A Chemist in Second Life: Made our local newspaper!

Teaching in SL

Over the years, I have been incorporating more and more technology into my chemistry classes. Now that I retired in 2015, it is fun to look back at what I did. Here's a PP presentation I gave long ago. http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/keeney/secondlife/Integrated%20Technology-its.ppt I am editing this in 2017.

Fall 2010 was my 3rd semester at trying to incorporate optional weekly review sessions into SL. Optional for a few reasons. (1) My classes are large; I teach two classes of about 250 students each, so obviously I cannot have everyone in SL at the same time. (2) I do have a few students under 18 - which is problematic. (3) Some students are very uncomfortable in SL. Here I'll be blogging about the trials/tribulations of encouraging students to get involved in SL. Here's the link to a video clip of a tour of my area: http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/keeney/secondlife/drwendy-in-SL.mp4

Chemistry World is the island Kurt Winkleman and I developed to see if first year chem students can do labs in SL. This blog is not about that project.

You can visit researchgate.com to keep updated with our papers.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Made our local newspaper!

Hi, all - The TAMU Health Science Center had their ribbon cutting yesterday on their new SL islands that are connected to our islands. We had about 20 people in SL for the event. Our local paper reported it and here is the link to the article: http://www.theeagle.com/am/Profs-teach-online-with-virtual-A-amp-amp-M . I made the front page! This was a big deal - the Nancy Dickey, the president of HSC and past president of the AMA gave a speech in SL and even one of the Lindens, Teeple Linden, was there to talk of the importance of the educational mission of Linden Labs. I asked him about the disappearance of the educational discount and the hardship it was placing on us university folks. He said I should drop him a notecard with my concerns. That is one of today's projects for me.