Check out the "postcard" we got from Claudia Linden today -- she's standing on what will soon be EdBoost's plot on the Campus: TSL island. It's pretty exciting -- EdBoost has never had land to develop before, much less oceanside property.
How did we get here? It's sort of a long story but I'll try to keep it short...
Two summers ago, Ed (mostly) and I (learning as we went along) put together an intro computer programming class for middle school students. The schedule was awkward and so enrollment was low but the students who came learned quite a lot about programming with Python (the language we used). We looked forward to hosting more classes and we knew that for future classes we'd need to find a way to give the kids lots of access to the computers so that they could practice. But, the summer class format was such disaster, and scheduling was so hard, I let this past summer come and go without a computer class.
Enter Hargall Orbit (his TSL name), one of our Homework and School Project Assistance (HASPA) students. He's obessessed with Second Life and talks about it all the time. I finally had to check it out, just to see what he's so interested in. And it's true -- it's fascinating. A whole world -- online. I had never seen anything like it (admittedly, I'm not very well versed in these things). Apropos of nothing, Hargall asks me if I know anyone who can teach him to "script." Apparently Second Life (SL) allows you to make objects (anything from a new t-shirt, to a new motorcycle, to a new house) and if you can program in the SL language (Wiki LSL) you can make anything (you can also buy anything, but why buy things when you can make them yourself?). I forwarded the query to Ed, our computer expert, and he was soon hooked too.
From there, we contacted Claudia Linden, SL's resident education person. I was interested in using SL as a platform for teaching this student and his HASPA-mates how to do computer programming (the kids are here all afternoon -- no schedule problems and unlimited time to practice!), but EdBoost has a firm policy of NOT allowing students on sites where they can "chat" with strangers. Claudia had a solution! She told us that we could get space on educator's island and restrict access to EdBoost folks. She also invited us to submit a proposal to try out the Campus: TSL program free for the duration of our initial class (a considerable donation!).
And just today, we found out that we will a parcel of land to use for our class (see picture-- and there's Claudia, our SL helper!).
So, here I am, setting up my first blog as well. We're going to try to chronicle this experience -- and get the kids to post their opinions and experiences as well! Keep reading!
