Saturday, May 05, 2007

The SLelves and Eloise


They must have hired some elves at Linden Lab.

Don't get me wrong; I am not one of the Linden Lab chronic complainers. I don't complain about lag because I understand the physics that underpin the world (a new UUID for every single prim...my hair, alone, is 300 prim). It is amazing that the grid is EVER stable.

The little elves at SL have been working feverishly on GOOD stuff!. First, they are beta testing an age verification system. WOO WOO! Second, they are cracking down on the terrible events calendar in SL. Third, they have developed a sculptie prim, but, as I know nothing about building, I couldn't tell ya what that means. It sounds cute.

People work REALLY hard to make SL a good place. Obviously, Linden Labs folks are hard at work. But, inworld, I see the educators working frantically to make SL a good place for their students.

Eloise Pasteur has been named the official fairy godmother of Literature Alive! We all know her work from those handy-dandy educational products she makes. But, she is also known inworld for her building and scripting talents. She has donated much of her free time to realize a dream that is only half formed in my own mind, and I owe her more than any amount of Linden could pay.

You will notice that the American Literature classroom has changed. It had to. I couldn't build one more traditional building in SL; it isn't my nature. I came to SL to break the bonds that I feel IRL, and, yet, I felt that I was simply duplicating what I have in real life.

Eloise helped me hash out a kernel that was knocking about my skull, and the new American Literature Classroom (in progress) is pictured above. Students will - literally and figuratively - extract a national literature from a raw land.

2 comments:

brtom said...

Since I blundered into yr new class space yesterday, I've made it a regular sitting/starting point. It's perfect: trees and rocks and wildweeds and all. My kind of place. I'd like to be able to look in on one of yr actual class sessions, if you'd allow it. Might that happen?

Tom Murphy
(If Lubitsch)

Beth Ritter-Guth said...

Sure! The American Literature I course starts May 14th and is open to both registered students and the SL community. The wiki for the course is located at http://collegeenglish.wikispaces.com/American+Literature+I

Feel free to participate in any way :-)