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Teachers say the darndest things
by ZacharyJ Carter
July 24, 2007 |
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NMC CAMPUS - What do teachers chat about when they are given an hour with an open mic? At Monday's New Media Consortium's Teacher's Buzz session, they talked about identity, clothing, appearance, sexuality, and furries...all in the span of one hour! CDB Barkley, Vice President of NMC, welcomed the chatty crew by explaining the importance and purpose of the NMC Buzz sessions. He says that they are to provide "some time for formal to informal discussions about teaching, learning in SL." Some sessions are chatty, some are field trips, and some are classroom shadow sessions. The NMC has sponsored this twice monthly Buzz sessions for about two years, Barkley says. Topics are selected from the SL Educators list (http://secondlife.com/education).
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The Monday Buzz focused on a recent thread on the education listserv about identity and appearance and what, if any, responsibility educators have to present themselves "traditionally" in SL. Barkley explained that recent SLed posts highlighted "both the "professional" appearances some choose for teaching in SL...as well as "the silliness of replicating RL in SL." As the floor opened, various educators shared their choices for avatars. Barkley, for example, uses dog metaphors for blogging, and after starting "with some lame avs" chose to be a dog in SL. Desideria Stockton, the "blond bombshell of academia" intentionally created an avatar that looks like Barbie. She says that she adopted Barbie for a gender discourse project. Robins Hermano changes his avatar rarely because of the limited availability of men's clothing shops. Philippine Hawks finds it "difficult to appear quite younger than I am. I'd like to be able to look older!"
Rolig Loon replied, "I don't want to look my real age. I like being 30 years younger." Thursday Xu says |
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