Oh my goodness! I have laughed until the tears flowed freely this evening. When I entered Second Life, Tyna was in the apartment talking with our new friend Ahna, and she happened to mention the story of the trampoline adventures. Remember when Tyna teleported to the apartment, hit the trampoline, and flew into the stars? Well, the trampoline mysteriously reappeared in the middle of our new home, but this time it was safely inside all 4 walls.

Being the mature adults that the three of us are, we immediately stood on it to see what would happen. Hmmm, if we held down the “e” key, we could bounce higher! We were having a great time, until Ahna bounced into someone else’s furnished apartment and I bounced into the floor right above us. No wanting any angry neighbors, we decided to take the tampoline to the roof.

Now we could bounce up and down without worrying about neighbors, except that if we failed to land on the trampoline, we completely crashed. Time to bring out the parachutes! What a great way to end the weekend! I wish that real life was this much fun!

I’m in travel mode again. I found a link to 2 different places in Germany. Both are worth the trip just for the beautiful buildings and lovely scenery. The first place I visited was Rothenburg Village. After wandering around there for a while, I teleported to a German Shopping village where there was the additional bonus of shopping! Here are some pictures from the 2 villages:

Nearby the shopping village was the Odds and Ends Furniture Store where you can sit and relax while looking out the window at a great view of Germany. There were lots of interesting and fun pieces of furniture, beach towels, and other items to explore. It’s definitely worth a visit!

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a wonderful place in Second Life. I rode a weather balloon, flew into the eye of a hurricane, walked around on a glacier that was melting, and rode in a submarine under the sea. There were notecards available throughout the site explaining each of the features and providing links to the NOAA website.

This would be a fantastic voyage for anyone interested in studying more about weather. I just keep thinking about how third and fourth graders would love to experience this in a virtual world!

Last night, I found a link that took me to the coolest place called Imagination Island. This would be a perfect hangout for anyone taking or thinking about taking a children’s literature class. There were pictures and notecards summarizing numerous children’s books. Curious George and his friend were throwing things at visitors, all in good fun of course.

The landscaping was beautiful around The Secret Garden. There was also a sky carousel to ride, a maze to navigate, a space station that was on fire, a treehouse, and more. It’s really too bad that there is not a location within Second Life for little kids to explore safely. This would an awesome place for them to really put themselves inside the literature and to use their own imagination to create sims! Maybe someone with more programming and graphics knowledge than I have can come up with something like that in the future. There are so many possibilities for uses of virtual worlds in elementary schools, but we need to address the safety issue first.

One of the coolest things I’ve been able to do is visit other countries. I keep thinking how awesome it would be to build virtual locations for young children to explore, like Ancient Egypt or Ancient Greece. If they could actually “visit” the pyramids or go inside the Parthenon, they would build memories that would last for years.

I’ve walked the virtual streets of Rome, Dublin, Paris, and Casablanca. Like any good tourist, I took lots of pictures!

Rome, Italy

Dublin, Ireland

Paris, France

Casablanca, Morocco

Over the past week, we had the pleasure of visiting with three Instructional Technology Resource Teachers from a neighboring school division. They are Anastasia, Tallulah, and Moona. We would like to create a place in Second Life for ITRTs to gather, meet, and share ideas and resources. Once we’re a little more experienced with SL and have time to formulate a plan, we hope to get the word out to more ITRTs in Virginia and invite them to a group social. So, if you happen to be a Virginia ITRT who stumbled upon this post, please leave a comment so we can keep in touch within Second Life.

Thanks to Robin Wood’s great tutorials and templates, I have created an ITRT t-shirt. It was really easy to follow these directions…The only hard part was creating the logo! Now I need to put it in a box to leave on our balcony so other ITRTs can pick up the shirt. Guess I need to find a script that will keep regenerating the shirts too. Oh well, something new to learn!

Oh my goodness! There are so many things I can do in this virtual world that I would never be able to do in real life! Take skydiving, for instance. Tyna took me to a sky diving platform that she found on Podcast Island. She reminded me to grab a parachute before we began, but, as usual, I failed to read the directions. To make a long story short, we ascended to an altitude of 4000 meters, and the machine kicked us out! That was one very long fall toward earth without an open parachute! Fortunately, I landed in the water, so all was well.

We also went hang gliding. Flying over the houses and trees with the sound of wind coming from my computer was really a fun experience! The only frightening part was jumping from the platform onto the glider that was somewhat suspended in space.

I somehow ended up in Atlantic City one evening and found the coolest roller coaster that had a gazillion loops. I would never get on anything like this in the real world, and I actually enjoy roller coasters…but without the loops

Podcast Island also has a huge water slide. Since I am somewhat challenged when it comes to landing after flying, I had trouble landing on the platform, but once I was in the right place, the ride down the slide was great..

Angel Learning Center has a great sandbox for experimenting with building and exploring inventory. Upon arrival, I found a sign that told folks to search the inventory for a cart and once found, to take a spin. There was nobody else present in the sandbox for a while, so I was free to ride as fast and furiously as I desired. That was great until I crashed upside down in the water. Tyna teleported to me later on and got out her own cart, so things got a little crazy for a while there. We both had a fine time though.

This has definitely been a learning experience in many, many ways. I’ve found that I have developed the bad habit of trying to figure out things on my own rather than reading directions. This has resulted in several comical events that Tyna has had to rescue me from, but some others were her fault, believe it or not!

For example, when we were first looking for a place to rent, she went to the top floor of a skyscraper and teleported me to her. However, she brought me in at the top of a stairwell, and I fell all the way to the basement, arms and legs flailing the entire way down several stories. Fortunately, I was able to brush myself off and walk all the way back up the stairs to her. Then later on, we were out on the balcony. As we stood on the balcony and I was trying to navigate to another location, she told me to jump! Now remember, I was still new to all of this, so when I jumped, I crashed to the ground….again. That’s when I decided that I needed to practice my flying techniques!

As I was shopping around for wigs, I found a shop that offered samples. Cool, I thought! Freebies! Unfortunately, I had failed to read the notecard before putting them on. So, I put on the new wig and went out on the town. I did notice that the wig was pick and white checked, but there are so many weird things in Second Life that I really didn’t think too much about it. Well, my good friend and mentor (Tyna) saw me and asked if I had on a sample wig??? I asked how she knew, and she said it had the word “sample” written all over it. Well, when I zoomed in, those pink checks were actually words. Duh! And I went out in public in that thing! Talk about a newbie!

Then there was the trampoline. I found a trampoline in my free inventory items and drug it into our the apartment. Not realizing that it might actually work, I sat on it and bounced straight up. Wow! Wonder what happens when I stand up on it? Well, I bounced right through the ceiling and onto the roof. Since it was getting late, I decided to hit the sack and deal with the trampoline the next day. However, I didn’t realize that I had put the trampoline in the exact spot Tyna had been standing when she last logged out, so later that same evening when she logged in, she hit the trampoline and bounced up into the clouds. Poor thing, she had no idea what had just happened! Once she came back down to earth, she saw the trampoline corner sticking out the side of the apartment. I had not realized that was a possibility! Poor Tyna (bless her heart!) returned the trampoline to my inventory where it remains. I need to find a sandbox where I can play again!

My inventory is a wreck, so as I was cleaning out my freebies, I pulled out a flag, but nothing happened. Then, I pulled out a bouncing stone and sat on it. It was huge and literally bounced me around the apartment, finally flipping me upside down and stopping. So, I stood up, fell to the floor, and lost the stone. Honest! I looked high and low and didn’t see it anywhere. As luck would have it, Tyna arrived later that evening only to find a the stone at the top of a flagpole in the middle of the apartment. <sigh>

At the very least, Second Life provides some much needed laughter after a long day on the job. I’ve laughed until I’ve cried many times this week, and I think we all need that once in a while.

I saw someone in my travels with a keyboard that showed up when they were typing and then disappeared. I wanted one! Had to have one! Laelia had an extra one from the Podcast Pickle folks and gave it to me! Cool! She was very helpful and gave very specific directions. She told me to find it in my inventory and drag it to the floor, which I did. Somehow though, I got ahead of her at this point and clicked “wear” and found myself wearing the entire box! What a dope! She talked me through detaching it and saving the contents to my inventory. Then I was supposed to click on the keyboard and select wear. However, when I did that “wear” was not an option. Guess I messed up the script with the whole box routine.

Anyhow, I thanked Laelia for her help and tried again later…still no luck…until I noticed that when I typed, a small green keyboard showed up in the corner of the room, nowhere near my hands! When I stopped typing, it disappeared. Now I really felt like an idiot. Who wants to go out in public with a phantom keyboard? Yikes! Some friends came by and I was soooo embarrassed!

In fact, I was so disturbed that I jumped off of the balcony and ran away for a while. I discovered though that when I was away from the apartment, the keyboard was not to be seen! Very cool! At least I could go out again. The silly thing became a great source of aggravation for me though.

All of this happened in the old apartment, before our landlord moved our building. I was so excited to discover that the keyboard did not show its ugly face in our new place! I suppose it’s still showing up in the old apartment when I type, but at least I don’t have to see it.

ISTE, or the International Society for Technology in Education, has a large presence in Second Life. Last night I attended a show and tell meeting sponsored by ISTE. This was my first official meeting in this new world, and I was intrigued by it all. There was a large number of avatars present, so many in fact that the sim filled up at one point. We were introduced to some cool gadgets that make living in this virtual world a bit easier, such as the MystiTool HUD from Mystical Cookie Designs. Then Kathy Dryburgh spoke about a database she is creating using the ways educators are using emerging technologies in their profession.

ISTE has a host of volunteers who stay at the desk of the ISTE building to answer questions and give tours during busy hours. They are also building a new island adjacent to Eduisland. Many prominent technology educators are involved with both ISTE and Second Life, and I believe that we are just beginning to scrape the surface of the potential of using virtual worlds in education.