Haphazard Journey by Starlight

Second Life Education Events
The Second Life Education Event Calendar provides a full overview of all educational conferences, training, discussions and events taking place in Second Life
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=f3b7ubjteso0776u83v4i38qm8%40group.calendar.google.com

Instructor Training Programmes
TUI Free Training and Instructor Career Programme
Second Life 101 for Educators: a 4 session course that introduces librarians and educators to the basics of SecondLife: orientation, appearance, shopping and places to visit.
https://www.eventville.com/catalog/eventregistration1.asp?eventid=1003298
Elven Institute
The ELVEN institute is conducting a series of 2 hour workshops known as the ELVEN Prek-12 Educator Workshop Series which aims to equip you with the basics of Second Life, including communication, clothing, shopping, using your mouseview to explore, editing your appearance, and how to find useful freebieswhich but which is open to anyone.
Virtual World Courses for Librarians and Educators run by Illinois Alliance library System
http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/programs/cpd/VW/
http://elveninstitute.org/workshops.html
Boise State University semester long graduate level course EDTECH 597: Teaching & Learning in Second Life
SURL

Free Second Life Teacher Tools
New Media Consortium Orientation Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Orientation/69/107/32/
ICT Library on Infoisland, includes an archive of Second Life and Virtual World Research, many free and cheap instructor tools
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/54/239/43/
Ivory Tower - for loads of free building resources and tutorials
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Natoma/204/70/25/

Great Second Life related blogs, wikis, guides and experts
101 Educational Uses for SecondLife in the College Classroom
http://trumpy.cs.elon.edu/metaverse/gst364Win2005/handout.pdf
SL Education Wiki
http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki
Simon Stevens: Second Life Accessibility Expert, Owner of Wheelies and Second Ability (the disability Sim)
www.simonstevens.com
EduServe blog
New media Consortium blog
http://sl.nmc.org/
New Media Consortium "How-to" delicious tags
http://del.icio.us/nmc_campus/howto
Learning from Online Worlds: Teaching in SL
http://learningfromsocialworlds.wordpress.com/
Diane Carr's NOOB Diary
http://learningfromsocialworlds.wordpress.com/game-diaries/

Second Life Email Lists
SL Educators List
https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators
SL Research List
http://list.academ-x.com/listinfo.cgi/slrl-academ-x.com
SL Jiscmail
SECONDLIFE@jiscmail.ac.uk

Second Life Educational Locations that are worth a visit
An excellent place to start is the full list of locations on the Second Life for Education Wiki
http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses
An automated tour of the top 20 educational locations in Second Life can be picked up at the ICT Library on InfoIsland
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/49/200/34
The Accessibility Centre on InfoIsland
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Healthinfo%20Island/59/72/26
Grendel's Children
A great place to pick up very cheap avatar outfits including bumblebees!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Avaria%20Sav/166/203/250
Wheelies Nightclub owned by Simon Walsh (Simon Steven's in Real-Life)

Posted by Celinelj at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

About a year ago a fanatstic MMORPG expert spent a day with Ron and I initiating us into the ways of World of Warcraft. I was impressed by the beautiful landscapes, especially the detail and the level of social interaction that was going on between guilds but I had two reservations. The fantasy and the look and feel were still very much of the elves, dwarves and *lands of yore* that I'd come to recognise from the RP table-top games I was introduced to as a teenager and the primary game-play involved battles. I've looked for alternatives, but unless you call Second Life and other MUVEs "games", there was nothing else out there.

Ren Reynolds of Terra Nova just drew my attention to a new virtual world in development, which may yet fulfill my desires for a really unusual, beautiful, mind-expanding, non-combative MORPG: Lila's Dreams.

It has the same surreal "inside your head" approach that so appealed to me in Psychonauts. The graphics are expressive and loose (let's hope they can hold on to that when they get converted into the digital - there's a good possibility since they'll be flash-based), the game-play involves monsters and some combat but the designers talk about they wish to avoid it where possible, and alternative activities include growing a garden...

A short quote from the blog

" There are no elves, dwarfs, or other Tolkien-derived player races. There are no dragons, orcs, or other Tolkien-derived creatures. There’s no magic. Well, there are “powers” that might be analogous to magic spells, but in terms of the setting they are psychic powers and not spells. So, there’s no magic. :P

There is no level grind. Level grinding is when you do boring tasks like killing cellar rats over and over to watch your game character become more powerful so you can kill bigger cellar rats. I personally do not like level grinding, and I think that it puts the focus of play on the experience of grinding rather than on the experience of the game world. I am working hard to design systems that do not require grinding so that the game world itself is the focus of fun."

Posted by Celinelj at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes big news can be delivered in the most unexpected of ways....I stumbled upon this tantaslising post today...from someone looking for a logo designer. But not any old logo...a logo for the first shop in the world to sell location-based games!

http://www.projectslist.biz/freelance/Logo-Design/logo-design-shop/

I'm intrigued....

Posted by Celinelj at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)