The annual T175 festival took place in the events space on Open Life running from Friday 10th July to Sunday 12th July.
LOL! editor and T175 cafe mod Eshala Tabacznyk decided to take a look round this years offering - especially as she had somehow managed to agree to doing an hours stint in the inworld cafe on the Sunday. The first thing to check out was the location of the cafe - on the wing of the lovely pink T175 plane hovering above the events space of course!
Back on the ground below a fairground had been set up with a big wheel, bouncy castle, dodgems and a carousel ride. Candyfloss and ice-cream were available to quell an attack of the munchies while a dog-petting zone provided much entertainment. For those feeling creative a tutorial was available providing a set of materials and instructions for how to make a gift box, a digital frame and a bouncing eyeball! As well as the fun stuff on show, a stand with course info cubes on it was set up. These cubes showed details of courses in similar areas to T175 and by clicking on them you could go the relevant course page of the OU website. A presentation area and discussion circle was also laid out for the scheduled activities.
Over the course of the event a number of presentations and discussions took place. First up on Friday night was a talk entitled The Banana Game: Fair Trade?. This was given by Sleepylittle Thing and was about the issues surrounding fair trade, particularly relating to the banana trade. On Saturday morning PsiRan Boucher was inworld to answer questions about the Open Degree, while throughout the afternoon T175 tutors Rocky Joans, lizit Cleanslate and Minnie Atlass each took turns being inworld to provide course support and general SL chat. In the evening Kickaha Wolfenhaut chaired a discussion focussing on the T175 block 4 GPS activity.
On Sunday morning Kickaha was back inworld and up on the plane wing to man the cafe, In the afternoon Gann McGann provided a talk, with streamed media from YouTube, on his Theatron project. (Theatron is a virtual reality tool for teaching and researching theatre history). Later on in the afternoon it was Eshala’s turn to take to the plane wing and try not to fall off mid-conversation. In the early evening lizit Cleanslate and Elsa Dickins (both T175 tutors and Virtual Worlds researchers) were inworld to answer questions about the future of teaching and learning in Second Life and other virtual worlds.
The event ended in traditional style with a party on the village green with music from our regular DJ Quentin Calvert.
Open Life events space: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Open%20Life/202/122/27
Theatron: http://www.theatron.co.uk/
Theatron: http://www.theatron.co.uk/
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