Our first 'live' session with the students was tonight!

Have just finished the first live session with the students. Great to be through with the 'first one' ! Here are some of my thoughts:

I'll start with the frustrations so the blog post ends on a nice note :-). Although let me say from the outset, I think that overall, it went well.

Technical issues - I personally had so many it was almost funny! I was frustrated with the issues I was having prior to and during the session - my mouse wasn't working - the wireless one went flat, and the plug in one wouldnt register, my headset was working, then not working, I couldn't log into the internet to begin with, then Second Life crashed 3 times before I could log on. Then I couldn't record the sound using WeGame ! I got 4.22 minutes of the session as a movie. So with that going on - I didn't feel I helped Jason and Meg a lot - and when it was my time to speak I was occupied with a number of issues, and helping people log on, get there via IM etc etc. And for some reason two of the notecards I had attached to objects didn't work - but they worked when I tested them just prior to the session (I created them just prior to the session!!) so not sure what happened there.

We also had some audio issues but once everyone stopped using the handsfree mode, the echoes stopped and it was a lot easier - although not for Lucielle (Meg) who didn't have any sound at all so couldn't speak to us or hear us!

Some technical notes (as opposed to issues!):

The Sloodle chat logger worked well after I actually logged in to Moodle and opened up the chat session there - but I didn't think I had to do that - but at least I had tested it enough to be able to figure out what to do when it wasn't working so I was grateful for that!! It also didn't capture chat that was happening as an Instant Message (private message between avatars) so that is good to know for the future. The activity we had set up was for the students to work in pairs to discuss the information found in the notecards (placed in 3 different areas on the island). So the chatting was a bit hard to follow I think.

Overall though, Sloodle tools worked well. For this session we only used the Chat Logger (Web Intercom) and the Reg Enrol booth (to register everyone's avatars in Moodle).

Personally I found it hard to just 'be there' for the students as I was trying to fix technical issues - but I think Jason and Meg did a great job interacting with the students and keeping everything running - especially Jason - it all fell to him really due to Meg (Lucille) not having sound and me working on technical issues!

However - all of that said, I enjoyed the whole process and am looking forward to the next session so we can build on what we all just learnt together. And really, this session was about induction and I think the students did really well to fly, move around, and manage their avatars, speak, chat, dance some brilliant crazy dance moves (!!)(thanks Matt) - as well as dress themselves! So overall I'm happy with it!!