Tom Eckersley exhibition

As a spare time activity I'm putting together an exhibition of posters by Tom Eckersley for the ArtsPlace gallery on Eduserv Island.  The posters, 24 of them, have been selected (and used with permission) from the Eckersley Archive hosted by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS).

As with any activity like this in the UK, clearing rights over the images has taken a while but I'm grateful to staff at VADS for dealing with this side of things on my behalf.

As you can see, I've got as far as uploading the images and plonking them onto poster sized prims.  Note that I used Picnik, the online image manipulation tool, to add a frame to each poster.  Now I need to get the sizes and aspect ratios correct, position them on the walls of ArtsPlace and create a notecard for each holding VADS catalog record for each of the selected posters.  Shouldn't be too long, assuming I get my finger out.

Watch this space...

AudioStreaming Firecaster

When we hold RL events for which there is a SL audience we usually use voice-chat to carry audio from the live presentations to the SL delegates.  I've always felt uncomfortable about using Art Fossett to carry this audio, even in those cases where it is Andy Powell who is speaking but particularly so in other situations.

For tomorrow's Maximising the impact of Virtual Worlds in Teaching and Learning event in Glasgow I've created a new avatar, AudioStreaming Firecaster, just to carry the audio from the event onto Eduserv Island. AudioStreaming will be positioned just next to the slides (that Art Fossett will be displaying in-world in sync with the RL speakers' slides).  That's leaves Art Fossett free to move around the SL venue as I see fit.

Education Support Faire

Linden Lab have announced an education support faire, to run for 6 days from the 25th to the 30th January 2009:

To support the educational community, we would like to invite you to participate in and attend Linden Lab’s inaugural Education Support Faire! Over the years, Second Life has provided ways for the world of academia to put to use creativity lending to immersive education, distance learning, knowledge sharing, faculty networking–and many other ways to enhance the collective educational community’s efforts in the real world. The success of projects surrounding these efforts within Second Life can be attributed to the many innovative educators, academics, and students who have chosen to utilize Second Life for these purposes.

The main goal for the Education Support Faire is to bring together educators, academics, and students to explore the support mechanisms available to residents who use Second Life to enhance real world educational efforts.

Maximising the effectiveness of virtual worlds in teaching and learning

Those of you not attending the joint CETIS/Eduserv "Maximising the effectiveness of virtual worlds in teaching and learning" event in person next week in Glasgow may like to note that we are planning on making the audio and slides of all the presentations available in real time on Eduserv Island in Second Life.

Audio will be made available using the SL voice chat facility and copies of all the speakers' slides will be visible in-world.  We will also try and allow for questions to speakers from virtual delegates via text chat.

As virtual delegates you should make your way to the Virtual Congress Centre on Eduserv Island

Presentations start at 10.30am (2.30am SL time) though I suggest getting there a little earlier to test out audio, etc.  You are welcome to drop in for only those presentations that interest you.  The full programme is available at the first URL above.