A week of classes, getting there!

This week all three classes continued with the building of the projects.

IST I attended on Thursday morning as per usual, the Flinders Street Station is looking fantastic, and a few of the other features such as the 7 Infinity are great touches. I am really looking forward to seeing the end result, it's all starting to come together.

I also attended the two WM1 classes in Second Life only, a first which was a bit of an experiment for us. Stefan was still on site in the real world, and I was on the Vic Uni island in Second Life, flying around chatting to people and trying to help them. I could probably muse on the implications of all this for days, so I will just list some brief thoughts in point form.

Advantages
- I got to work from home! With proper broadband!
- I found I could chat to more people at once in the virtual world, multitasking via IM, dropping items onto peoples profiles.
- I communicated with different people than I would usually talk to in class, I was getting less caught up with individual students.
- I think a good example is often the best advice, and having me working from home is perhaps a good demonstration for the students.

Disadvantages
- Hard to know how people are reacting, or even if they are listening
- Being less caught up with individual students may also mean some are not getting the help they need
- It's difficult to explain the more basic skills in Second Life, a lot of students still needed someone there to lead them through various tasks.
- Attendance, as soon as the real world teacher left, so did all of the students, I was last to leave the virtual environment.

Other notes
- Having a virtual assistant seemed to work well, however doing the classes 100% virtual seems like it could have a few issues. The major one seems to be making sure that students know how to build and use Second Life before commencing the virtual classes.
- 100% virtual classes where students were at home seems like it could possibly work in the near future considering the lack of decent computers or internet in the classrooms.
- A professional issue - pay. Would this come under a teaching or non teaching pay rate? It was certainly much easier than trekking across town for a class, however considering a lot of teaching may be virtual in the future would being paid less set a bad precedent?

The Space Station is taking shape, with Chris taking the lead and building the main structure. David has written a story for the Space Station which is nothing short of epic, it can be found here;
http://davidatflinders.blogspot.com

The St Albans stadium is also coming along very nicely, Vicky is doing the main structure and a few of the other builds look great, locker rooms, a scoreboard, and nice chair work by Eoin.
Vicky's story is also being used, http://wmmvickysblogs.blogspot.com
More updates and images to come....