While waiting in class John sent us an invitation to join the module, after accepting the invitation ‘Module Participant’ is now visible over my avatars head. When John came up to the class, one of the first things he talked about was the class blogs. I had already sent him the link to my blog but resent it again after the class as my blog wasn’t listed in the class blog list.
John then talked about the groups and asked if anyone had met up in their groups online. From what I could tell only one group had met up in SL and now all have the same avatar which I think was a creative idea. One member of that group told us how they were able to find the outfit, which looked like a cardboard box man. I found this interesting and then had to see what other costumes were available. I would have never thought of looking through different settings, I just stick to basic controls which I will now try to challenge this to try uncover what I can do with my avatar.
Another thing that we discussed was the ability to multitask. You can take this class and also be able to answer emails or talk in a group chat on Facebook. John states that being able to multitask is important because there can be so much happening in this day and age that you sometimes need to be able to divide your attention. I would say that I multitask during our classes by taking notes on my laptop and maybe reading the brief to try get a better understanding.
We then began our elevator pitches, and when I say began I mean no one volunteered so John began picking people at random. I prepared my elevator pitch on KLF and how they burnt a million pounds in cash. I had been talking about this during the week with another lecturer and found it interesting. I wrote about the key-points and timed myself reading it aloud being able to complete it in about 27 seconds. I didn’t end up delivering my pitch this week, I was going to volunteer but I didn’t want to be the first person to go. I wished that I had gone to get it out of the way, especially when I actually did have something prepared.
After this poor start to the elevator pitches (which will be continued next week), we talked about the project brief. I had no idea what the brief meant, which maybe had something to do with the fact I only skimmed through it once. Even after John talked about it, I was still confused. I am hoping after meeting with my group we will be able to figure it out. Even though we were placed into groups, it doesn’t actually matter about groups- its about how well you understand the group dynamic as an individual. We also talked about how it is important to read the module assessment page and work under these to ensure we do not get off track and stick to the points that we will actually be marked in.
It had been a couple of days since our class and I still had not received any notification about any group chat where people in my group where trying to communicate. So on Monday I created a Facebook group chat and asked if we wanted to meet this week and talk about the project. There was a positive response and we agreed on a time that suited all of us – Tuesday at 6pm on the DIT campus in SL. I arrived first and at first thought maybe other people forgot about it and I was going to be the only one there, but other members of the group began to show up one by one. OPrincess was the first person to arrive after me, we were talking about the brief and neither of us really understood what we needed to do. She then said that there was another group chat created last week but only 3 of the 6 people were receiving notifications, I was part of the 3 that didn’t even know the group chat was created. This is one of the problems with only communicating online, you may not receive a message and then be out of the loop and unaware of decisions or discussions that are occurring.
Everyone was here apart from one member, who we discovered after the meeting that she didn’t see any of the messages and therefore did not know the meeting was taking place. We discussed the brief and what we thought it meant. One person brought up a suggestion that was discussed in the first group chat about Travel Bloggers. I’m honestly not sure if this fits the brief because I still don’t really understand the brief but I’m going to trust the other people in my group. We came to a decision that we will all do research into Travel bloggers and meet again next week to discuss about what we have found.
I feel the meeting went well and it was my first time using my mic to have a conversation in SL. I use it in class but it is only to answer ‘Yes’ to reassure John that I haven’t left to make a cup of tea. I think having this meeting, it will help with my elevator pitch this week as I now have some experience talking in front of a small group of people in SL.
Second Life 