Pi Day 2015

Pi Day isn’t what it used to be in Second Life, but The Exploratorium still celebrates. The displays were generally visual, with one mildly interactive, and I do mean mildly—touching objects in the display gained you some notecards to fill up your inventory. Most of the other spots that came up in a Pi Day search were for dancing this evening. Dancing? I guess I never thought of Pi Day as a reason for dancing, but do you need a reason?

Area map

Pi display gives notecards

Pi Henge

Pi Pond

Before I went to the Pi Day exhibit, I stopped at Moucault’s Pendulum in Sploland (The Exploratorium is next door to Sploland). I found a lot of blog posts around the web from 2009 that referenced this sight, such as this science post from Jokadia. Nothing much to do at the pendulum, except slow down and wait to see if you will be knocked over. Many places in Second Life are as good as many real life spots for sitting and observing, but they might be a little harder to find. I usually stumble upon them. Why Moucault? I have no idea, unless copyright prohibits using Foucault.

Moucault’s Pendulum

These spaces have been around since 2006, I think. I’m both glad and impressed that they continue to be sponsored by the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco.

 

Built Spaces Section

I added a section to the site that shows the two spaces I built for two institutions of higher education, one island for a small college, and one campus on a leased corner of an NMC island. Neither spaces exist anymore, but the pictures give an idea of how they were or might have been used. It takes both vision and commitment to make virtual worlds work in higher ed.

You can see the menu item at the top of the page, or visit the pages here:

A College Island

Community College Campus

field trip to Pixieviewer

At today’s VWER meeting, we all took a field trip in our browsers to Pixieviewer–while our SL© avis remained waiting in world for our return. Pixieviewer is a browser-based world, not working in mobile devices yet, and very interesting in terms of VW progress. It was a little clunky and old-fashioned, but it was working. I could build and walk and chat, nothing fancy, but it’s a start. Soon browsers will be able to compete better and that will be a huge advantage for educational access. I’m not sure my avi has a face, because there are no camera controls to be able to rotate your view, but I’m assuming I looked okay.

John Seely Brown on Motivating Learners (Big Thinkers Series) | Edutopia

John Seely Brown on Motivating Learners (Big Thinkers Series) | Edutopia.

I think this relates to my sense that I work well in SL because I have a high tolerance for failure, here mentioned as change.