Everybody arrived at Çağ campus in good time for this week’s class but just as we were about to begin we all lost voice. This seemed to be a problem across Second Life because even though we moved to the VWEC Student Challenge area in the Eduverse the issue persisted. Despite logging out and back in again, turning off the voice preference and turning it on again nobody could get voice working. Eventually we decided to proceed with subtitles. Fortunately, Valibrarian is always well prepared and she had the entire text loaded into SpeakEasy to facilitate this. About twenty minutes later voice suddenly became available again and remained stable for the remaining duration of the class.
If you missed the class or would like to review the presentation you can see a recording of Val’s talk from last year at Class 4: Digital Citizenship and Metaliteracy.
Following the class Val invited us to the Community Virtual Library for a visit and some closing discussion about the how literate or meatliterate we think we are and what it might mean to call ourselves digital citizens. Val spoke of the importance of teaching these concepts to children from an early age to ensure they will be able to navigate this complex space with confidence and in safety. She also referred to AI and mentioned an experiment where she tested the ability of AI to be creative with poetry – Will AI Slaughter the Muse?
Finally, we visited the VWEC Student Challenge building area where the three Teams were shown their building spaces and recommended to take landmarks. Each space is currently surrounded by a translucent cube which delineates the available space for building. It is recommended that these cubes are left in place until the end of project – they can be removed before the final submission. We also noted that once inside your team space your voice cannot be heard outside the boudary. This is useful so that teams of students building together do not disturb each other, but remember if you want to talk to another avatar they will not hear you outside.
Here are direct links to the VWEC Student Challenge 2025 building spaces:
Red Team
Blue Team
Green Team
A quick check-in with the three teams revealed that all had selected the UN SDG they will work on. The next task is to start researching the detail of the SDG and begin to identify an appropriate narrative for the preenetation. The first building class will be held next Saturday by Builder’s Brewery so it is importatnt to attend that. Here is the link to the Landmark in SL.
Finally, we visited the Student Commons which has been provided to give you a break from all the hard work. It features a range of games and toys to play with and have a rest. There are trampolines, a lifesize chess board, pool tables and a range of others to explore while considering your pojectc work.
Virtual Environments: Is one life enough? 