Jacquie Sholokhov

Elsa Dickins tells us the story behind the name of our former halls and the village tor - Sholokhov.

Jacquie Bennett was an associate lecturer on several courses, including T175, and was a teaching fellow with COLMSCT at the OU. Her project was to get an island in Second Life - called Cetlment - and see how people might use it. She was a lifelong gamer and had been in SL as Jacquie Sholokhov since SL started. She always believed virtual worlds were going to be big for education and was just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with her.

It was Jacquie that got me into SL by nagging me to give it a try, and when I did I was blown away by the potential of it, and I immediately started working with her. She was one of my closest friends and we often said that we talked to each other more than our families, as we would be on Skype or in SL all day, often joined by lizit.

We were both tutoring T175 at the time and we started bringing our tutor groups into SL and working with them together, and it was all very new and exciting and our students were really enthusiastic, so we had great results. About 11 months after we started working together in SL that cohort of T175 came to an end and we wrote a paper about our experiences, to present at the international conference on computers in learning in Austria, in September 2007. I wasn't able to go, so she went by herself to present it and the night she arrived she said she was going to bed early with a migraine. In fact she had a brain haemorrhage and died that night - the hotel staff found her in the morning. Her death was totally unexpected.

COLMSCT bought a new island, which was Open Life (Linden wouldn't let us transfer Cetlment so it had to be abandoned), and we put it next to Schomebase. Jacquie and I were both very active members of Schome and were working on the Schome project in the teen grid at the time (the kids had an inworld ceremony as an act of remembrance, which was very moving). I did the development of Open Life and Schomebase and when the halls on Open Life needed a name it was a good way to keep a reference to her memory on the island. Nobody ever asked about the name, which was as I’d hoped, so it was just part of the way things were.

Jacquie and Elsa enjoying a tipple, early Cetlment days

Cut to the village, and when we moved here and didn't have the halls as such any more we had the requirement for a spiritual/peaceful area, and it seemed a natural thing to transfer the name. It means something to those of us who knew her, and it has a whole other meaning to people who were around for the original halls, which is nice.

She wasn't a sentimental person, she was very kind and a brilliant tutor but could also be bitingly funny, and she wouldn't have appreciated anything soppy, nor would it have been appropriate, particularly as the project expanded and more and more people came on board who had never known her in the first place, so I like the way it worked out.

She had a husband and 2 young children, and about a year before she died they moved to a remote farm in Wales and bought some sheep and goats. They loved their new lifestyle and Jacquie was learning to sheer and spin in order to start a business selling their own wool. I do believe that however successful it became she would always have continued to spend significant time each day in Second Life.

Role-play for beginners.

Aseret Quintessa & DeeDee Bookmite tell us about role-play sims (with thanks to Riss Altman).

You may or may not have heard that role-play is available in Second Life. For those that already into role-play elsewhere, Second Life opens up a whole new experience. For those who don't know about role-play read on. Often people jump to the conclusion that role-play is about sex. This is NOT the case and while some sims and some forms of role-play do have that element most do not.

Role-play to put it simply is not unlike children's imaginative play in that you construct your own character, your race, your motivations, but your character is driven by an adult mind. It's not unlike being in a stage play but you provide your own lines; both leading and reacting to the other characters involved. Most stories are organic in that they develop as they go along. Occasionally if someone has a major storyline they might ask other players to get involved, although they shouldn't tell other characters how to 'play' the story. Dictating to other players in this way is called ‘God Modding’ because it takes away their freedom to act how they see fit and can inhibit the flow of the unfolding story.

Within Second Life there are sims dedicated to many different genres. If you are interested in fantasy, urban, city, war, combat, science fiction, wild west, mostly anything else you can think of, there is a good chance you can be involved in role play within your chosen genre. Remember to check whether your chosen sim is PG or Mature. It's no good thinking you will fit in a Mature role-play sim if at heart you are a PG player. Decide if you are easily offended, or prefer not to be involved in more adult themes, and if so stick to PG sims. To check this is look on the tool bar at the top of your screen and it will show the name of the sim and what the rating is. If it doesn't show on the toolbar right click on the ground in the box that opens look at the General tab, look down the list and you will see Rating.

Sill interested? The first step is to look in Search; for example type in 'Elves, role play'; a large selection of sims will come up. Go to the sims and a have good look around, it could take a while to choose. Quite often as you arrive at a sim you will be in the welcome area. In general, although not always, there will be information in that area that pertains both to the sim, style of role-play, dress code, and usually offers free items such as male/female clothing and weapons.

For this article we chose to visit Valahari; The welcome area was slightly confusing as there were no directions, but in just a short walk we found all the information we needed to join the group, plus clothing and weapons.

When filling in your application you are asked for a backstory. This is your character's personal history up to present day. The more depth you can give to your character the easier it is to play it believably.

If you are interested in role play its worth thinking about this aspect before you apply. You will be asked to submit this information to the admin in charge of role-play on the sim. This person is usually identified in the welcome notecards. Hopefully your application will be approved quickly, and once approved you are then free to join in.

A word of caution - don't just leap into an obvious on-going story, its the best way to get off on the wrong foot! Most Rp'ers are very helpful and welcoming to newcomers; if you ask, someone will help.

"Hang on!" I can hear you saying, "I don't feel ready to just jump in.". Quite understandable - when DeeDee and I first started it was a bit hit and miss, the funniest episode I remember as Deadwood newbies was when DeeDee had got slightly lost somewhere in the worst part of town and I got an IM from her saying " I am being held at knife point and mugged!". DeeDee had accidentally wandered into some ongoing roleplay but had no idea how to deal with it., but she improvised fast and said, "I have no purse young man, I have lost my way to the boarding house, would you be a dear and show me the way ", I still giggle reading that! Luckily a handsome outlaw rescued her and pointed her to home! The other difficulty was most of the other women were playing 'goodtime girls' in the saloon, whilst Dee and I were running a boarding house. We had far less opportunity to role-play than the saloon girls.

There are two ways to learn how to participate in role-play, one is literally to just jump right in and try out your character; do gentle role-play, establish some interaction with other players but not deliberately trying to start a story, this way other players become used to your character and will gradually interact with you. The other is to loiter on the edge of others who are role-playing, observing rather than attempting to take part. Try to take on board the way character's greet each other, what the etiquette is, what mode of dress seems the most popular and ask about training classes. Most RP sims hold classes and they can be really enjoyable in themselves. I personally have learnt a great deal about herbalism from Gianfar. Many role play sims also hold role play classes.

If anyone wants any further information or help with a character back story, please feel free to contact me: tm3382@student.open.ac.uk or contact us inworld by sending a notecard to either Aseret Quintessa or DeeDee Bookmite as IM's tend to get capped. If we don't know the answer to a question we will either find out for you or will put you in touch with someone who can. All enquiries with be treated confidentially.

Valahari: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Valahari/128/128/2
Deadwood: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Deadwood/128/128/2
Gianfar: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gianfar/128/128/2

T175 festival

LOL! went along to check out this years event, which naturally ended with a party!

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/