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.