Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

I have finally delved into Second Life (SL). It is a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) that I’m not entirely comfortable in. My avatar’s name is Bentley Noel, so named after the pet cat. Here is a picture of Bentley (the cat that is.) ” alt=”Bentley the Cat” />I have a picture of my avatar too, though I’m not ready to post that. I was sharing with a friend recently about my excursion, and sent her a picture of my avatar. I was celebrating that I had just learned to rotate my avatar around so I could see my face! Previously I had shared with her about the questionable things I’ve seen in SL, like inappropriate language and sexually suggestive content in some areas. I’m trying to stick to the educational sections of it. My friend told me she wasn’t surprised about my sharing about being accosted by a man in SL as it was painfully obvious my avatar was not wearing a bra!! So as soon as I have time I’m going back in to SL to see if I can find a bra and get a shirt that is significantly looser! I do NOT wear tight shirts that are so revealing EVER.

My excursion here is twofold. One—I am trying to see if I can find any reason I would want to bring students into SL for a school based project. It’s still early, but that is not looking promising. Second—I have been tapped to facilitate a session at our annual spring SCASL Library Conference that will be held in SL. The presenter, Linda Woods, an Education Consultant/Trainer from AT&T in California , whose avatar’s name is “mTea Box”, will be doing a session for our conference. I was asked because my friend Valerie Byrd-Fort, our president-elect of the organization, who is charged with completely planning the conference, and she knew that I had entered the world and had some working knowledge of SL. I happily agreed, so now I have a REAL reason to visit and look around in SL. Best, I have met several people that I know in real life through my blogging and conference attendance. And even better, I met and befriended mTea Box in SL BEFORE I knew she was our host for the conference session. How strange is that! But I am only spending limited amounts of time in SL, as I do have a RL (real life!) I’ll let you readers know of experiences I have there if I think they are noteworthy.