Networking while shopping

Working in Second Life for the Transforming Undergraduate Education project has been a whirlwind of fun experiences as well as frustrating challenges. I know from experience how exhausting the multitude of features in Second Life can be when you are learning, creating content, or doing anything for the first time. After using SL for more than a year now, I would like to share some resources that have made my SL experience all the more fun and exciting when using SL as an educational tool. Below are the 5 tips I find most useful.

Tip #1: Network, be friendly, be social!
When starting from scratch building on a sim, try consorting other educational sims, schools, faculty, or SL librarians. SL is filled with people who have been building, working, studying, and learning for months to years in Second Life! You can send instant messages (or even offline messages) to people and ask them questions about anything you need help with in Second Life. You don’t have to go through Second Life alone! SL was created to be a social environment where people can come to learn, build, and grow. Don’t be afraid or think that you must learn everything on your own. There are hundreds of tutorials, video blogs, and even Linden Lab employees who are online to help you with whatever it is you may need. Graduate students, professors, and registrars are all on Second Life, so why not take advantage of this more social environment and use what skills they have and learn from them?

Tip #2: Notecards are your best friend in Second Life!
Notecards are the best sticky notes in SL without actually having to use real paper! Whether you’re researching for a project, listening into a consortium from an event, or in a curriculum faculty meeting, open up a new notecard, title it properly and write notes in it! One thing that I really enjoy about SL is that when you are in a non-voice meeting, it will be held in text. This is amazing in the sense that if you find yourself behind in whatever is currently being talked about, you can “scroll up” and copy/paste whatever was just said down into your notecard to hold and reference back when you are running behind. This is also great if you are brainstorming ideas with group members and you need to take notes of items that will have to be finalized later. Jotting things down, analyzing and assessing whatever it is you write in your notecards is just like writing on paper in real life. Plus, when you need to give someone your notes, it’s just a matter of dragging and dropping it into their avatar’s inventory, versus having to copy and paste things down or photocopy handwritten notes in the real world! It saves time and paper!

Second Life Showcase

Tip #3: Search engines are a great resource
If you’re lost on finding educational sims, or educational projects in SL in general, Google is your best friend. A few keywords typed in to the search, and voila, you have instant hits that can lead you to numerous pages that have a compiled list of places to go. A second resource is using Second Life’s search engine. Tab over to “Showcase” and from there select “Education and Nonprofits” where you can get many universities and nonprofit organizations who use Second Life for outreach purposes in getting the community to be more aware of what your missions and goals are. This is a great way to find things in SL–both educational and informational.

Tip #4: Second Life Educator’s Mailing List
In Second Life, there are a ton of educators who teach a bunch of different topics from scripting LSL code, to chemistry classes, to marine biology, and so much more! If you are interested in gathering feedback from a multitude of different educators and don’t mind being bombarded with a mass mailing of messages sent to you, sign up here! Once you sign up, you are instantly able to go through and have a great index of people who could probably help with whatever project you have going on. It could be advertising for an event or suggestions and tips for performing specific task. I used this mailing list when I was in a group and had to fundraise $L100,000 for two charity organizations that my group was sponsoring. From this, many educators helped us advertise on their sims and sent word out.

Tip #5: Torley’s Tutorials, SL Wikis, SL classes!
When you finally get into being creative and wanting to expanding your own expeditions on Second Life, you might be tempted to build and create content! Tutorials from the SL Wiki and Torley’s Tutorials are great resources online which help you expand your skill set and with tips on how to be an efficient content creator. I find that if there is something you want to do and make in SL, someone has probably had the same idea and might have already created it! You can build from what they teach you to create wild, innovative and crafty outcomes in the wondrous world of Second Life!

Have fun on your quest to discover the educational side of Second Life! If you are ever in doubt, these tips should help you get through your rut! Good luck!

by Crystal Lin, VLCI Undergraduate.