Pre-course start mail to students

I've just mailed the students to remind them about what happens at course start and to introduce them to the researchers.

Had an interesting conversation with Peter Carlsson at lunchtime. Peter's advice was to make it clear that this is an experimental course - he felt that students would be more tolerant of minor problems that way. I was going to mail people today anyway, but I incorporated his suggestions into the 'final' mail before course start:

Dear All,

We're getting the course underway tomorrow, starting at 4 pm. If you don't know exactly what time you're due on Kamimo Island, just get in touch.

I'm quite excited about the course start - so far as we know, no university in Sweden has ever run an entire 'conventional' course in Second Life before (those few places that have worked in Second Life so far have tended to run certain exercises in world, but not whole courses).

However, ground-breaking does have certain risks associated with it! One factor we know little about is how *your* computers are going to cope with SL, for example. So, bear with me as we start working on the course. If things go wrong (like the program freezing or you getting lost!), just re-start and re-join us. I'll be on Kamimo Island more or less the whole course.

Here are a couple of things you can do to 'find yourself' again:

1. When you arrive on Kamimo Island for the first time (via the course web site?), go to Create Landmark Here (World menu at the top of the screen).

2. If you get lost, open your Inventory (blue button in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen) and open your Landmarks folder. You should see the link to Kamimo. If you double-click it, a box opens which invites you to teleport there.

3. Click on the Search button (blue - about in the middle of the screen). Click on the People tab and type my avatar's name in (Davric Rinkitink). You'll then be able to send me a message (IM) from wherever you are, and I can send you an invitation to teleport over to Kamimo.

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This is what's going to happen tomorrow (a reminder, just in case my other mails had disappeared!):

1. You turn up at the time stated against your name on the Course Launch Schedule.

2. I'll be taking the first three people to arrive for a quick tour of the facilities, during which time I'll check you off against my list of students. I'll also make sure that you know what you have to do before Course Meeting 1 on 14th February.

3. One (or perhaps more) of the American students will be there, and he or she will take over after I've finished. They will either take you directly to one of their favourite spots in world, or will fix a time with you when you can all go together. They have some questions to ask you about the place(s) you visit, and you'll be preparing a presentation about it(them) to be delivered at Course Meeting 1.

4. Then I'll take the next two or three people through the same procedure as the first group!

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The novelty of this course has also attracted the attention of some researchers into the whole phenomenon of education in SL. Alexandra Petrakou is a doctoral student here in Kalmar (at the department called IKD in Swedish) and she has a number of requests to make of you during the course (none of which are going to take an enormous amount of your time …). Luisa Panichi is a teacher and researcher at the University of Pisa in Italy, and she'd also like to hear about your experiences. Finally, you might even hear from a researcher in Missouri called Naomi Baldwin.

The researchers realise, of course, that you're only studying part-time (i.e. that you've got lives as well!), but they'll be very grateful indeed for any feedback you can give.

I'll send you another mail tomorrow detailing the specific requests the researchers are making. The documents they have produced will also be downloadable from the Business Pages section of the course web site.

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That's all for now - see you on Kamimo tomorrow afternoon.