Kims Kaleidoscope

I met Jorgito when I was looking for a student entrepreneurship project in Second Life. He responded to a post I wrote on the SLED list and showed me the work teachers he works with did with students during the winter term. We have kept in touch and he’s invited me to see work he’s doing for schools in Finland.

Tomorrow morning at 6:15 AM our time I’m meeting Jorgito in his Finnish sim to talk about my role in Second Life. Jorgito will teleport me to his group’s sim and I will introduce myself, talk about what I do in Second Life. The teachers and students he works with will be invited to ask me questions. It’s all very informal and easy. I decided to make a short slide presentation for my introduction to help the people watching understand. I’ll be speaking English. I’m not sure if Jorgito will need to translate, but visuals are always helpful.

Today, after writing an outline, I decided I needed photos of my school and the school admin building so I set out to take them. At my school I couldn’t get a good shot. There were Boy Scouts gathering for an outing and they were parked right where I wanted to take the photo. I didn’t get out of the car because it was just too weird. I went to the school admin building and took some there and came back to my school. The scouts were gone  and I was able to park, get out of my car and take the photos.

After I got into my car a policeman parked in the parking lot drove over and came over to ask me what I was doing! He said people aren’t allowed on school grounds when school is not in session.  Can you imagine trying to explain the above? He didn’t seem terribly interested. I must have sounded like a lunatic. Sigh. I showed him my school ID and told him I’m the CRS and webmaster there. (Really, I have plenty of reasons to take photos of my school.) He needed my driver’s license as well and took it to his car, just like he’d pulled me! I listened to my favorite podcast while I waited. I couldn’t wait to get home and blog about it.

What did I learn from this? Our school is safer than I realized. I’m hereby excused from all after hours events, as I’m not allowed on the grounds. (How will I ever get my work done by 4 PM daily?) Grin. Boy Scouts may be very suspicious people. I need to have vocabulary to explain SL to people who don’t know about the educational value of virtual worlds because I’ll never know when I’ll have to justify it to them. Most of all I’m glad I don’t have any parking tickets!