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.

I’m proud to announce that Prince William Sound Community College (in beautiful Valdez Alaska) has posted a 2 year IT position that will include technical coordination of our Second Life educational sites.

With campuses in Valdez and Cordova sitting on the beautiful Prince William Sound and in the Copper River Basin at the doorstep of the magnificent Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, PWSCC serves a large geographical land area that is only matched by the large diversity of its people.

The Information Technology department at PWSCC supports the technology needs of our students, faculty and staff at all of our campuses. We strive to provide friendly, prompt and exact service while delivering leading edge technology that enhances the educational opportunities our communities.

The IS Ops Technician 2 position, based out of the main Valdez Alaska, campus, assists the I.T. Manager to provide this service in a wide array of disciplines including workstation setup & maintenance, software support, networking, video conferencing, telephony, audio-visual support as well as being a team player with the other departments of the college. The work environment is fast paced and requires an individual possessing good people skills that is able to apply creative solutions in problem solving situations.

This position will also be the lead technical coordinator of our virtual world as designed in Second Life. They will act as our technical designer, admin and liaison as we venture into this new and exciting approach to education.

For more information click on: https://www.uakjobs.com , go to *Advanced search* and choose Valdez in *Location*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Julie A. Fronzuto Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biology

Prince William Sound Community College

303 Lowe St.

Valdez, AK 99686

907.834.1633

Pipsqueak Fiddlesticks (SL) Denise Cote, CCSL, Pathfinder Linden (SL) John Lester (RL), LL, Claudia Linden (SL), LL, George Linden (SL), LL, Carl Metropolitan (SL) Carl Henderson (RL), NCI, Beth Sachtjen (RL) Stella Costello (SL), NMC, Saxet Uralia (SL), Mentor groups in SL, Maggy Marat (SL), ISTE

My chat transcript
Thank you so much for inviting me here this afternoon. This conference is fantastic! I am Denise Cote from the College of DuPage in Illinois. Wow, I’m just so flattered to be here with all of these great people! My group is quite small compared to the awesome Real Life Educators group, the NMC, the ISTE and the NCI. The Community Colleges in SL group has about 380 members and our mission is very specific. The CCSL group provides support services to community college faculty, staff and students. I formed this group about 18 months ago because we needed a forum where community college people could connect and assist one another. The group provides a venue for community college educators who share similar curricula, economic constraints and also a culture that is very specific to the community college. Of course, we do get help and information from the variety of great support groups represented here, but our main goal is to band together to lend credibility to using virtual worlds in Community college education. You know, it is all well and good to tell community college administrators that Harvard and the University of Michigan are here in SL, but it is quite another to be able to offer examples of how other community colleges are successfully using Second Life! Community colleges have issues that can be very different from other institutions of higher ed. Our institutions not only teach students art, literature and mathematics but we also train electricians, nurses, construction managers and fashion merchandisers. And that’s just a tiny taste of the variety of instruction we provide. In addition, community colleges are not research-oriented. We are very practical and most community colleges do not have the same sort of funding for “experimental” methods as large universities, though our teaching is just as innovative. Given the pracitical nature of our Colleges, faculty need to be able to make a very solid case when asking for funding and support. The CCSL group works with individuals to help them formulate strategies for obtaining funds, for working with IT departments, for working with our students and how to overcome challenges that are particular to community colleges. In the community college, we rely heavily on hands-on labs and simulations. Virtual worlds can lend themselves well to scalable, affordable options for practical work training. There are many examples of technical training and work simulations in SL, many of which, I’m happy to say, we are learning about at this conference! We have several community colleges that are doing great work in making virtual world applications a part of their curricula, such asTexas State TC, Pellissippi State, Nova Scotia Community Colleges and Tacoma CC. There are still others that are quietly doing small but excellent projects, such as Front Range CC, my own Colllege of DuPage, Oakton CC and so many others. For some, our ability to continue teaching in SL is tenuous given economic constraints and the lack of research on how VW’s can enhance the educational experience of CC students. There are many challenges but we are overcoming them… Community colleges educators are used to doing a lot with a little! So, as I see it, our challenge is two-fold– we have to work to create viable learning experiences on shoestring budgets for our own students while continuously working to show that virtual worlds can be pedogogically sound/viable/economical options for community colleges. We also need to step up and lend our expertise to other community college educators who are trying to get a foothold in the virtual world. Every CC success here is a success for us all, because we can use these great projects as case studies to bring forward to our own institutions, and most importantly, to our students. The CCSL also helps new community college educators “ramp up” and learn the Second Life interface through a group of CCSL mentors who work with people one-on-one. We do workshops and field trips to interesting builds and share literature and information. I think, though, that the strength of the group is our collective knowledge of what other community colleges are doing in-world and matching up educators with similar interests and similar college profiles. I know that many of you are not from community colleges but I do invite you have a look at our group wiki at http://ccsl.wetpaint.com and to participate in our group activities. There is a update group that you can join that will not use up one of your 25 slots. The kiosks to join this update group will be around this venue until after our panel today. Thank you so much for your kind attention.

Teaching on the MUVE Workshop, originally uploaded by notmarian.

Here I am with my class on the first day. Its so exciting to have so many of my COD peeps here with me. In this group, we have 4 computer scientists, a student services professional, a journalism professor, an architect, a literature professor, a business professor and, of course, a librarian! The experience was a total riot. Everyone dived right in and learned a bunch of basics. My favorite part was when I gave everyone “walk overrides” so they wouldn’t walk like ducks. It was so cute when all the women in the group simultaneously said “oooooh” when they saw their avatars move with the Sexy Walk override. Hilarious. The guys are diving right in too. One guy is looking pretty beefy and another is fashioning himself into an angel. Ha! Next week we’re going to discuss the life of an avatar and the virtual representation of self. Check out the workshop wiki–click on the pretty wiki tab at the top of this page!

COD on Edu3, originally uploaded by notmarian.

Here’s the new parcels we’ve just acquired! We’ll still have Tintern and the Clouds Classroom, the Community Colleges space plus a garden of scientists, a copyright and intellectual property in VW’s experience and, tentatively, a William Blake immersion. Oh, and lots and lots of room for COD faculty and staff to learn/play! Stoked!

2nd Anniversary, originally uploaded by HVX Silverstar.

Alright, so, I pole danced for charity…I am proud of it! (well, not really, but it was for the Libraries in Second Life–an excellent cause). Its amazing just how far librarians will go to support their own!  Dancing with me is Rocky Vallejo, who runs “Imagination Island” a wonderful resource for children’s lit librarians.

Here’s the Kevin Jarrett/KJ Hax’s ISTE posting about my dog and pony show. He was wonderfully supportive and on my case everyday to get it together. Love that! http://www.storyofmysecondlife.com/?p=652