My Other Me

Posted on June 7, 2008 
Filed under Oz NZ Educators, Second Life, Virtual Reality and tagged , , , ,




Second Life is a virtual world. You download the software to your lap top and then you can enter this world. When you do, your avatar represents you. An avatar is a digital representation of yourself. When you select this avatar you have to give it a name. I named my avatar Mazarine Rhode. I have just spent an hour or so changing Mazarine’s look from this:

to this:

You can change all sorts of details of your avatar – the size and shape of any body part, how far or narrow set the eyes are, skin colour, freckles, height, weight etc. I must prefer Mazarine’s new look! I hadn’t spent much time playing around with appearance until now. Now I’m ready to party!

A few weeks ago I went into Second Life with a few other teachers from the OZ/NZ Educators network. It was a session for newbies like me. We spent the time on the island of Jokaydia. I took a quick video so you can see a very little bit of what Second Life looks like – in an art gallery! I recorded this with SMART Recorder and the quality isn’t great, but it will give you a bit of an idea if you are interested!

I am hoping to spend some more time in SL and start thinking about using virtual worlds for language learning. I’m a member of the Second Classroom Ning, a social network for educators interested in students using virtual worlds. I’ll keep you updated…

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2 Responses to “My Other Me”

  1.  Isabelle Jones on June 8th, 2008 8:07 am

    Hi Jess

    Your other you looks great! (too) I am very interested in the SL developments for languages but it seems that the initial time investment is very high. I know there was a SL Languages conference last month. Did you get involved at all? If you did not, do you know anybody who did? I could not get involved as it coincided with a family holiday. I have bookmarked quite a few references under second_life (available from Diigo, delicious and http://isabellejones.blogspot.com) but a personal perspective woud be interesting…

    Isabelle
    http://isabellejones.blogspot.com

  2.  Aaron Bray on July 7th, 2008 10:16 am

    It looks like a lot of fun; I’m interested in the educational implications of SL as well though. I’ll try to stay posted and see what may come of it.

    Aaron

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