkeley.  I have to give it a try as soon as I have time to figure out what the whole crontab thing – probably not as hard as it seems.

The second thing that I want to complete is a snazzier banner.  The image that I use is one that I took but I have been playing with idea of using a SL picture but manipulating it so that you can’t quite tell what it is – photograph or image.  I really like the on that Elika uses – although it is too glam for my purposes here (but I do love glam!!)  Instead of trying to stage the whole thing in SL I might try combining images – not sure why I did not think of it before but it was not until I saw the post on how to make your own fashion ads for SL that the idea was sparked. 

Lots to learn from the business side of SL.  Hopefully next time your check back I will have had more time to play.