After two long years, we finally have an island in Second Life to work on. We bought an existing island from the Alliance Library System. Those good librarians have been a wonderful support for us, and a lifeline for me personally. Since the Linden Labs people can’t easily grasp higher order thinking, they are having a hard time making me the named owner of the island since we paid Alliance for the coming year of maintenance and transfer fees, etc. I am keeping up my zen chant of “We’ve waited this long so a little longer isn’t going to hurt.” Visit the vast emptiness here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/College%20of%20DuPage/135/82/27

People have been asking what we’re going to do with the island. Well, first I need to be able to apply a raw file to change the terrain. I’m planning to do a prairie landscape with lots of pretty wild grasses, ponds and streams. Then, I’ll decide where to put the Fashion faculty and their runway and store front displays. They are going to use SL to teach merchandising which is going to be way fun and useful for them. I have a small student commons area all ready to plunk down where we’ll have information about the College and help for students new to SL. We’ll have Tintern Abbey there again though I’m not sure if it will be used in a COD class. Its a popular build and we’ve gotten a lot of attention for its usefulness in teaching. There will be a big area for our chemistry students since they are so keen and have lots of ideas. I’ve invited to Literature Alive some space for one of their smaller homeless builds. I’m also going to put up a new Community Colleges resource center for my group (500 members now! eee!) We’ll have the social networking display again and I’m toying with the idea of a storytelling and folklore center too. Its so great to have prims! (If we ever get them…grumble)

I admit to having much less energy for SL than I did two years ago or even one year ago…its interesting how apathy can sort of weigh a person down. I’m sure that I will get my energy back once I get started on the new sim and see our students using it.