Nice legs...

Group 3 (the folk who have some previous experience of Second Life) organised a fashion show as the culmination to their work on digital identity. The show was held in SL at the JISC Emerge Centre in SL (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Emerge/76/81/36). It was a great deal of fun. Bascule got to walk the catwalk as Bhodidharma, who brought Buddhism from India to China, start the Zen tradition along the way (and teaching the Shaolin monks some seriously kick-ass moves). This was my attempt to turn Bascule from a virtual nonentity into the representation of someone famous; the avatar of an avatar (OK, more accurately the avatar of a bodhisattva, but where the wisecrack in that?) Other people I knew were at the show, but I finished up spending most of my time with Boudica and Bex, both people I know IRL. I found it a difficult to strike up conversations; a lot of ‘traffic’ on the local chat, and IMs are easily missed when there’s so much going on. Maybe there’s a skill here that comes with time, or maybe large group social interaction in SL is difficult.

Dancing, on the other hand, is easy. I’d got hold of a rather nice Abranimations Club Dance HUD; better than the dance balls I’ve come across in allowing you a degree of improvisation, throwing in crowd pleasing moves. It also allows folk to dance in sync with you. I certainly enjoyed this part of the evening.

After the show Bascule, Bex and Boudica (spooky… the Three Bears) went to see La Performance in You Are So Beautiful, a Second Life Dance piece by Jie Loon (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Shakespeare/186/28/581). The piece was great. Watching from the audience was less stirring than getting amongst the dancers; something that the SL camera controls allows. This was another of those ‘a-ha’ moments when you experience how SL and RL are different – presenting different possibilities and encouraging different ways of thinking.

I’m still waiting for the big ‘a-ha’ though… the one where I suddenly see how a MUVE fits into facilitating learning in a systematic way. I clearly see how a MUVE can fun, exciting and motivating… all things that make for an excellent start. I still have some practical concerns about access and safety, both well-rehearsed digital age anxieties when working with younger students. Actually I don’t have big concerns here, though we need well evidenced, well argued cases to put to those who do have the big concerns – and there are plenty of them out there.

One of the best cases for understanding the virtual world was put to my by Boudica. Can you imagine how much more money Tesco would take if you could do your on-line shopping by walking around a virtual shop? To my mind, the answer is lots… lots and lots… which is why it will happen. Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden) say’s much the same in an interview on TEDTalks (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/the_inspiration_of_second_life.html)

On July 8th, 2008 Linden Labs and IBM announced that they’d successfully teleported an avatar from Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server. (http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/ibm-linden-lab-interoperability-announcement/)

Someday, I suspect this will be seen as being as significant as Neil Armstrong’s trip to the moon. For now, having fun is enough; but get ready, ‘cos there’s work to be done…