Blogging here from iDMAa in Philadelphia, sitting in a session entitled Art in a Virtual World: A River of Second Life. Yes, the speaker has leveraged the power of SL by having a panel, of potentially interesting people to comment on this topic. This is my first time hearing the new voice application, and it’s mostly contributed to giving me a phenomenal headache. It is 2:20, we are 20 minutes in, and I have learned nothing except that bandwidth is a HUGE issue with SL.

For anyone who has cared to listen to me babble about my dissertation, one of the biggest findings was that duh! technical problems redirect goals constantly. Where breakdowns occur, the task focus shifts from the original issue to the technology and troubleshooting a problem. Though it is obvious, unless I want my students to focus on this phenomenon, that seems to be what I learn about the most when dealing with Second Life. I know cool things go on in this virtual world, I just find the evangelism for the potential often outweighs any evident pedagogical gains.

At least we ditched the crapalicious sound reverb from the first speaker. Maybe my headache can subside.