The SLENZ Update – No 43, January 31, 2009

2.Would you believe Kermit? Although I don’t agree with a lot of what she says I would recommend that you should read knowledgeable educationist/researcher Eloise Pasteur’s (pictured above and left below)  reply to  my blog (SLENZ Update No 42) on  the necessity – or not – of providing oneself with a “credible” avatar when either [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 42, January 28, 2009

Would you believe ‘Kermit?’ People like to have fun with their avatars but, is a big, green, frog credible as a senior Linden Lab executive (no don’t say it), a large organisation’s Chief Financial Officer authorative as a friendly Beagle pup, or a renowned educator and SL guru believable as a flittery, monarch butterfly? It’s [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 41, January 23, 2009

Xstreet ‘in from cold’ The Linden Lab’s acquisition of  Xstreet SL and OnRez – the two leading Web-based marketplaces for buying and selling creations for Second Life -  will not lessen marketplace competition, according to Lab executives. And it could eventually lead to Xstreet SL retail virtual world products being made available to other grids, [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 40, January 20, 2009

Birth Centre takes shape The beginning … The SLENZ project’s “ideal birthing unit” is taking shape quickly with the  basic walls constructed on the  floor plan and already trialed for ease of  avatar use (movement, camera views etc). The trials were done by  Aaron Griffiths (SL: Isa Goodman), the Lead Developer for the SLENZ Project,  [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 39, January 15, 2009

SL ‘valuable’ for HS science The value of virtual world education for high school students has been demonstrated  in a  recent independent evaluation of a Science through Second Life project run in New York last year. The project integrated Second Life and a wide range of web tools into a standards-based high school science class [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 38, January 12, 2009

Full SL instruction ‘pays’ Post-secondary school instructors who conduct classes fully in Second Life are significantly more satisfied than those who use Second Life as only a small supplement to a real-world classes, according to an international research project  from the  University of Florida, reported in the Winter 2009 edition of the International Journal of [...]

The SLENZ Update – No 37, January 2, 2009

The year that was … I feel sure that during the year a lot of New Zealanders lost their embarrassment over being residents/participants  in virtual world’s like Second Life and began to see MUVEs as part of their “real” world. Although the Lindens do not disclose  the number of Kiwis accessing Second Life on a [...]