Okay, so my daughter asked, "You're paying that much real money for a virtual class that will be taught in an imaginary place by characters in a game?" So I responded, "Well, I'm not the only one who's interested. The first section is sold out, and they've opened an additional section." The course is called "Virtual World Librarianship, Your Second Life," and will take place in Second Life on six Fridays, beginning May 25, and will count as continuing ed units offered by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
This means, though, that I'm going to be a very busy person in a few weeks, with at least one other online course plus two in-person workshops that will be happening in May and June, plus continuing to work full-time. It will be almost like being back in school!
I've been a sometime tourist in Second Life for a couple of months, and my avatar is a Goth librarian named Annot8 Greatrex. My greatest challenge has been navigation and travel - my mousing skills don't translate well enough, and sometimes I walk into walls or fall off embankments. It is interesting to meet others in the Second Life Library, though - mostly they're curious, or they're bleeding-edge professionals who are looking for ways to make the space relevant to today's young people, and to create virtual library applications and programs that exist in that sort-of gaming world. (Second Life is not actually a game, because there is no objective, no "levels" of play, and nothing to win or lose.)
Since I'm probably not going to Internet Librarian this year - boss wants to share the opportunity with librarians who haven't been to that conference - this will give me my professional technology "fix" for the year.
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