Today I collaborated (virtually and in person) with three other Second Life educators to present a session on Libraries and Second Life at the TELSIG National Seminar which is being held in Palmerston North today and tomorrow.

I was incredibly nervous, and we were all crossing our fingers and toes that there wouldn’t be technology hitches - but all in all - even though there was the odd hiccup, I think it went pretty well! Everyone I spoke to afterwards had such nice things to say.

Clare Atkins from NMIT (Arwenna Stardust) was the MC - attending the conference in person along with me - introducing Second Life and describing its scope and features. We heard from jokay Wollongong (Joanna Kay) of ‘jokaydia‘, who took us on a tour of her Island, highlighting interesting learning and teaching spaces, including a “Virtual Classroom” project spearheaded by New Zealand educator Leroy Goalpost (Leigh Blackall from Otago Polytechnic).

Emerald Dumont (Kathryn Greenwood) joined us from Murdoch University in Perth. She talked about what libraries were doing in Second Life, gave us a guided tour of Murdoch’s Second Life space. Kathryn had set up a video feed from her office at Murdoch, so that we could see her as well as hear her speak. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get it to work on the spot! You can see a flickr video of what it would have looked like, though, if you’re interested. Kathryn had also suggested three great videos for us to watch, just in case Second Life failed us on the day! “Libraries in Second Life“, “Murdoch Uni Library gets a Second Life“, and “Murdoch Uni Island in Second Life“.

I gave a ‘mixed world‘ talk, with my slides and avatar in Second Life, but not managing to get out of standing up in front of 80 or so librarians! My talk was (of course) about my INFO580 research project “Second Life Libraries: Challenges and Strategies“. I had prepared lots more to say than I had the time to talk about, so I’m really glad I prepared a full transcript of my talk as a set on flickr for anyone interested in experiencing everything! (Of course, if you’re really keen you could read the whole report, or you could also check out my earlier presentation about Digital Libraries!)

It was so cool to do this, and excellent to get to work with clever people like Jo, Clare, Kathryn, Tim and Rob. Thanks everyone! ^_^