Adventures in Second Life - Part II

This week was somewhat different from my last experience in Second Life. I saw the more educational side that the application had to offer. My assignment was to collaborate with a group of my peers through our Second Life avatars and explore locations based on the readings. Finding these places wasn’t difficult seeing as I was paired up with the two co-facilitators from this past week. They had already researched islands that pertained to our readings about open source software, net neutrality, and intellectual property. Our first stop, after leaving Purchase College Island, was a location called Free and Open 43 on ama gi Island. Here my group and I were able to get information and access hyperlinks for companies and programs that promote open source software, such as Mozilla, Linux, and Ubuntu. We were also able to get free promotional in game objects. I walked away with several different virtual shirts, a pixilated Debian notebook, and a digital can of GNU Linux classic soda. Not a bad haul.

Next up was a landmark called Open Source Information Center on Watarrka Park Island. This is where we spent a majority of our time and learned a lot of useful information. Upon arriving at the island we were greeted by an avatar by the name of Catherine Pfeffer. Catherine told us to look around and ask her if we had any questions. After looking around the Open Source Information Center for a while, watching streamed videos and gathering information about open source software in the form of text documents, our group engaged in a lengthy discussion with Catherine. We discussed a lot about the benefits of open source software, intellectual property, and much more. She also provided us with websites where we could download our own open source software. At the end of our discussion Catherine reveled herself to be a technical writer from France who was very knowledgeable about what we are currently learning in class. When we were ready to move on we thanked Catherine and teleported to the next location. Our last stop was a place called the Old School Gaming Zone where we looked for examples of copyright infringement. After searching for a while, we decided that this area didn’t have what we were looking for and decided to part ways since our class time was almost up. After we all bid each other fare well, we logged off and went about our days. That pretty much sums up my second classroom experience in Second Life.