Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Iggy's Syllabus: Build It! Report

Group two interior

Location: Richmond Island

It's almost "showtime" for the first-ever building project I have asked students to do in SL. And on Friday, an eminent group of educators from the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education will make a SL tour of many spaces--including Richmond Island.

I was a little worried, over the weekend, at the fairly empty lot where the students would be working. Their assignment was carefully written to indicate how the building, writing, and project decisions would be divided.


Socrates at work

What WAS I thinking? After all, the students are competing with each other...and soon enough, avatars began popping onto the island to hang up photos and begin the home stretch for Build-it. In the image above, Socrates Turbo begins to prepare the interior of his group's gallery for the photo essay they will co-produce.

Socrates on the roof

I put a radar dish on the roof of the group's building, just before Socrates appeared. Why? No idea, any more than I know why the group put a search-light there. But one does not question the Steampunk aesthetic: just cobble it together.

The balancing act is a fine one. One or two students share each of these roles: head architect, archivist, and project manager. In addition to the group work, however, each writer must find a photo that expresses a fundamental claim about SL and link it, in-world, to a 500-word wiki about why the claim is important and the assumptions one can draw from that claim.

The project puts a modern spin on a few 2500-year-0ld (plus) rhetorical strategies. I just hope the projects look good in the end. If not, an outside consultant has been hired to fix up any last-minute gaffs.

Git er Dun!

Only the best at Richmond Island!

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