Teamwork matters
School Designers is an extremely talented team of creative professionals.

Our final project worked so well because of the individual contributions of not only people who care, but people who know how to get things done.

Our project began with the idea to design an in-world Admission Center for a real secondary school. Our goal was to make the space serve dual purposes – as a self-guided tour, and as a virtual venue to conduct open houses with real-life prospective families and real-life school staff.

I believe we reached the first part: self-guided tour. There is enough content of photos, videos, downloadable brochures and application forms, FAQs and the ever-popular free tee-shirt. The second goal of running an open house will have to wait until the school actually purchases land and recreates the building.

I am very proud of the design, the flow, the content. Can it be improved? Sure, but in the few short weeks we had to build, we did more than alright.

Lessons learned
* Second Life is the most unstable environment in which to work. You never know how long you’ve got to work in-world. You can freeze or be thrown out at any moment.

* There is a ramp-up of technical knowledge required to understand building, scripting, filming a machinima. This requires time to learn, and practice.

* There are technical restrictions that limit design. For ex., we wanted to have 6 different videos at 6 different content areas so a visitor could play whatever one interested her. But we discovered it is one stream per parcel, so the 6 videos were reformatted into one long video which plays on every screen. Still looks great, but not as individualized as we had wanted.

* There are some very generous people in SL who are so willing to help with technical issues. It’s reassuring to know they are there.

* A few lindens can go a long way.

* I would like more class lectures & discussions to learn about the theories and practices of virtual worlds now operating, SL being just one environment.

For immediate release
December 3, 2007

Cheshire, CT – With students coming from all over the real world, Cheshire Academy has now opened an outpost in the virtual world. Today marked the ribbon cutting of the Cheshire Academy Admission Center in Second Life, an online 3-D social networking environment that allows people to interact in an entirely digital realm.  

“As one of the oldest independent college preparatory schools in the United States, it’s only fitting that we blaze new trails with this electronic frontier,” said spokesperson Colleen Reilly. “This venture will allow prospective families from all across the globe to all across Connecticut to visit and talk with our staff face-to-face. It’s an exciting way to introduce Cheshire Academy and all we have to offer.”

The Virtual Admission Center is two stories tall and allows visitors to watch videos, download files, and even take home a free t-shirt. Anyone coming for a campus tour can get an actual t-shirt that reads, “I visited Cheshire Academy in Second Life!”

The design of the virtual center allows visitors to view exhibits about Academics and Athletics on the first floor, and Student Life, School History and Living in Connecticut on the second floor. At each exhibit, there are .pdf files to download and links to the Cheshire Academy website. Each station has a video screen showing students talking about the specific aspect of interest a of the school.

According to its online developer, Linden Lab, “Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by over 10 million residents from around the globe.”

Cheshire Academy’s Admission Center started out as a class project in a Graduate Class in Interactive Communications at Quinnipiac University. The “School Designers” team put together the concept and final product in less than six weeks and got a really good grade for their effort.For more information, please email: SL@cheshireacademy.org

I’ve always felt SL was a place to explore. And I’ve had fun doing so. But like any well-worn traveler, I need a place to call my own. And then it hit me. This is the Linden model – more then building a chair, creating a cute avatar, or attending an inworld conference – it’s about the land. OMG, I’m homeless!

For my final project, I was fortunate to know a professional designer who owns two islands in SL. He gave my team an empty building that we’ve designed and filled with branding and marketing content to introduce prospective families to Cheshire Academy (an independent, college prepartory school), entice them to make a RL visit, and make an application. We can have it for a little while after the final presentation, but it’s not mine to keep. OMG, I’m homeless!

When I realize that the property we’ve created is temporary data that I cannot save and take with me, the notion of intellectual property rights and who owns what moves to the forefront. It seems that Linden Labs has a lot of power since in theory they can reclaim all property in SL. But doing so would alienate all the residents, thus eliminating the company’s source of income. OMG, I’m homeless!

Since I don’t own any land at present, this is not a worry that keeps me up at night. But since I have invested many, many hours designing, building, editing, I don’t want to give this up so quickly. Being thrown out onto the virtual street is not the way I want to remember our collaboration to create an educational selling environment. I really like what we’ve accomplished and I’d like to see it move forward to an actual, working site. And to go one step further, I’d like to “own” what we’ve created so that it can be preserved for future use.

It’s only at the end, do I realize how this “game” is played. Just like in RL, you need to “buy in” to those who own the land. You work to create. You sell your creations to fund SL activities – buying land for example. You get taxed on the land you own, so you have to keep working to pay the taxes. (this sounds very familiar) But even then, digitally speaking, you don’t even own a “bit”. It’s overwhelming when you think about it. I don’t have a conclusion yet…I’m still thinking about OMG, I’m homeless!

I know the buzz words (at least the ones known today);I can usually use them in a sentence,;and most important I can explain in the most general of terms, how many (not all) things work.

I mention this because I enjoy Second Life. I can talk to other avatars. I like to design and build to market. I am impressed that so many people can do so many technically advanced things in this virtual world. It’s a good, and fun, place to spend some time, so anything Linden Lab can do (open-source its SL servers) to improve the experience (no lag times) of being in SL would be positive. Just tell me the customer benefits. I’m not a techie.

You can fly around SL for hours and come across very few inhabitants (which can be good sometimes). Many avatars new to this environment ask, “why”, “what do you do here?”. Very good questions, indeed.

In order for anything to happen in SL, you need interaction – with another avatar, an object, a notecard, a SLurl. Just as in RL, YOU have to make it happen. SL is a social networking experience. And keep in mind, you can be anti-social in this environment, but why waste your time here? 

Once you recognize and feel comfortable in this virtual world, the next big step is interaction. Some would say building, but I say people. (Sorry, avatars.) And that’s one of the reasons it’s not a game. Avatars are unpredictable. You can never program avatars controlled by people. Ever try herding cats? That’s what makes it so interesting.

In Synthetic Worlds: The Business & Culture of Online Games by Edward Castranova’s (an economist who studied multi-user 3-D games), he never mentions SL as one of the leading online interactive games, although he points out there is a similarity in the reasons people seek out virtual worlds for entertanment, communication and sociability. Why? Because it’s not a game.

In Virtual World, Real Leaders, I have to stop at the title. The only way people learn how to motivate and guide others is to do so in real life. If you can’t do it here, you can’t do it in there. Yes, you can assume leadership roles in a virtual environment, but this doesn’t make you one in the real world where so many hard facts come into the decision making process. You can’t just pick up your business with a single mouse click and move it to a friendlier neighborhood (island), you have to make the product/service, the market, the people, the costs, the unions, the politicians, the economy… a whole host of sometimes uncontrollable factors, work. No virtual game, or virtual social environment can teach you that.

After joining SLED, Second Life Educators, I have gotten a lot of emails, some of which I need to share. This is one of them.

From Microsoft comes the next generation of computers – surface computing.

You’ve got to take a few minutes and watch this video. From ICM501 to here. Amazing journey.

This is a webinar by Ross Perkins, PhD from the School of Education of Virginia Tech, for members of AECT (Association for Educational Communications and Technology). There are 3 parts: 1) Prims 2) Plans (overview of what AECT does in SL) and 3) Projects (teaching & educational research in SL).

Interesting to see. Sit back with some popcorn and enjoy the show!

As a good example of an emerging virtual community, SL does two things simultaneously. It reflects real life as users try to recreate or simulate existing environments. For example – a college campus, an office building, a retail business, a famous landmark. And it serves as an incubator for vivid imagineers who now have the freedom to unleash the full range of their creativity to produce worlds that once only existed in their mind.

Anything is possible here

This virtual world is a product of computer technology which has freed us from physical boundaries and redefined freedom of expression and autonomy. As a SL resident, you’re like a super hero. You can fly. You have the power to move heavy objects. You can travel at the speed of your broadband. And you never age (unless you want to). And not even kryptonite can kill you.

You definitely have more control in SL. What you look like, what you wear (or don’t in some cases), where you travel, how you spend your time. It’s a user-created environment and you’re in charge. So very unlike real life…and maybe that’s the primary attraction. It’s the ability to start fresh, to create something (if even in pixels) that you can call your own. A virtual king in a virtual kingdom. It’s easy to see why people could immerse themselves here.

While all this fantasy is enticing, it can also be distracting. Distracting in the sense that the longer you remain in this world (of your own volition) the dividing line between real and imaginary begins to blend.

You start to believe that SL could be real, and maybe for a brief time, your imagination gets the best of you. But snap out of it……

So what’s real and what’s made up?

That’s the beauty of this place. It doesn’t really matter. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, you can enjoy the real/unreal aspects of this constantly evolving virtual environment.

Just as in real life, you find people you like meeting and places you enjoy visiting. After spending some time in Second Life, you begin to open up and talk to other residents. Most, like in real life, are helpful. Some you would like to meet. But like in real life, you’ve got to remember that all is not what it appears to be. Really, it’s virtual common sense.

We wanted to make our virtual site resemble a real-life building on the Cheshire campus.
The landlord did not want us changing the building too much. He graciously allowed us to have white brick (not the red we really wanted) and a campus landmark – the Eight Pillars of Bowden Hall.

A view of both floors. We have 5 content areas for visitors to view.

When looking over the balcony onto to the floor below, it seems so real that I forget sometimes I’m in Second Life.