Alpha Testing Heritage Key

Working in Heritage Key's King Tut exhibit, I began with much enthusiasm but soon found more problems than would allow for the mobility and usability of Second Life. I had high hopes for the program but there were several things that came up immediately. First, the clothes were unfortunately very scattered. My pants enjoyed revisiting the 70's much too often and my sunglasses sometimes forgot they were sunglasses. It was nice to have different outfits at the beginning for some variety in the avatar but some of the of the kinks need to be worked out before this becomes a major educational tool.

The second problem I ran into was much like running into a wall in that I would be suspended and stuck floating in the air waving my arms and legs in all directions. I found this especially annoying because I was using a wired connection, that usually means I have no problems moving through Second Life but Heritage Key could not keep up.

Although I did find these problems in the program, I did find many positive sides to Heritage Key. The First was the interactive nature, providing audio clips with almost every part of the land exhibits and in the museum the virtual artifacts were proportionally correct to my avatar but could be enlarged for a better view.

Another thing I enjoyed was the attention to detail. All of the artwork in the actual tomb was quite photographic, almost to the point that it didn't seem like a copy at all. Not only in the exhibits, but also in the landscape, details could be seen that are very rare in Second Life. Take the Hippos for example, this made me realize that Heritage Key does have one up on Second Life in that the landscape is part of the exhibit. In Second Life, much of the educational material in simply placed in without regard to the surrounding area as the owner of one property cannot control the actions on the island next to him.

Overall, Heritage Key does have what it takes to become an educational site that many educators will be able to use but not yet. There are too many problems making the program cumbersome, but I feel that it will not be long before this catches on.

Meeting people just gets easier, especially when you can find them...

Walking through the remnants of Burning Life, I ran into two women, meandering around just as I was. They were quite nice, very interested in the class I was taking asking many questions after I mentioned my enrollment here at the University. In conversation with them I asked for a picture of the two of them and they more than obliged, even posing together for it, asking if the camera could still see the fire in the background. Also, they were excited to here about a collegiate class studying how virtual worlds, such as Second Life, were being used as the newest form of communication between professionals and educators alike. I met a few people on this trip, all of them involved in Burning Life, some of them adding vehicles to the entertainment after the crowds had left, just as something else to do.


Encouraged by the friendly nature of these Second Lifers, I decided I should go exploring! Bad idea. This was probably a good idea and simply a bad approach, as I simply began teleporting all over the map hoping to run into some fun subculture, but all I got was backyards and do not enter signs. How is it that I teleported five times and everytime ended up trapped on private property? I would pick a place on the map that had plenty of green dots, hoping to find more people but somehow when I got there, everyone had left! I want to explore Second Life, but next time I want a guide because obviously I'm doing something wrong. This virtual world is a lot of fun but I want to get past the surface and dive into something more complex. This is an opportunity to see how people behave when their actions are less connected to negative consequences. I say this because there is less peer pressure in SL and it is easier to find a group of people that share your values. This means people's true values, beliefs and wants will come out as the opportunity to express one's self increases while their actions are tied less to their reputations than in real life.

Checking out Burning Life, after the Party's over

I never thought that a virtual party would require clean up, just a few clicks of "delete" and all of a sudden you have a new canvas to play on. But when I visited Burning Life after the festivities, there were plenty of people still milling around. They were playing with the attractions still up and driving cars through the empty streets.

Some of the attractions were still up and in use including the bubbles in the space pod and the serpentine fire exhibit. The bubbles were fun to sit on and bounce around inside the spaceship, just a cool part of burning life that people were able to enjoy after the fire had gone away. Also it was interesting to watch how the colors overlapped just as the would in real life.


Given the option, I would love to ride on bubbles and just spin around into other people and flip upside down. I also enjoyed creating my own music and streams of images in one of the other Burning Life exhibits. One thing I noticed a difference in going after the actual party is that there was absolutely no lag! I could interact with every exhibit and had no trouble with lag. I will admit that I tried it while I was on a wireless network and that did not go well but tied up with an ethernet cord, there were no problems.


Overall it was weird to think that in a Virtual World people still have to clean up after parties! There are still exhibits on the ground and people can still find a way to have fun with the area that they have. If Linden Labs have already charged people for the land, why not enjoy it as much as possible?

Hallucination Simulation

To put it bluntly, schizophrenia scares me a lot more than I thought it would. Until I walked through the hallucination simulation and realized how little I know about the disorder. The first thing I learned was that with schizophrenia is not something that you slip in and out of. I was under the impression that a person with schizophrenia would simply flip personalities and have no recollection of the other side when they switched back, it is weird to think that someone could have two thought processes going on at the same time.

To have no control of an entire train of thought in your own head would be incredibly hard to fight. If I had those voices going on in my head, first off, I wouldn't know that they we not supposed to be there. If you are born blind, and never view the world, you cannot comprehend the idea of a picture. If there were voices in your head for most of your life, without a trigger or warning, telling you that you were worthless or better off dead, what signs would have that this was not normal? This scares me again because, although hurtful, the voices would seem to be part of a normal life.

Going through the Second Life version of a hallucination was disturbing to say the least, and I'm glad I was able to go through with the option to stop the voices. If that were my life, seeing myself die in mirrors or having the TV speak to me would drive me insane, if I were not already. This experience in SL opened my eyes in a way that was in no way offensive to anyone with mental disorders. The producers from UC did a very good job and I do commend them for the quality of work they have done.

Why can't I take a picture?

One thing that I am very confused about is the fact that people have problems when you take pictures of them in Second Life. I admit that I don't believe that it is normal but that fact that Dr. Essid had to make sure that we knew to ask people if it was OK to take a picture is slightly discouraging. Some of the sights beg to be photographed and I would worry if there was a large group of people there, in which one or two might object. I feel this doesn't reflect real life, because you never have to tell a child, "here's a camera, but you have to ask everyone around you before you use it." That makes no sense! On a side note, I believe the SL term for real life is first life but I refuse to go so far into the Uncanny Valley that I have to specify whether I am talking about Real life or a computer program.

This question sticks with me because I do not know that much of Second Life and I am aware of my ignorance. I do not expect to overcome this in a day or even a month but I would like to know more about the picture taking etiquette. I understand that people have written overwrite codes to establish that they don't look like a newbie every time they take a picture. I can also understand why people wouldn't want to look like they were taking a picture is they were gathering evidence to report to the administrators, but I cannot conceive why people would object to having their picture taken at a random site. I would never object to a picture as I control the avatar and wouldn't do something with it that I wouldn't want captured for eternity through another person's lens.