My flag project turned out to be more of an undertaking than I had anticipated. My goal was to create a flag representing each school, using their logos/mascots, and arrange them in some fashion near the building that I’ve set up to be the virtual “Central Office.” This took quite a bit of graphic editing on my part. The second thing I wanted to do was to have each flag, when clicked, to launch the school’s website. Some nice folks in the ISTE group helped me out with a script!

My opportunities for island development have been few and far between, however, in the past months I have completed three sections of the island:

• The Staff Development Center - a tropical, tiki-themed region which includes meeting spaces, an auditorium suspended over a coral reef, and huts for resource sharing. (shown here)
• An Undesignated, Mountainous Region - includes two homes with meeting spaces in a wooded, rocky terrain.
• A Sandbox - One of the goals of staff development for the island is to ultimately have educators creating their own objects.  The sandbox is a place where members of the Pender County Schools group can do just that.

I’m currently in the process of developing an Administrative region which will feature our virtual District Office, complete with meeting and office space.

-Lucas

Time for some original object creation.  I decided that we’d need some sort of visual cue for visitors and users of our island so they’d know what region of the island they were visiting should they take the paths that will one day be created.  I decided I’d try my hand at object creation.  Now, initially this can be a bit daunting and frustrating, but it can be fun, too.  This image shows some of my work in creating region signs.  If you can begin thinking in terms of X, Y, and Z coordinates it makes things much easier.  Everything in Second Life exists in those dimensions.  A big thanks to my high school drafting teacher, Ms. Thompson, for helping me to develop some spatial reasoning skills!  The sign on the right was my first attempt.  It was fine, but I’m growing a bit paranoid about over-usage of prims.  The sign on the right consists of five prims (two posts, two braces, and a flat surface for the sign).  As I though about it, I realized I could create a comparable sign with only three prims (thus, the sign on the far left).

My next challenge was texturing.  I created an image with part of our district’s new logo and the word “science” and uploaded it to Second Life.  The problem however is that the texture appeared on all surfaces of the prim.  I wanted it to only show on the front side.  In the object editing menu, there’s a radio button that says, “Select Texture.”  By selecting this and then clicking the surface you want to edit, you can apply a texture to a single side of a prim.  Very handy!

-Lucas

After discussion with another member of our district’s instructional team, we decided that a good way to “divide” up the island would be based on curricular areas. I came up with a list of sections I thought would be appropriate for the island (science, mathematics, office space, an auditorium for presentations, a sandbox (area where group members can build objects), etc.). Nine areas seemed like a good number, so I set out to gather some data on the space available to us. Islands in Second Life are actually large squares of area measuring 256m x 256m (or 65,536 sq. m.). That’s quite a bit of space! What’s also important to remember is that you also have all of the vertical space above you as well, and with the beauty of teleportation pads, you can hide large structures floating high in the air above your estate. I created a few glowing green poles and placed them at the interior corners of my squares and put a yellow pole at the center of the island for reference. The next step was to subdivide the land into parcels. This is actually a pretty simple process. You “edit the terrain,” select the land you want to subdivide (with a big yellow square), and click the blue “Subdivide…” button. By subdividing your estate, you have greater control over individual sections. For example, you can stream different audio or video into those sections. History podcasts streaming to one, biology to another…

-Lucas

Talk about a blank canvas!  Here I am on our recently “delivered” island in Second Life.  When I ordered the island I was able to make a request regarding its location in “the Grid.”  I requested that we be located somewhere near UNC Chapel Hill’s island or near ISTE’s islands.  If space allows, Linden Labs can accommodate your requests for island placement, and so now, we’re located just southwest of UNC Chapel Hill’s five-island complex.  When ordering, you can select from one of four (maybe more?) general island shapes.  I chose the one with the most amount of land space and the least amount of topography.  As I soon found out, it’s fairly simple to “terraform” regions of your island, raising and lowering the topography.  I also decided to create a Pender County Schools group as a means of managing access to the island.  Currently the island is only accessible to members of that group.  By using a group, we will have more flexibility in controlling how various portions of the island are accessed.

-Lucas

Pender County Schools has recently purchased an island in Second Life for the purposes of staff development, collaboration, and resource sharing.  This blog’s purpose is to record the history of its development so that other school systems considering such a venture might have a reference.  As we plan and develop our island, look for updates here!

-Lucas Gillispie, Technology Coordinator