Second Life First Time Logging in

This was my first time logging into Second Life, I'd never heard of this virtual world before but I was intrigued to see what it was all about. Once the software was finished downloading and installing I was greeted with a screen where I was given options to customise my character. I didn't personally think that there was that much choice and they all seems to be fantasy styled options. I would have personally preferred if I could have styled myself in more of a real life style but I ended up just choosing a wizard type avatar as none of the avatar styles really caught my attention.

I then spent a little time trying to figure out the avatar controls, it was almost time for the class, I could hear the lecturer talking but I couldn't see which avatar was his. It turned out that I didn't realise that the classroom was above where I was standing so I could hear the class but I wasn't in it. Once I figured this out I made my way upstairs to the class, after I figured out by clicking a door I could open it. I spent the rest of the class learning how to sit (right click on a chair and select "sit" from the menu) and also trying to come to terms with the chat dialogue box and also the voice chat. Lastly I learned how to lower the graphic settings in the preferences menu which improved the performance on my laptop.

After class I went exploring, I didn't really know what I was doing as it was my first time logging into Second Life. However I ended up in a garage that sold motor bikes and cars. I didn't have any money so I could not purchase one but it got me wondering if it is possible to drive motor vehicles in Second Life? Or are they purchased purely for aesthetic reasons?

Next I came across a theater however there didn't seem to be anything happening here, maybe as in real life shows/performances are only happening at specific times. Most of my exploring seems to be leaving me with more questions then answers. However I'm starting to realise that the people in Second Life seem to be emulating anything and everything that happens in real life and recreating it in the digital realm, I already feel that a lot of people on here might prefer to live in a virtual realm.

Comments

Class 10

This was our last class before the presentations so it was our last class to ask any queries that we had about the presentation, this was a comforting class for me as John went through thouroghly how to show slides on the walls of the classroom. My group had decided to create a video for our presentation so John explained that we could share the link in chat, we thought that this would be easier as showing the slides on the wall of the class seemed a bit unpredictable at times. Later in the week my group chatted about who wanted to talk about what in the presentation so we came up with a running order so everyone could figure out what order people would speak in. Next we decided to set up a google drive folder which we gave everyone in the group access to so that we all had a place to store our files that we wanted to include in the presentation. Finally we made a rough estimate for how long each persons speech should last and shared it with the group. ...

Class 9

This week we were joined by guest lecturar Glenn Loughran who was a lecturer on Sherkin Island, to be honest I had never even heard of this place before and I had no clue whether it was an island off the coast of Ireland or somewhere else. I looked it up and it's aparently an island off Cork, I had however been to Cape Clear before when I was younger but I was unaware that it was close to Sherkin Island. I think that this class was a perfect example of how technology has changed our lives, to think that the lecturer was sitting somewhere on Sherkin Island whilst we were all scattered around Dublin, you can really see the opportunities for this kind of thing, could we have TED talks held in Second Life? Certainly it would be a lot cheaper than flying these people out to these events. We discussed a reading "The ones who walk away from Omelas" I kind found this hard hard to understand as I was unsure of the context that I was reading it in, what was I supposed to take f...

Class 8

The group met once again on Facebook this week to discuss our presentation, we have found that this has been the easier way to stay in contact in the group as people don't need to log into Second Life to attend the meetings. Where as you need to be at a computer to use Second Life, with Facebook everyone has it on their phones so they can have access it in more situations, for example someone can be waiting for a bus and still contribute but taking out your laptop at a bus stop might not be the most convenient thing. Also when we talk on Facebook members of the group who were unable to attend can still view the conversation at a later stage and catch up on what is being discussed so everyone basically has the full minutes to the meeting, which is really handy. This week in our meeting we decided that we would work on the Virtual Reality theme.

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