The rollercoaster ride

So much has happened in a week!!  Our wonderful DECS partners - in particular Di Ferris and Jodie Coleman havebeen working away with their cooperative and extremely helpful DECS ICT managers.  Jodie has contacted me several times to let me know that one by one the trainees have been given access to Second Life so that they will be able to log in from the workplace.  First it was 3 who had access, then 4, now 7.  There is still a problem with 3 trainees getting access but the DECS ICT teams are continuing to work on this to see what they can do.

This was great news for us and so we decided to continue with our planned treasure hunt today.  We had asked for the trainees to be allowed to go online between 11am and 1pm taking advantage of the lunch break so as to inconvenience the supervisors as least as possible.

The trainees had been emailed a series of questions relating to an area in SL which is called the NMC Conference Centre (spelled Center) which gives lots of help to anyone new to SL and is set up like a conference.  There are booths where you can pick up a conference bag, get info about how to use Twitter or Eluminate, create a tee-shirt, drink iced tea, visit various places of interest and so on.  The treasure hunt was designed to get them to find all of these places and so get to know the conference centre really well.  We plan to build on this knowledge at our next meeting when we want the trainees to be show their customer service skills to other avatars who will come in and ask questions.

So, today we set up our laptops in the Harvey Norman room at the back of the library at the Adelaide Campus of TAFE.  There are 6 network points in this room which are connected to the IT program's server.  This is yet another example of colaborative support offered by the fantastic IT program team - in particular Stephen Donaldson who has been a strong supporter of our project from the beginning. 

It was wonderful to watch as each of the trainees came into the centre and after greeting each other, set off to find the "treasures".  We saw that they all had their conference bags over their arms and we read the interaction betwwn them as they attempted to assist each other with directions to various places.

A few of the trainees experienced slow speed problems, something that they were going to discuss with their ICT people after the session.  A couple had to log out and then back in again. Unfortunately, we had lots of trouble with our laptops freezing and crashing.  At one point the trainees were all running around and we almost couldn't move.  Ruth decided to see if there was anyone in the computer room upstairs on the 5th floor and soon we received an IM from her saying that the room was empty and that the computers there were working fine.  So we abandoned our laptops and ran upstairs to finish the session.  Most of the trainees managed to get through most of the questions and all stayed until about 12.45 (by which time they were probably famished because this session had happened across their lunch break). 

Once again, Jodie was really pleased with the trainees and their involvement in the activities.  She thought it was an enjoyable session for them and is keen to follow up on the trainees who missed out on getting access today.

I have called this entry the rollercoaster ride because the thrill of watching the students interacting and participaing was tempered by - again - the poor technology.   The thrill of the trainees actually having access from their workplace is a wondrous miracle since we still do not have this luxury. 

Our next encounter with the trainees will be a face to face meeting over 2 days - 11th and 12th August.  On these days we will be giving them time to finish the treasure hunt and then organise themselves for the event we are planning on the Tuesday.  I will be asking other avatars to come in at 1pm to be "strangers" so that the trainees can demonstrate their customer service skills. 

On with the ride...

Posted at 03:53PM Aug 06, 2008 by Jacinta Ryan  |