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Second Life in Education

Getting around In World

Overview

Getting started

Navigation in world

Navigation hints are available from Linden at http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/category.php?id=22; and see Torley Linden's Second Life & techno music blog with Tips and Tricks, e.g. this one at: http://blip.tv/file/106637 <-- this is on advanced camera techniques and might be a bit much for newbies, but it would does provide an insiders view of what getting around in SL could be like. These tips are available through http://secondlife.com/newsletter/

From a dispatch from Dudeney Ge: Moving around can be tricky to begin with. When I first get into Second Life I usually wait for 30 seconds or so while the world around me settles down. Tips for movement:

Getting help

Some tips to enhance the experience

Speed

More from Dudeney Ge: If you're getting a slow SL video experience, please experiment with the following - all available from the Edit - Preferences menu:

Suggestions for improviing performance in case of poor computing resources, posted on the SLED list Vol 441, Issue 1 , Aug 16, 2007: " reduce quality of all bandwith relevant settings you can find in the preferences. Reduce draw distance, pull down the levers for mesh details, turn off sound and video options for example. There are also some settings in the "secret" Client menu which you access by clicking ctrl+shift+alt+D when you are logged in. This menu has options for turning textures off and such. Im not sure the experience of SL is going to be much worth without textures.. but you can try turning diffrent rendering options (in client/rendering/types) on and off in this menu to see if anything helps. "Animate textures" could be something else you might want to turn off, not sure about that one but might be worth a try.

Light

Clothing

Building

There is a list for SLED Builders: http://lists.simteach.com/listinfo.cgi/sledbuilders-simteach.com

Video on constructing objects tutorial

Pedagogy

Nik Peachy has created a set of shockwave video tutorials pertaining to his work teaching languages in SL via http://www.languagelab.com/ and in a spirit of much appreciated sharing has blogged them at "Learning technology teacher development blog for ELT" - http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2007/08/teaching-english-in-second-life.html. On Aug 13, 2007 the following videos were available. I've included the links in the list below, copied from Nik's blog: The videos reveal:

Torley Linden has some tutorials and much else of ummm interest shall we say at his blog http://torley.com/category/resources/tutorials

Other tricks

HUD (Heads up display)

Voice in world

Second Phone: http://www.vivox.com/

Webeads were using Ventrilo to voice chat in Second Life. In order to use Ventrilo you need to download the client from http://www.ventrilo.com and then launch it. Next you need to configure it with the IP address of the server everyone is using, and the password for that server.. Gavin notes that there are (at least) two servers: One Ventrilo server provided free of charge by Pathfinder Linden, for the educational community - whereas EduNation has its own server (also provided free of charge). In the Webheads hut you'll find the IP of the EduNation server, and the password is available from Gavin (or me, Vance, assuming I have most current information). More information:

SusNy Foss tells us:

Video in world

Bruce Neubauer asked on educators@lists.secondlife.com" What is required, please, to use a web cam to appear and speak in SL on a video screen?" He got this great answer from: Eloise Pasteur:

You need something that will stream video out in a format quicktime recognises. The obvious (but probably not the cheapest) solution is the Quicktime Broadcast Server.

In world... you'll need a URL for your video stream, and a "screen texture". You put the texture on one (or more) screens in the parcel. Right click the land and choose about land (also in world menu) and choose the media tab. Put the texture in the texture box, the URL in the streaming video field.

Make sure you know how to tell people to turn their video streams on and give them a couple of moments to do so ... Quite a few people don't know how to turn it on (preferences>audio and video>play video) and the pressing the play button that appears also throws them.

What's it like in World: Video and Image galleries



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Page updated: January 6, 200804:30 GMT

Copyright 2007 by Vance Stevens
under Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

August 13, 2007


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