PHOTOS: University of Houston Class and Student Final Presentations in Second Life

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Students and attendees learned more about the intriguing lives of the charming millionaire hostess Alelia Walker, the six-feet tall Ms. Bessie "put-up-your-dukes" Smith and the flamboyant Mr. New Orleans himself - Daniel Louis Armstrong.

Everyone enjoyed the jazz audio and video (thanks YouTube) details of the long life of England-born cabaret singer Ms. Mabel Mercer, and prolific writers like Ms. Zora Neale Hurston, Mr. Langston Hughes, Ms. Gwendolyn B. Bennett. Also Harlem Renaissance visual artist Ms. Lois Mailou Jones painted well into the age of her nineties.

Click photos above for more or ...
visit the student virtual presentations in Second Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Harlem/214/75/31

Group tours in Second Life spur creativity for educators and students

In the recent class workshop in the TLC2 lab, two groups were formed for Second Life tours. The student group explored the space in Virtual Harlem where their class assignments will be shown.

CherDawn, Jah, and Jaison also talked about objects in Second Life that use audio, video and images.

The teacher group transported to different learning locations from the workshop notecard.

Lamar, Scipper, dominoe and Vapassana visited and reviewed the design elements on each island. Teachers discussed the buildings, open spaces, collaborative spaces and "sandboxes" for building or experimenting with objects.

This group touring objective exposes locations like Svarga, Reuters, Campus:Second Life, and San Diego State University that may contain designs that educators may wish to incorporate on the Teen Grid Island or the Mainland.

(VIDEO) SEMI-FINALIST: University of Houston Department of Health & Human Performance in Second Life

Congratulations to the efforts by the Texas Obesity Research Center TORC and Earnest Thorne (RL Dr. Layne) in the Public Good: Community Challenge.

"Research regarding sedentary lifestyles have shown both lower and higher levels of obesity. The advantage to Second Life is the interactivity. Opportunities to develop social networks that can provide support for people behaving in a healthy manner." - Sirena Felisimo, TORC

Virtual learning tools for teachers in Houston, the birthplace of KIPP schools.

Scipper Snoodle captained yesterdays University of Houston workshop class which added a few new faces. Thanks, to Vapassana Hermit for inviting Abgoosht Adamski. And welcome to dominoe Haystack, Luthre Dezno and Alelia Quintessa for jumping (and flying) in feet first as we headed to the 3-D version of Virtual Montmartre.
Shout-out to Lamar Jumanya and KIPP Liberation embracing Second Life as a learning tool. Especially when attempting to convince my-gosh-what-for? teachers to try a new web application.

Bryan Mnemonic tip-of-the-day: Organize your Landmarks folder with subfolders (Health, Libraries, Sandboxes,..) within your Inventory.

Jah Waffle, Afropikin Skytower, CherDawn Foxtrot and Jaison Landar held it down for the students. Everybody had a chance to review the Second Life work of other students during the Virtual Montmartre tour.

The Great Undo: CTRL + Z

Noticed all of the places that CTRL+Z works lately?
The powerful 'undo' keyboard shortcut works within all PC desktop applications and Windows.
In the browsing-preview window, try renaming a highlighted list of photographs without batching. If there is a mistake, you can undo (CTRL+Z) each file name to correct while highlighted. Sweet. Personally depend on solid file-naming conventions to organize graphic files instead of the undescriptive camera defaults (FILE F100DR793.jpg). Also do not depend on a folder's name. The individual file name should give more info while browsing file lists without 'visual' preview (graphic_screenshot-Second-Life-notepad-scripting-UH-HHP.jpg). My unconfirmed intuition says this type of file-naming increases deskstop search results.

In Second Life, scripting and building tools take advantage of this powerful shortcut. You can CTRL+Z while scripting and building an object using the 'notepad' of Second Life. (Big-ups, Linden Labs...smile).

If only we could have a CTRL+U for undo-ing real life...sigh

VIDEO: Friends of Emancipation Park with Bill Milligan

Many local community projects are worthy candidates for virtual representation. Second Life offers enriched portrayals of social history and cultural preservation. Watch the video above and hear about the grassroot efforts by The Friends of Emanicipation Park with Bill Milligan. Emancipation Park is located in Third Ward, Houston, Texas and purchased by freed slaves in 1872 and has served as an oasis for families and young kids.

Teachers and students explore notecard assignments within Virtual Harlem

Since the Saturday workshop, mostly everyone had at least gone shopping on the cheap. Yes!
Bryan Mnemonic guided everyone through ideas for classroom assignments. Everyone got a chance to use the notecards to visit other historical builds in-world. We went to places like Renaissance Island, Temple of Isis, Land of Lincoln and the Independent State of Caledon.
In Antiquity Texas, we could explore the many sights and historical information found all over Texas, including The Alamo, Texas Governor's Mansion, San Jacinto Park, Indian Camp, Lighthouse, Presidio La Bahia, and the Grand Texas Capital Building and Rotunda. A Historical Walking Tour is located to the right of the landing area and is an automated walk thru the buildings and attractions of Texas.
All of us returned to Virtual Harlem to report findings during our explorations.
Next week: Virtual Montmarte

Introductions to Second Life virtual learning at University of Houston

Appx 20 educators, students and administrators participated in the all-day workshop. Led by Bryan Mnemonic, participants were thoroughly engaged in their introduction into Second Life. Houston Independent School District teachers discussed applying their efforts within boundaries of the omnipresent TAKS test. University of Houston African-American studies class students were assigned Harlem Renaissance biographies to research for virtual creation. UH administrators brainstormed about SL applications toward assisting various campus professors in the ED Dept.

Virtual Harlem and Virtual Montmarte: Bringing The Jazz Age To Life (in Second Life)

Texas Learning & Computation Center TLC² generously hosted Virtual Harlem and Virtual Montmarte: Bringing The Jazz Age To Life with Dr. Bryan Carter. Bonus tour of the visualization lab with Rosalinda, Erik and Judy of TLC².

Watch the short video below with Erik and see the effect of the 3-D glasses.