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Friday, April 20, 2007

Second Race in Second Life

We just ran a quiz race in Second Life for the second time this morning in my organic chemistry class. Two of the students were physically with me in the classroom and two were coming in remotely.

Initially, Beth was still the owner of the obelisks and we learned the hard way that all but one stop working when the owner is not on the island. We worked it out this morning by transferring the ownership to me and as long as I was next to my students all of them could do the quizzes.

Beth is always talking about the community spirit in Second Life and I got a taste of it first hand when Beth invited many of her friends, including Eloise who built the quiz, to come help. This is such a different experience from using Unreal Tournament to construct the races. When I would run into a problem, I was basically completely alone and had to read the manual or try to make contact on a forum.

We got started about 10 minutes late and there was confusion but now that we understand the problem next week should go smoothly. There is still a problem that not all the obelisks will work when I am not there but Beth and Eloise assure me that can be fixed also.

We also had a few random visitors taking a peek at what we were up to and, if I had a bit of time between helping students, I chatted with them. Some also talked with my students. Since we are on Nature Island, the type of people who tend to visit generally have a great interest in science and are eager to share.

Here is a pic of this morning's race.

2 Comments:

  • That looks great. A bit to much chemistry for my taste but probably a great way to attract younger people to science. Maybe you could apply to some Science and Society funding to make this a larger project.

    By Blogger Pedro Beltrao, at 10:20 AM  

  • Well we can make the quizzes for any topic easily - let me know if you want to try.

    By Blogger Jean-Claude Bradley, at 7:09 PM  

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