SL Starting Guide 2007

Second Life in Education

Getting around In World

Overview

• The Second Life homepage gives you a good overview of what SL is all about http://secondlife.com/. The official blog is at: http://blog.secondlife.com/
• NMC, or New Media Consortium, has interesting resources such as Getting Started With Second Life A step by step guide to getting started in SL, from installing and registering to learning how to move around in SL http://www.nmc.org/campuswiki/index.php/Getting_Started. You can tag the NMC newsletter straight into delicious, and http://www.nmc.org/sl/ will get you the feed links.
• You Tube - Sample Second Life Videos A selection of videos that show you clearly what life is like in SL http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Second+Life
• Two PDF files: Second Life Absolute Beginner Tutorials I and II: http://www.combinedstory.com/tutorials.html

Getting started

• Getting Started in Second Life http://www.nmc.org/campuswiki/index.php/Getting_Started
• Absolute Beginners Guide to Second Life http://www.combinedstory.com/tutorials.html
• My Teaching Semester in Second Life http://www.slatenight.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=40

Navigation in world

Great navigation hints are available from Linden at http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/category.php?id=22; and see Torley Linden’s Second Life & techno music blog with Tips and Tricks, e.g. this one at: http://blip.tv/file/106637 <– this is on advanced camera techniques and might be a bit much for newbies, but it would does provide an insiders view of what getting around in SL could be like. These tips are available through http://secondlife.com/newsletter/

Some small Tips for movement:

• Running is erratic and difficult to control (World - Always Run)
• Flying is good (Page Up to fly up, Page DOwn to fly down)
• wait for +- 30 sec to load up when you arrived at a new point. It depends also on your Internet speed.

Getting help

• Second Life Help Wiki http://sliki.info/wiki/Main_Page
• http://blog.secondlife.com
• Known issues with upgrades, etc. http://secondlife.com/support/known-issues.php

Some tips to enhance the experience

Speed

If you’re getting a slow SL video experience, you can do these experiments with the following - all available from the Edit - Preferences menu:

• Graphics - lower the draw distance
• Graphics detail - disable everything, avatar rendering normal, sun and moon only. Terrain detail low, all sliders under that towards the left - your mileage will vary, so experiment
• Adv Graphics - turn off Anisotropic Doodahs and reduce the particle count to 512, keep the Outfit Composite Limit low
• Webhead Link has found that “if the window is maximized full screen performance on my laptop can degrade to something akin to falling into an event horizon. Simply minimizing and resizing the window diminishes the visual experience only slightly while restoring snappy performance (so, it’s the graphics!). One way to restore control is to use File / Screen Size and then select 600×800, to snap your window to low resolution”

Light

• If you turn up anywhere and it’s dark - try ‘World - Force Sun’, which is a per-user setting.

Clothing

• Tips from Baldric Commons: If you search on the ‘Gnubie store’ or ‘freebies’ you should find something. Another tip I have is to sign up for an account with http://www.slexchange.com and search for what you want there. Likewise, there are lots of freebies, or clothes that cost 1L$
• Graham mentioned in a recent post about the Gnubie store (which is great) and there is another freebie place I use a lot called the Freebie Warehouse. As the Search function within Second Life is disabled at the moment, I have created a quick Second Life Languages Welcome pack (box) which, when you click on it, will give you landmarks to these locations (and others) plus some information (on notecards) that I hope you will find useful. The box is on my island, click on the link below and it will open a webpage with a map and link to a my island’s location in Second Life. Click on “Teleport now” in that web page and it will open Second Life and when you click the Connect button, you will arrive directly at my island (if you have Second Life open already, it should open the map for you to click teleport).
  Once you are on the island (Boracay), turn your avatar around and look for the big, light purple, box near the big tree that says “Second Life Languages, Landmarks & Freebies”. Simply click this to get the landmarks and notecards. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Boracay/128/128/0/
• Dove’s (128,128,0) … has a lot of free stuff.use the search engine for this…

Building

Some nice videos on constructing objects tutorial.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVSzh_QTE00
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVSzh_QTE003
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVSzh_QTE00 3

Other tricks

HUD (Heads up display)

• Fire from Korea says’s. He distributed a free Rock Papers Scissors game I had found from the HUDDLES store (search for it on SL) The Rock Paper Scissors is a HUD (Heads up display) attachment that will give you a set of controls on your screen - one for “Challenge” then a “rock” “paper” and “scissors”.
  It’s Simple : wear the HUD and click Challenge. If someone esle in the vincinity is wearing the R.P.S (rock paper scissors) HUD, then you’ll get a message which asks you to who you want to challenge - once you select a person, and that person accepts your challenge, you’ll get another message that asks you to select a rock paper or scissor. then after 20 seconds, you both will do the R.P.S animation, and then one of you will do a victory dance, or get knocked to the floor. It’s pretty neat. — I think this HUD attachment is pretty pretty cool, i always use rock paper scissors to resolve conflicts and make decisions amoung students.
  There is BlogHud which allows you to blog directly from SL (for free) and even directly to your Wordpress or Blogger (if you have a pro account). Where that is, it’s still be found by me…

Voice in world

Second Phone: http://www.vivox.com/

In order to use Ventrilo you need to download the client from http://www.ventrilo.com and then launch it. Next you need to configure it with the IP address of the server everyone is using, and the password for that server.. Please note that there are (at least) two servers: One Ventrilo server provided free of charge by Pathfinder Linden, for the educational community - whereas EduNation has its own server (also provided free of charge). In the Webheads hut you’ll find the IP of the EduNation server, and the password is available from Gavin

• Gavin’s Ventrilo tips are:
  1. Download Client from http://www.ventrilo.com/download.php (client, not server!!)
  2. Install the client on your machine
  3. Run the software and add a new user name for yourself
  4. Add a new server with
     • Name - Edunation
     • I.P. - 87.117.195.90
     • Port - 4237
     • Gavin might have forgot to mention the shhhh password

  Ventrilo’s instructions on how to setup and configure the different components of the Ventrilo system: http://www.ventrilo.com/setup.php#Client_Quick_Setup

• Short Media’s Ventilo Setup thread: http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14039

SusNy Foss tells us:

• Flickr tag: secondlife - Flickr hosts heaps of people’s pictures from SL.Take care and rezise them before upload ; they’re huge by default http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/secondlife/
• SL home video collection People are recording small videos from in world. I believe you would need powerful computer & connection http://secondlife.com/community/media.php

More to come later,

Frank

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