[HMDS] First Meeting
I was so excited to hold the brainstorming meeting. I prepared note cards in advance, so I could provided background information all at once, and used the Groups Voting tool to announce the meeting (a little bit of a cheat, but it?s all we are offered). I said it was B.Y.O.C. (bring your own chair).
A number of people came but, to my surprise, they were all from Kim?s team. It was clear to me I had found what I was looking for. If I recall properly, Gus on the left did terraforming, Alex on the right did scripting, Wynx next to him sculpted creatures, and Kim designed and managed them all.
I described the project, explained my (to me) outrageous idea of the essay contest living inside a giant volcano, and not being able to enter it until you took some quiz by a globe that rises out of a lake. They didn?t flinch, added their own crazy ideas, and promised me a proposal within the week.
While waiting for the proposal, Blue prepared me for what lay ahead. In part that meant learning more about the two grids. What would happen to my 17 year-old students when they turned 18? Would they just get the boot?
This location, in the main grid, is the one-way transit point between the two worlds. When a teen ?graduates? from the teen grid this is where they enter legal adulthood in the main grid - an old-fashioned boat with a dock. I am told there are often welcome parties to greet them.
You might notice that tower of cards. By now I had bought a copy of this amazing magic wand, which produces all sorts of objects and animations based on words in the chat box. So, as I told Blue about computers at our school having outdated video cards, the word ?card? triggered this tower, which, once built, promptly collapsed around us. This wand is SL at its best.
This wand, which costs a fortune within Second Life at more than $30 US, became by first Second Life toy. It was always fun to just leave it on and have physical objects ?rez? to emphasize my words. But I also learned how to summon objects at the appropriate moment and play with them. One of my first games was to combine two ?spells? - one for ?balloon? and one for ?Spiderman?. The first would cause colored balloons to fall from the sky, which would pop when you ran through them. The second made Spiderman appear, swinging in a circle overhead. The more times I said each word the more objects would appear. I tried to time it so the Spidermen would pop the balloons. Then I would say ?bubble?, select ?ride?, and me and my companion would gently float away above it all. I was learning what play meant in an embodied world with alternate physics.
