DUDE! Where are all the UCLA students?

Demelza, Bertie and Clarina waiting in vain for UCLA students on Wednesday 12th March. They must have gone surfing...

Still no sign of the UCLA students on Wednesday 19th March, but all was not in vain. A large group of SILS students got to use time in SL for an impromptu seminar about our Technology Audit assignment.

I think SL is one of the great untapped resources for any subject or discipline. Personally, I feel that when I'm away from UCD for any length of time, it can be quite isolating. You're beavering away on all manner of assignments, with nobody to talk to. Group emailing works to an extent, but actually I think the group dynamic works well in SL. OK, so you need to keep up with the 'chat' and messages can overlap, but overall, I found our discussion very helpful. It was interesting to see the flow of conversation, and I got a great buzz from throwing out a comment or question and seeing eight other avatars frantically typing away like crazy in a frenzy of response.

The added bonus of a 'tutorial' in SL is that if you lose track for a moment, you can save a 'transcript' of the 'conversation'. I did just that last night, and was able to review it this morning. I had missed out on one or two comments that were very useful...

It seems that some students are finding that SL can be quite a lonely place, so I think it would be good to keep meeting up like this at set times, so that we don't lose the momentum of this whole SL experiment. My group (Elmes) for the BIG project have had a couple of brief meetings in SL when we're off campus, rather than texting or group emailing, and it's working well for us.

Left-click once on this picture to see a 'Who's Who' of attendants...

I took some snapshots as usual last night, and also a screen shot, as this meant I had avatar names over each student. Screen shots are particularly useful for keeping track of attendance at an event, especially as most of us are changing appearance so often. (Also, if you want to make contact with someone after an event, you can search for them under People once you have their avatar name.)

Perhaps when we're all finished with this assignment, we could send the best of our pictures to Akiiki Vella, and she could keep an 'album' to show next year's students, or we could put them on Flickr ourselves...