Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch

Gettting ready for NECC in SL!

I took a little trip in Second Life today to the TX PBS TeacherLine and TCEA's shared site on one of the ISTE islands. Took a bull ride and chatted with Joie Despres (SL) who was busy getting the site ready for NECC!

She handed me a notecard to share with all of you about an event they are having on their sim area tomorrow night.

"Howdy Ya'll!

On June 19 at 6PM SLT, put on your cowboy hats and boots and join PBS TeacherLine of Texas and the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA), your Texas Ambassadors, as we welcome you to NECC in San Antonio, Texas 2008!

We are going to fire up the barbecue, put on some country western for a little line dancing, and get real crazy with a bull-riding contest. Yeehah!! So, come on down!"

SLURL for the event:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island%202/128/175/23/

I immediately went out and found a cool cowboy hat! Looking forward to the event in SL and even more to the event in San Antonio in RL!

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Best Practices Conference Archive is live!

My presentation was "streamed" from the Best Practices Conference last week. I specifically chose not to utilize the voice function, since, for most of us, that would not be available on other occasions. Here is a direct link to my presentation: http://slcn.tv/bpe-kathy-dryburgh

A conference committee member conducted a "play-by-play" voiceover of my presentation in the video, and, although it was a bit rocky in some places since she did not have the script ahead of time (mine went smoothly in SL!), I think it came out fine. It is interesting to see how slowly the slides came into focus on the video, since, in Second Life, on my computer, they were appearing in focus right away.

This was a learning experience for all of us, and we all learned a lot, so I feel it was truly worth all of the effort. Thanks again to the hard-working conference team who put it all together!

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Kathy Dryburgh's Guide to SL for Educators

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Update on conference presentation location

I will not be presenting my session on Eduisland II. Current info is below.

Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference
May 25, 2007

Title: Kathy Dryburgh's Guide to Second Life for K-12 Educators
Time: 7am SLT
Location: Hyperstring Conference Center

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Presenting in Second Life

I have been accepted to present at the Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference to be held in-world on May 25th.

My presentation is entitled "Kathy Dryburgh's Guide to Second Life for K-12 Educators" and will be presented at 7am SLT at Hyperstring's Conference Center. Directly after the presentation, the links to the sites covered will be available on this blog.

The presentation schedule for the entire event may be found here. Please register for the conference if you are planning to attend and hope to see you there!

Kathy

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Second Life Update

Well, Kathy Dryburgh has been busy in Second Life. Kathy's Kaffeeklatsch, the professional development area, is complete and plans are underway for some upcoming sessions.

I have also purchased some plots of land on the island, Montbard, and have put up a vacation home. Decorating and figuring out how to build things has been fun! I am trying to get a geodesic dome put up, since I live in one in real life, but have not quite made that work yet.

Thanks to all the K-12 educators who have joined SL and have said hello. I have created a group just for you! Directions are below for joining the group. There is a cool t-shirt available at the Kaffeeklatsch if you are interested. I am using the group to send out messages of interest to the K-12 crowd about professional development opportunities being held in SL dealing with areas of interest to us.

To join the K-12 Educators group:

Click on the SEARCH button at the bottom of the screen and choose the GROUPS tab. Type “K-12 Educators” in the search box and look down the list until you see that specific title. Click on the group to open the description and choose join by choosing the JOIN button which is found directly under the picture of the school crossing sign. You can then right-click on your avatar, choose groups, choose K-12 Educators, and choose ACTIVATE. That will put the group name over your head.

Try it, and, if you cannot do it, send me your avatar name and I will send you an invite!

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Dollhouse c. 2007

Way back in 1977, I purchased an unfinished dollhouse and painstakingly put cedar shingles on the outside, wired the rooms for electricity, used old wallpaper books to create the wallpaper in the rooms, and crocheted my own rugs for the floors. Well, fast forward to 2007, and I am doing the same thing again!

I now have rented my own house, Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch, but not because I did not enjoy sharing a space with Hodjazz and Leigh. I simply wanted my own place to have more prims (the construction faces that make up the objects in Second Life) so I could both gather and create my own furniture and decorations. I will also be putting in links to lots of educational URLs in the house, but, for now, I am simply having fun creating and decorating. Guess it is the craft-lover in me!

There are plenty of apartments and offices available for rent on Eduisland II, and Fleet Goldenberg, the "landlord", is very responsive and helpful with any technical problems that occur. The cost to rent office space or an apartment is very reasonable, and you would have 250 prims all your own!

See you in SL! (Okay, I really do feel this 3-D MUVE has huge educational implications, but I can still have fun, can't I?)

Kathy Schrock aka Kathy Dryburgh

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Second Life Articles and Info

Well, I sent out Second Life as my site of the school week this week, and am happy to see so many educators signing up! I am helping them out a bit, but the tutorials in SL are easy-to-follow, so they don't need too much of my help.

I came across a short YouTube video that gives a brief explanation of Second Life and the role of businesses in the environment.

In addition, here are a variety of articles about SL that discuss various aspects of the metaverse environment.

A Second Life for Middle School Science
Second Life: A Venue for Professional Development?
Second Life: It's Not a Game

Kathy Schrock

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Second Life update...

Well, Kathy Dryburgh now has her own space in Second Life! Thanks to Ferdi Serim for renting me some space.

I finished decorating today and also learned a tiny bit of the scripting language. I now know how to distribute special T-shirts to people (I made them for the Schrockguide, MassCUE, and my district) and also how to lead users to a URL on the Internet from within Second Life. Here are some pictures of my space, but they do not really do the rooms justice!

I am still learning my way around, but am more and more convinced that Second Life is a viable option for the delivery of online professional development. In addition, I ran into some of my favorite ed-tech gurus today, and it is nice to keep up with them!

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Kathy takes a kaffee break in SL

Kathy Dryburgh visits the Kaffeeklatsch and sits down to enjoy a cup o' joe!

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Kathy Dryburgh photo...

In case you run into me in Second Life, here is what Kathy Dryburgh looks like.

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Kathy Dryburgh's trip to Second Life

Well, I have had my avatar (Kathy Dryburgh) in Second Life since last December, but just took the time today to both edit it (so it looked a little more like me) and spend some time figuring out how the interface works. My home is the ISTE Second Life building, and I met some ed tech folks who helped me out with some of the things I did not know how to do (like point!) There is a lot to learn, but at least I feel comfortable with the interface now and will make time to attend ISTE sessions and talks in the environment.

I felt like I was on a real trip, so I took some photos while I was visiting. You can view the small photo album here if you wish.

If you have not tried Second Life give it a try. Once you do, and once the real-time audio functionality is available for all later this spring, you will imagine all types of educational uses of it! Even without the interactive audio, it is a fun and interesting concept to explore. Look me up when you are using it!

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