Stepping Into Literature Conference

I attended the Stepping Into Literature Conference on Monday Aug. 4 and Wednesday Aug. 6. This was an online conference about using SL to teach literature. The reason I went both days was that they had technical problems on Monday that prevented me from experiencing some of the events properly. In addition, I spent a while helping Vicki, who was attending also.

The highlight of Monday was a discussion about Grapes of Wrath at Rollig's sim, Only Yesterday. Rollig did a great job as discussion leader and had a very clever presentation object. It was a pile of cubes, arranged like building blocks, with different text or picture on each visible face of each cube. She had them rotating too, but rotating objects in the center of the discussion always make me dizzy and I don't think that was a good idea.

Wednesday was far more organized and went very smoothly. We had an awesome discussion group - we spent about half the session discussing Snow Crash and the rest discussing teaching in SL.

Great opening talk by xx about how she uses SL to teach literature and how other people are using it. Excellent panel discussion on Wednesday with Rocky, Cindy, Rollig and some other people.

There was also a presentation by an experienced SL developer who had some creative presentation objects on display. Turns out she is coauthor of the book I just bought on building and scripting. Also an old friend of Desmond's - he says Caledon will be featured in her next book, which is an introduction to SL for business people.

Vicki was unable to get her Voice working, so couldn't hear the talk. I took her to Oxbridge (less lag there and I wanted her to see it) and tried to help her, but no luck. When I asked the chat, the consensus was that she probably didn't activate her headset before opening sl. I'm not sure whether she was impressed by Oxbridge or not - not sure she really got it.

After Vicki left, I flew around Oxbridge taking photos. Saw Desmond Magic working, but didn't bother him. He sent me an offer to join the Oxbridge group - I was the third person to join.