September 24 - Moving Along...

Reminder: Meeting to be held in SL on Ramapo Island on Tuesday September 26th at NOON SL time. Call Maggie Marat or Gus Plisskin for TP
We are hoping that scheduling the meeting at this time will afford better opportunities for our European friends to attend! The meeting will continue to outline the plans and delegate specific tasks and responsibilities to those who are willing and able.
We received some great news from Linden Lab this week in that they WILL be able to accept our New York State Teacher Certification FBI check as clearance for Teen Grid. All NY State teachers (and I am assuming this is true for other states as well) must be FBI fingerprinted and cleared before being hired. LL will accept this documentation for their clearance. This demonstrates to me that they really do want to help - and get us in there teaching! Thanks to Claudia Linden who did the footwork!
Also joining the "Wall of Honor" this week is Twisted Foool who rebuilt the library on a smaller scale and added a great back patio with a new walkway. Kayla Khan rebuilt the castle and added the teleporters again! PAtch Lamington created a great Doodleopolus" area that the kids are going to love! (on Rockland complete with Doodle Cars!) He also donated Doodle Boards fopr all the kids! Thanks for teacher laptops to aEoLuS Waves who donated a bunch of great tech stuff including "EmailToOwner machines" for all of the Ramapo Teachers! Ushu T sent over some great games!

September 24

We received some very positive news from LL this week. They will be accepting the existing FBI check that all NY Teachers must have before they are hired. That saves us (and any other educators who have similar employment requirements) time and money. More about that later.
Gus Plisskin and his team of volunteers are incredibly busy behind the scenes preparing inventory for the transfer to the teen grid and determining what can be accomplished before the move and what needs to transpire once we are over there.
On Suffern, the castle has been rebuilt(thank you Kayla Khan) since the new terraforming (thank you Mathieu Basait) required all be removed. I have begun to furnish it and have received generous offers from help from many including Ayesha Honey who has basically given us everything for the castle and been wonderful! Twisted Fool rebuilt the library on a smaller scale and added a great back portico and pathway. He is quite a talent! I have added a little Irish Cottage for my own teacher space! Oh and let's not forget Patch Lamington who built us a "Doodleopolus" (go and see on Roackland) and donated DoodlePads for the kids! Lastlly, aEoLuS Waves has graciously donated EmailToOwner MAchiones for all the teachers in Ramapo Islands! WOW! What a community we have! Please support these artists in world!

Meeting held September 14 in SL

Suffern Middle School in Second Life

Many apologies for such a lapse in communication - but once school started , well, you know! Things have been moving along at a furious pace! If you have been directed to this blog therough a SL notecard, please read earlier posts for the vision. I will try to summarize noteworthy events in our progress:
1. After a meeting with Claudia and Blue Linden, we cleared up a lot of the nagging questions. The Lindens were extremely helpful in clarifying procedure and anticipating problems we may have as we continue. Specifically, we now know that the islands will ultimately reside on the Teen Grid where they will be private. This means that my students will not be able to leave and others from the TG will not have access. This non- access status is a condition requested by my district. I will be able to invite adults onto the islands ONLY if they have LL clearance. We are now trying to ascertain if Linden Labs will accept the teacher certification as clearance since, in New York at least, it requires an FBI background check. Otherwise there is a fee for Teen Grid clearance and I'm sure some kind of waiting period for the clearance status through LL.
2. Gus Plisskin, Seifert Surface, Frans Charming, Lilith Heart, and many others dropped by for an in world meeting yesterday and we started to assign tasks and delegate responsibilities. SO far we are going to have a movie section in the library, a roller coaster, Mathieu Basait has consented to doing some terraforming with Gus as well as contributing the coastline wav set-up! (surfs up on Ramapo!)
3. On the district side, I am meeting with our superintendent for curriculum as well as my building principal soon to go over curriculum connections in SL. I approached some of my teachers today who have signed up to use SL with their classes and they already have lessons aligned to standards to be taught with SL! Any of you who have curriculum ideas for NY State (8th grade) please submit them to this blog! We are specifically seeking some science connections.
4. Thanks to Robbie Dingo who has built a sound stage on Rockland and also to Twisted Fool for the library. We are getting donations everyday and the positive input from many residents is invaluable! More meetings to come soon! Remember to join Ramapo Volunteers in order to have acces to the islands.