Second session

We didn't start too well. Not all of us arrived on time () and many of the PCs had to be closed down and rebooted which takes an age, as does logging into SL. Without wanting to micro-manage my SL teaching, what am I going to do (if anything) with this time? And cope with latecomers?

Never having built collaboratively before, it was an interesting experience (use function in friends list, make objects copy/mod/trans). I suspect, however, that my JustDoIt tendencies make me a bit of a nightmare under such circumstances. I should probably have waited for an agreed plan to emerge but the fact that we had already lost time encouraged me in my fellonious ways.

We had a vague idea of what we wanted to do, i.e. make a harbour, though not necessarily how we wanted to do it. Having some pix of RL or SL inlets/harbours to discuss might have helped.
We also had only the slightest notion of how we were going to build collaboratively and what there was of that was rapidly overtaken by events.

I shifted/deleted existing content, then attempted to brainstorm a process using the spidergram (what to make, who to make it) but an inlet then appeared. I then decided unilaterally to clone the existing micro-landing stage to make a walkway round the inlet. After a bit of fudging, this was finished and I tested it with one of the frogitos, leaving the others to attend to rails and steps.

The good aspect of this was we got something to mull over by the end of the session and it may well be that the "final" port will look very different. The less good aspects are that I probably subverted the learning opportunities for others and didn't make good use of El's presence and expertise. Sometimes it is hard to balance reflection against showing initiative. There certainly have been times in other situations where I have shown more restraint and this actually hasn't improved matters (typically when working against the clock).

Aspects we might want to consider include:

1. Overall shape of walkway and the way it moulds into terraforming
2. Removal of terraform glitches
3. Preserving easy path round island
4. Wood (retexture?) versus paving/cobbles/stone/rock for path/structure
5. Egress from boats
6. Furniture (re-seating is a good exit mode for debarking) and features, e.g. beacon.
7. Visual appearance from other aspects