It was of great importance for my rain/weathering/water cycle portion of the display to play more descriptive information around my display in regards to information of actual educational value; not just showy thunderstorms and rain. Furthermore, I placed large emphasis on the different sorts of erosion and weather in their respective locations on the mountains cape that would highlight there characteristic qualities. I also placed a sign which highlights the overall objective of the information I was providing to the viewer. Basically, a weather machine recreating an actual water cycle along a mount side that also includes a mist to accentuate evaporation; completing the water cycle.

For other members of our group, I was able to indentify parts of the display that were modified in ways similar to mine. Mostly, every just took the time to put more signs containing useful information and fun facts. Overall I feel like our weather display will be catchy to the eye of a middle school student, and I feel they will also obtain a lot of useful knowledge regarding the different aspects of rain and how it affects our world. The other team projects that I witnessed were also of great educational usage as well as being fun to witness. One group highlighted the physics backing a home run from a baseball pitch that actually alluded to the popular movie The Sandlot. The other group made use of Second Life animations and objects to highlight the science behind the atomic bomb. All in all, I feel that this team project only goes to show the endless capabilities of Second Life and other respective online social networks as a whole.

Furthermore, by allowing for a new test user to take a look at the project we created we shall be able to notice any flaws in our design of information. This is because not every user of the weather display will view the layout the same way or notice everything in the way our group, the creators, see it. This same sort of technique is used by many companies in the business world. Whether it be a technological or food based company, they all take part in the use of product testing in order to find the small flaws, or ways to even better the product, in the product in development. Therefore, we shall expect the same results in obtaining a more user friendly final display of our weather project.

All in all, I am excited to use the rest of this week for showing my display to many test users and will look forward to combining the input my fellow teammates obtained from their testing in order to see how we can work our the kinks in our display. Once again, with the final presentation approaching in less than 6 days, it will be of the highest concern for our team to make sure that the students who will be viewing our display of the weather and water cycle on Saturday will be able to feasibly use our display to better their knowledge of both our weather topic and the capabilities of Second life.

Today in class we were assigned our actual land space that we will be building upon. I first began with the raising of the mountain side and used the smoothing tool in order to shape the mountain to my desired specifications. Next, I used the lowering tool in order to create a body of water since, in our acquired land, all the actual land and soil is layered on top of water. It was at this point that the mountain and water side looked good enough to begin adding the weather element to my work of art. I logged on to XstreetSL to purchase a weather control device designed to allow anything from rain to blood and meteor showers to fall from a set of clouds along a given area of land space. Once I discovered the square meters of the building space, I adjusted the weather control radius to 60×60 meters.  I made sure that there wasn’t going to be any stray weathering space that would interfere with neighboring property lines. It took some reading of technical instructions and user frequently asked questions in order to get a good feel for the weather control device, but I feel that I understand the operation of its features to a usable degree finally.

The last thing I did today was began the evaporation element of the water cycle presentation for my section. I was able to find a mist creator on XstreetSL that allows the owner to adjust the density and position of the mist. I was hoping to achieve a look of evaporation in order to connect the mist layers to a region of cloud space to highlight the actual science behind the water cycle when I get to the instructive portion of the presentation. In days to come I hope to collaborate with the cloud, lighting, and thunder departments of our group to achieve a completed project by the end of the week. Tomorrow, hopefully we will all be able to complete the terra-forming and arrangement of Second Life item purchases and begin working on the flow of information for our scenic presentation.

In order to assemble our groups our teacher allowed us to group ourselves will fellow students that we felt would serve as good teammates. To be a good teammate is not always the same definition for everyone. Before we were placed in our groups, as a class, we sat down in a meeting and discussed both qualities of ourselves and qualities we look for in a good and bad teammate. I believe this was a solid foundation in which we could understand each other’s working style and time management abilities. I personally discussed how big of factors bluntness, efficiency, coordination, and organization are too myself and fellow teammates in a working environment.  I believe that I fit into the group I ended up in because of these qualities in myself and the other members of the group; who are also great communicators. Furthermore, I feel each of the members of the group possesses the creativeness factor that is always crucial to take the next step into creating a great end team product.

In addition, as we began brainstorming, it surprisingly only took our group minutes at most to come up with a great idea. The focus of our team project was to be “The Different Aspects of Weather and The Water Cycle”. Once this idea was set in as our desired end goal, we immediately began dividing up “who is doing what”. We were able to divide the work up into four parts, for each individual in the group,: terra-forming and the water cycle/rain, lightning, thunder, and clouds. Lastly, we exchanged contact information, and I am excited to get the collaboration underway in order to come up with a great education product in the end.

The land that my group chose to create was a lagoon of sorts complete with a lake, a giant slide, a loft, mud wrestling, and many more available actions to complete the low key mood of our lagoon. I found it most challenging to terra-form our respective land in order to create a giant mountain in which I placed the slide I purchased from SL terminals. The main terminal I chose to purchase the majority of my items from was XstreetSL , https://www.xstreetsl.com/. This is a website that is run through Second Life that allows for easy searching and purchasing by either Linden Dollars or real U.S. Dollars through a Pay Pal account.

In addition, other groups chose to create worlds involving places such as a military base camp in which we all were placed in teams and given an assault rifle to do a capture the flag battle.  Another group even took us on a tour of Downtown Austin, 6^th street,  that was a near perfect recreation of the experience one would get by visiting ^6th street in real life complete with music, dancing, and most importantly, pizza stands.  All in all I felt that this assignment was extremely beneficial in acquainting us with a feel and ability for applying textures and terra-forming in the world of Second Life. Furthermore, I feel I personally was able to even become better acquainted with the concept of acquiring purchasable items which hopefully won’t lead to me blowing too much unnecessary $ on items like double-edged light sabers in the future.

We were first asked to take a seat aboard the laptops which were the vehicles for the presentation. The laptop was then able to take us on a ride throughout many rooms in which become a very sensory based ride. Each room that we were transported to corresponded with a different aspect of virtuality. Whether it be viruses or the concepts underlying what makes our virtual experiences actual real experiences. There we times when I feel I was personally completely engulfed in the visual art as it changed completely in mood from room to room along with the music that was fitted accordingly.

Once the ride was over our class actually had a debate that kept us 30 min late in the classroom. The main topic for this debate was “Was this presentation we experienced really a place?” That question leads to many other questions like “What defines a place?” due to the fact that we are experiencing many different stimuli through the use of technology in this day and age. I personally feel what defines a places is the extent to which one allows the experience to affect the human senses: taste, hearing, sight, touch, and smell. Therefore, all in all, I would have classified the Virtuality presentation a place because I had completely devoted my sense of hearing and sight to the presentation. That I feel is what truly defines  whether or not the worlds we interact in online are real “places”.

Seeing that I enjoy working out the first thing that I placed emphasis on was my physical appearance. In class this week we were actually allowed time to customize this; although I may have spent a couple of hours outside of class due to the fact that I kind of  got carried away. I made sure my avatar fit the mold of tall and muscular; since that’s what I’m going for in all reality. In addition, it was imperative to me that I create a facial display on my avatar that looked as close to me as possible; down to the eyebrows, nose, and chin.

The main objective for our “avatar makeovers” was to properly skin and cloth our respective selves in SL.  Kimori Korro was the Second Life avatar that took us on our mission of avatar discovery. I personally first obtained the most normal hair I could find just to get rid of the terrible hair due that I had been given to get away from the “noobish” bald avatar Second Life provided me. Next for our makeovers was the mission to cloth ourselves. I found it necessary to sport a “wife beater” and some torn jeans with black shoes at first, but I soon found that look to be a bit too flamboyant for my own standards so I soon switched to a nice dress suit.  All in all I found the avatar makeover to be not only necessary but a ton of fun, and I can only imagine where my adventures in SL will take me in regards to my appearance in the future; we all shall see.

Personally all of the basic concepts were not hard to grasp, but I found some aspects of SL to be challenging to use and took time to understand. I had to become familiar with the more advanced aspects such as building things and learning how to search for various places and items through the world of Second Life. For example, I found it difficult at first to take the building tool and create a sign from a simple cube by altering its shape and position. Furthermore, the flattened cube, which now was in the form of a sign, could have various textures applied to the exterior. I was, in time, able to learn how to upload images at the cost of 10 Linden dollars, and from there, I was able to use that image as the texture for that given sign. In addition, buy searching through the worlds of SL in various Places like junkyards I was able to buy new items that I felt would express who I was through my new condo that I had built and my avatar decorations.

Overall I feel that this week in SL I accomplished a lot by becoming familiar with many of the tools. From building, contorting, and positioning items both from other people, places, and my inventory to decorating my avatar, I feel I am ready to learn more about what Second Life has to offer.  In time I hope to both better my understanding of the Linden dollar and maybe learn of ways to make some currency of my own. In addition, I feel there are many undiscovered features, people, and places to be networked with and I will be open to all the possibilities of living a Second Life.