Philosophy Garden Tour and Ethics of Virtual Worlds Discussion

On Wednesday May 26th at 3:00 PM Oregon Community Colleges in Second Life will be presenting a tour of the Philosophy Garden with instructor Bill Noonan of Columbia Gorge Community College followed immediately by a group discussion in the garden amphitheater on the Ethics of Virtual Worlds led by Philosophy Instructor Matthew Stockton of Portland Community College.

Please encourage your philosophy minded colleagues from any interested academic discipline to attend. Philosophy instructors who teach the history of western philosophy (PHL 201) will be especially interested in exploring the Philosophy Garden as a shared resource that can be used to easily introduce an immersive learning experience into their courses. If you would like to see a preview of the Philosophy garden and hear a few words from instructors and students who have participated so far, click here.

If you have a Second Life account , the Second Life URL (SLurl) link where this tour and discussion will begin is here:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/OR%20Community%20Colleges/132/169/24

You can also get a free account for yourself at www.secondlife.com. Instructor Mike Russell from MHCC has written a brief guide to get you started available on our main project website by clicking here.

Assistants will be available 1 hour early at 2PM at the starting point on Oregon Community Colleges Isle to help you prepare to participate. Please feel welcome in dropping by during this time to ask any questions to help you improve your avatar skills.

Note: This event will be enhanced with live transcription to to make it accessible to all participants.

Live events on OR CC Isle

Yesterday we presented our very first live video streaming event on OR CC Isle, Tango Pacifico, a wonderful musical group who gave a beautiful performance. While I can't say the event went off without a hitch, I was happy to say that those of us on Mac computers experienced a good event. The majority using PC machines however couldn't see the stream within Second Life. With flexibility, this isn't a problem, as it is possible to see the stream out in a web browser. (We're also streaming it to the Art Beat page on PCC's website at www.pcc.edu/events/artbeat . )

Today we'll be streaming Tears of Joy puppet theater and their live performance of Stella Luna. We're streaming this into the outdoor amphitheater which you can get to by having a Second Life account and clicking on this link: http://bit.ly/dfjcYW I'm very excited for this event today, I'm a huge fan of puppets! Hope you can join us in Second Life to share it.

..and a HUGE note of thanks must go out to the Media Services and Production staff at Portland Community College- with a specific nod to Michael Annus and Marc Cole. We've used this event to help us figure out the technical aspects of what our equipment and facilities are capable of re: live streaming. We're all in the middle of an incredibly busy term, so the team and their willingness to always go the extra mile in service to our institution is admirable and inspiring. Mahalo nui loa!!

Note: If you don't have a Second Life account but would like to enjoy this event anyway, you can see it on the Art Beat website at 1PM. http://www.pcc.edu/about/events/artbeat/2010/live.html