My Virtual Life - KaticusSparrow.com

Want to use Second Life for education or training? Start here!

The folks over at CollegeDegrees.com sent me a link to a resource list they have put together: 50 Tips and Tricks to Create a Learning Space in Second Life.

They've pulled together a really nicely annotated list that includes setting up a training program, examples of real-life education projects in SL and lists of blogs & wikis as well as some general SL-useful tools that could be used by educators and plain ol' folks alike :)

One SL Educators resource of note that I didn't see on the list is the SaLamander Project: Creating a Community-built index of Second Life content, activities, and tools of educational value.  I saw a presentation by Dr Jonathon Richter, University of Oregon who curates this project.  Saw him at the recent vBusiness Expo put on by Clever Zebra.  Cool project because they use both taxonomy and folksonomy to annotate resources - so trying to extract value from both the wisdom of the crowds (find ALL the resources) and the expertise of the few (resource rating by teachers and other educators).

New Blog Title and URL - KaticusSparrow.com

In an effort to comply with the new Brand Guidelines from Linden Lab, I've renamed this blog with my avatar's name - KaticusSparrow.com (Yeah, it looks kind dumb when it's all in lowercase.  Sigh. Things you don't think about when you're naming your avatar).  The old links will still work (that include "secondlife" in the URL), but I won't be promoting that URL. 

I've also updated my feed URL, but I'm leaving the old one intact as well.

Good Guide for SL Beginners

Once I figured out the basics of avatar fashion in Second Life, I wasn't sure what to do next.  I thought maybe a little building, maybe a little scripting .. but more so I could have a good time, not to become a hard core builder or anything.

This great newbie Second Life guide from Ariane Brodie gives examples and links of what to do after you figure out good skin, hair and clothes, including teleport scripts, camera controls, jewelry creation and attachment scripts.

You can certainly enjoy Second Life without going into this next level of basic scripting and creation, but it's really helpful to have links to these basic scripts and how to implement them into simple prims.

Ariane also writes the Life in the Metaverse blog; recently there has been an interesting series of real-life builds in SL.  Some great places to check out!

Thanks  to Gwyneth Lillwelyn for the pointer!