Wow, when it rains it pours
The “sample” course I am using in my DevLearn presentation has morphed into more than originally planned. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I did not want to just make a lesson on baking cookies (any sample will work, but my day job’s courses are all proprietary). Don’t get me wrong, I love cookies.
So with the help of my lovely subject matter expert (I am biased as she is my spouse), we hammered out a course that will hopefully add to the corporate enterprise goals of Second Life in a very small way. Making Meetings Matter is the name of a series of seven courses on meetings tools.
So what is the morphing bit? Well, I was “encouraged” to submit the final course for DevLearn08’s DemoFest. This is a competition for eLearning material and is intended to show off new and novel approaches to delivering eLearning. Our course was selected as one of the entrants!
That is a nice accolade and the material in the DemoFest is different than in my presentation (Session 708, Friday at 10). The presentation focuses on how to use Second Life as a film studio for those of us on a limited budget (read: $0) and shows how video clips can easily be inserted into your existing training in a rapid and inexpensive manner.
The DemoFest submission goes beyond this by taking a complex (and dry) topic and serving it up as a short podcast. Think a bit of a blend of CommonCraft simplicity (in the way that the complex concepts he teaches are so easily digestible) with Second Life video as the medium. A very user centered approach explaining what is often made to be a dry topic.
My day job is with a company that creates software for the hospitality industry that deals directly with meetings. Thus, I am aware of the dire lack of real meeting skills in Second Life.
I hope that our Making Meetings Matter series also adds to the meetings community in Second Life (they will be available free inworld).
oops! Our bad! And happy Halloween!
A funny thing happened on the way to the sim . . . it seems that we (myself and Ener) overlooked the sl issue of teleporting to map found places. In other words, when you do an inworld map search without coordinates, you end up at ground level in the centre of the sim (128,128). The map search has no way of knowing if any structures are at that location and so drops you at ground level.
Well, I have been telling folks to search for Enercity Park as a starting place to use our resources. Only problem is that Enercity Park is part of a planned nine sim city. And that city has catacombs under the streets. The catacombs are there just for fun, but they are “trenched” and under the apparent ground level.
So if you TP straight to Enercity Park you end up under the catacombs and this can be disorienting for new sl folks. And to add to the confusion, if you have audio on, you will hear moaning. And although it’s not funny, I had to laugh at what kind of experince that must be! Teleporting ans ending up under water, under a structure that you can’t walk out of and hearing moaning!!! =D
Well the moaning is from zombies placed there for Halloween! Only they are spawning above you so you might have no clue what the heck it is.
Well, maybe it’s a learning experience (gee, that sounds good). Since you are allowed to create objects in that sim, just rez a box and sit on it. Then edit it’s position to about 34 metres up. Ta dah! Out of the catacombs to freedom!
Obviously, we will address this, but can’t help to wonder how many people experienced this. Beware, damage is enabled and the zombies do bite . . . happy Halloween!