Location: Travel Hub, Heritage Key Before Viv gave me my recent tour of the Heritage Key Valley of the Kings, I bumbled about the new welcome areas for avatars. The ability to select better avatars (I'm sticking with Ron Glass' clone, however) makes HK worth a repeat visit. Here's Iggy/Ron looking at the new HK avatars and accessories:

Viv Trafalgar wanted to give me a sneak peek at some of the new content coming for Heritage Key. I'd cast some doubt last fall on how well it worked for my class. So now I'll begin a few dispatches on what we found, on my return visit. This post focuses on the Tomb of Tut. I'll turn soon in another post to the orientation experience for Heritage Key.

I'm pleased that on almost all fronts that worried me, Rezzable's team has made some dramatic improvements to the areas I'd ticked off: lag, navigation, avatar customization, and stability.

Location: Virtual Valley of the Kings

I was amazed that we got 18--or 17, with someone crashing frequently--into Rezzable's Virtual King Tut Experience. It was our group's first foray outside Second Life. It will not be our last. We plan visits to Metaplace and Reaction Grid soon.

I'm pleased to be the host for an event next week, at the Second Life Education Roundtable, for two very special guests, Martin J. Keltz (SL: Marty Snowpaw) and Jena Ball (SL: Jenaia Morane). We'll meet on Montclair State University's virtual campus in Second Life [direct teleport link] from 2:30-3:30 SL Time (PST) Tuesday, November 3.

Location: Second Life® Education Roundtable
(picture by Ponderosafish at Olivia Hotshot's Flickr site for the group)

During our last Roundtable meeting, Jon Himoff of Rezzable covered a lot of ground. I've pulled out some call-out points from his talk:

Call-out Points:

RightAsRain Rimbaud, aka Jon Himoff, CEO of Rezzable, will give a talk in voice, with Q&A by educators, for the weekly Second Life Education Roundtable.  Topics will include the role of virtual worlds for education, Rezzable's decision to move more content to OpenSim, the Builderbot controversy, and Rezzable's vision for content creation.

The event run 2:30-3:30  SL Time next Tuesday, October 6, at the Montclair State University campus in SL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Montclair%20State%20CHSSSouth/130/180/2

Have a question to put to Jon in-world? You can submit advance Qs here and as time permits, moderator Ignatius Onomatopoeia will ask them at the event.

Scottish students and their teachers now have a new canvas for their projects: CANVAS (Children’s Art at the National Virtual Arena of Scotland). This Open Sim virtual world will provide learners a space to display art projects while avoiding the administrative difficulties associated with other  worlds blocked by school-system firewalls.

Location: Rezzable's Valley of the Kings in Open Sim

On my first tour of Rezzable's Heritage Key site dedicated to King Tut, and when the entire project was quite new, I was taken by the South Wall of the young king's tomb. It was an immersive moment; I felt that I was as close to the actual site in Egypt as I'd ever get.