Second Blog

Texture Heaven_001, originally uploaded by SLAnglistik1.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Asanga/163/163/87

“Texture Heaven”, it says.
A freebie texture pack and loads of textures to buy.

Three weeks into our seminar, we had a brainstorming session on Friday. The result was a mind map detailing numerous possible subjects for our village.

As you can see from the map, the main challenge this week will be to narrow these down to a list that is

manageable

Winterfell Gothic Medieval w advertisement, originally uploaded by SLAnglistik1.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Winterfell/128/117/26

Described as a “gothic medieval village”
Nice buildings, as far as I have seen, but plastered w ads.

I found a place called the “Isle of Wyrms – Here be Dragon”. In front of the castle there is a “Stargate” that you can use in the same way I think many of us know from the Science fiction TV shows “Stargate and Stargate-Atlantis”.

In the middle of the Cathedral there is a book which you can use to become more information about the Isle of Wyrms, on the left side you can see the Dragon Familiars illustrated which pictures. If you touch one of these pictures you will see how a Dragon grows up. In the back side of the Cathedral there are many different Dragon Eggs portrayed for example: (Fire Dragon, Aquatic Dragon, Strom Dragon, Spirit Dragon; etc.).

If you pass the Stargate you will enter another part of the Isle of Wyrms were you can buy many different things, specially about the Dragon Theme. Enjoy the trip into Dragons-World. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cathedral/122/59/102

You can see my picture in a separate blog.   Chris

The Woodsheed Castle is a secret place, everyone has to be. A wonderful dusk at a medieval place may teleport you in a fanstastic life. “Mylord, can I help you?”, asked me a nice girl So I made a snapshot.

Alex 

I found this little old English chapel. It doesn’t really have anything that I thought might be interesting for our seminar, but I liked the way things are designed and presented. For example there is a table with a bible where one can sit down and read. Maybe we could do sth similar with e.g. the Canterbury Tales or Beowulf or some other medieval text? And include some pictures of original book covers or folios? It also has a beautiful organ that one can play on. I think it makes things a bit more attractive and interesting for people if they can interact with them instead of just stand there and watch them. So much for infotainment…

I tried to upload some pics I took of the place, but somehow wasn’t able to. So maybe you can just go there and have a look youselves… 

Milla

The second week of our seminar has seen the first steps in-world. By now, everybody has his or her own avatar, and we have also created our own SL group, “HHU Anglistik 1″.

It’s now time to pass gradually from background information into hands-on activities – as far as “hands-on” is possible in a virtual world, of course… 

Here’s a snapshot of the very first building experiments:

Now that the seminar has finally started, this blog is realizing its full potential as the communication platform of our course.

In one go, it has gained 17 co-authors: All participants as well as the two tutors have been given authoring rights and will hopefully post busily over the next months.

Willy Hegel (SL), our landlord for the Medieval Village, has posted an entry in his own simteach.de blog this morning titled “Mittelalter im Metaverse” (Middle Ages in the Metaverse).

He cites the RP article on the seminar and gives a bit of background information, too. Thanks for spreading the word further. ;-)

Today, a full-colour article on our seminar was published in the Campus section of the “Rheinische Post”.

It was written by Alexander Ruth, himself a participant of the course, and gives an excellent description of the aims of our seminar and the activities awaiting both the students and our future visitors. If I did not teach the seminar, I’d certainly want to enrol.

An online version of the article is also available on the website of the “Rheinische Post”.