do I have time for a second life?

After going to the presentation yesterday, I felt very enthusiastic about the potential of Second Life as a tool for teaching and learning. So finally, against all the odds, I have got myself an avatar and have spent my first evening exploring. First I went to a 'mall' where newbies like myself were meant to be able to find more out - but quite how one went about this was not clear. I read a bit about changing my appearance and tweaked it a bit - taller, slimmer - as I would like in my first life. Hot places to visit were not particularly interesting and not many people were around. All a bit lonely and boring really. So I decided to visit ucreative island - also empty. There was an 'interactive whiteboard' so I tried to interact with it and ended up losing control of my avatar to a little blue blob for no apparent reason other than to move it up, down, left and right!! What was that all about? Very disappointing, but I was probably missing something - what? There was also no instructions about how to get my movements back to normal which impeded my explorations for the rest of the evening and resulted in me flying sideways through a rainforest!! Great graphics but they crashed my computer.

The Uni is thinking about starting a new degree in computer gaming and it is possible that I would be asked to teach on this course - so I feel I should persevere with this in an attempt to carve out a relevant area of expertise. Reckon I'll have to ask my son to help me with the basics as I can't see how I will have time to complete the learning curve in tutorials. I don't particularly want to start building and so on, but I am very interested in Second Life's potential to pilot new methods of teaching, communicating with students and colleagues at other campuses, showing student work, disseminating research and so on. Coincidentally the Guardian Education ran a short piece about this today.

'performance' development review

Aha! Just realised it is my 'performance' that is being reviewed rather than my personal development needs! A misunderstanding of the meaning of the acronym.

personal development review

Can the use of a Mac and software be regarded as 'training'? Yes, there is a great deal to be gained from having a project in progress and finding out what you need to do to achieve specific needs - but does this equate with 'proper' training. I don't think so. We need to subscribe to an online or DVD training package that will update us with new versions of software as we introduce them at UCA. And we need to be given the time during working hours to use this package. I need to document this in my pdr which, at the moment, seems totally focussed on what I can do for the course/UCA, rather than any form of personal development for myself.

smack the mac

I'm not doing very well with the Mac. I managed to exceed our download limit this month by not understanding that the Mac puts downloads into a pallette and you have to find the file and click it in here to open it to the desktop. I downloaded a large file several times thinking that it wasn't happening. Don't like Safari. Kept crashing on me and I can't figure out why. Also there is no indication of it loading pages like the wobbly flag you get with Explorer.

I have tried to watch some basic tutorial videos to familiarise me with the OS but these mostly push Apple products that I don't have and don't relate to the college software that has been pre-loaded. Guess I'll struggle on but I keep returning to the PC (that's where I am now) just to make expedient progress.

research time and technical hitches

This week I have been trying to get up and running with the Mac. I wanted to capture the HD video I shot with the Sony Z1 into Final Cut Pro. What a nightmare. I spent most of Tuesday trying various codecs but couldn't get device control. Steve Littman came over on Wednesday and discovered that the Mac needed to install various updates from the web but because it has been given a student spec I do not have priviledges to do that. He managed to get the password so by Thursday I was able to begin capture. Unfortunately I still don't have proper device control to set in and out points, so I have had to capture the video as big long takes that I will have to make into subclips. Looking at what I have shot, I am not sure there is much I can do with it. I prefer the digital stills that I shot at my parents house. I think I was so overcome by the emotion of being there and having to engage with the practical issues, that I didn't really permit myself the time for creative reflection as I hoped I would do.

macbook pro

At last I've got my hands on a Mac!! When I started working at UCCA back in 1999 I was shocked to find out that all the studios had PCs but over the years I have grown to like them and we have a couple of Sony Viaos at home. Shock! horror! They decided to change back to Macs the year before last and I have been teaching PhotoShop, Final Cut Pro and so on without really getting to grips with the Mac OS. This can be incredibly undermining when you are being projected at the front of the class. After repeated requests for a Mac to take home to learn on, I have eventually picked one up today and I'm sitting here making this post on it!!! Very excited just to do everyday tasks on it, but also hope to get to use it for my 'high gabble' project that I started yesterday... that's another story.

Communications? O2, DHL and South West Trains

This is a rant. I spent all day Friday waiting for my new mobile phone to be delivered by DHL. It didn't arrive. A day of the children's holiday wasted! DHL's website tracking system is down all weekend, 02 customer services are sympathetic, but offer no effective help. I have no idea where it is or when it will arrive apart from the fact that I have clearly stated I will be at work Monday and Tuesday. I arrive at work today (Monday) and O2 have sent me an email saying it will be delivered to my home address today. So much for the new age of communication!! However I will receive a £10 credit - whoopee...

All this is somewhat ironic after my attempts last weekend to get to the Filmobile conference were scuppered by South West Trains. I spent all Saturday morning travelling between Farnham-Woking-Farnham and not reaching London due to engineering works and eventual signal failure too. Needless to say I still don't have a refund for my ticket.