My Avatar Times: An Intro

morelia.frank@gmail.com (Divergent Learner) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:50:00 +0000

Hi all... I am Frank, an EFL teacher trainer, Local Cambridge Exams Administrator, and a few other things, hehe! I live in beautiful colonial Morelia, Mexico. I have been in Mexico since June 2001, living first in Guadalajara, then Zacatecas, and now Morelia. I also spend quite a bit of time in places like Leon and Mexico City.

I am creator of the Mexico English Teachers' Alliance (META means "goal or target" in Spanish), and avid blogger, twitterer, plurker, Facebooker (only since the NEW FB), YouTuber, Flickrer, Netviber, wiki-er, and you guessed it Second Lifer. I think my avatar was birth-rezed in 2007 .. but I just didn't "get it" like a lot of Web tools at first. So I left my avatar "Salty" to hang on the rack for a while. After hearing more about SL, I decided to go back in. During my first couple days stumbling around somehow I ended up on Virtlantis Island (of course I didn't know the name at the time) home of Kip Yellowjacket's SLEnglish. I was walking past this building and was a bit startled when a woman suddenly appeared. That woman was Daffodil (Nergiz Kern). She offered me into her lovely Moroccan -style home for a chat and then invited me to a small training get together the next day or so with Dennis. That day, Nergiz taught me how to create an object and place a texture on it. Dennis lamented on losing a rug below the floor of his house; and I watched as Nergiz and Dennis solved some SL mysteries working with objects. And, from that day forward, I was hooked.

I started attending every training session that I could teleport into, many given by the wonderful avatar Celestia Cazalet from Discovery Educator Network. My avatar was kind of dopey and flat looking in those days .. more 2D than 3D looking. DEN sort of became my place to drop in and hang out. I would lounge at the pool with DENers and participated in all that I could suck up. That's Lori Abrahams (FSINFO) in the background of the pool shot.

After a couple months, I found myself chatting with Fleep (Chris Collins) from the Chilbo Community (she was already a twitter friend) .. and soon thereafter I moved into a little townhome in Chilbo ... still there decorated in Nepalese Tibetan style .. I teleported into Nepal to buy all the furniture and decorations. Chilbo is a great community and some very influential and active SL residents live and participate there, such as malburns the most prolific twitterer on all things SL.

Then, one day I saw a notice from Kip that he was graciously lending training pads on Virtlantis Island ... so I took him up on the offer and got my new SL buddy Guillermo from Peru in on the deal too .. I actually introduced Guillermo to Fleep and his ended up being my neighbor at both Chilbo and Virtlantis. Now, with my own open piece of land to build on ... I went to town, so to say. I created the Mexico English Teachers' Alliance Training Center and and even ended up with a house to boot.

As Nergiz has mentioned in my profile page that I have come far indeed in just a few months ... I feel that I have only seen the tip of the iceberg .. and I want to see it ALL. I hope to keep developing my SL skills and learning new ways to use SL for language learning ... and education in general.

So a HUGE thanks to Nergiz, Fleep, Kip, Celestia and other DEN folk who have put the air under Salty's wings and taught him how to fly. My feet will never be completely on the ground any more!

Salty

P.S. In Second Life I am a also Buddhist Mayan Warrior.

Test Post - Avatar Times

morelia.frank@gmail.com (Divergent Learner) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:47:00 +0000

This is a test post for Avatar Times. This is a test post for Avatar Times. This is a test post for Avatar Times. This is a test post for Avatar Times. This is a test post for Avatar Times. This is a test post for Avatar Times.