Suzanne Calling

Yes, I know I have really bashed on the game, thanks to the image of the game presented by Jane. It still doesn't appeal to me, but I have to create a lesson plan for Monday's class, based upon elements of the game. As my semester-long theme doesn't translate well into this virtual world, I came up with an idea based on work I did in last semester's Spanish class. Basically, I wanted to have students walk the Camino de Santiago de Compestela in the Galician region of Spain. I'd thought I'd found enough content to make this work and use both English and Spanish from my PowerPoint presentation in a lesson plan geared towards third year Spanish students. Alas, what I thought I'd found was really a group, not a location. Back to square one. Then I was thinking I'd bring students on an architectural tour of a Spanish architect (also part of a presentation I'd done), but that also was a bust. Next, the lightbulb went off that I should have students l...

Earlier today I signed up for Second Life . For class, because I sure as heck wouldn't be doing it otherwise. There's a reason why I have an avid dislike for it, namely Jane's passion for it. Basically, the title says it all, participants get to have a second, more interesting life in the virtual world than they do in the real world. While that could be lots of fun, Jane's descriptions of it turned me off. She hung out online with a lot of kids between the ages of 18 and 25, who would constantly tell her she did not act like a woman of her age. She took it as a compliment that she was still considered youthful. Some of her stories about it made me wonder what exactly was going on, and I could read between the lines when she told me about the youngsters she hung out with having relationship issues in the game and how she gave relationship advice. I found it odd that a person who was most definitely a homebody and had one serious relationship to her credit was exper...