My Seven Wonders of Second Life

Here I am at the Great Wall of China.  I have never been here and wanted to get an idea of what it looked like.

Here I am in the bell tower in Big Ben in London.  Since I am from England I had to visit a British inspired site.

Here I am in the Cologne Cathedral.  It is French inspired and looks beautiful.  It is still undergoing construction, but what is complete is really nice.  I chose to visit here as I had never heard of it and wanted to know what it looked like.

Here I am flying alongside the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  I have always wanted to visit Paris but have never had the chance as of yet.  Hopefully one day I will be able to visit it in real life.

Here I am at on the Golden Gate Bridge.  Yet again somewhere else that I would like to see in real life.

Here I am at Mont Saint Michael.  I thought that it would be a nice place to visit and boy was I right.  Such breathtaking views!  Although you have to climb a lot of stairs to get a view like the one pictured below.

Here I am in a simulated environment called Theatron.  Here you can pick from 25 different types of theaters that will build right in front of your eyes (although it does take a long time to load).  Here I am standing next to a picture of the theater that I chose to have built outside.

My overall reflection about my Second Life experience is a good one.  I discovered that it is very difficult to build items but as long as you have the time and patience, you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it.  While building, I always had trouble lining things up but I think my skills have improved greatly as I learned to build different items.

I think that the Second Life environment is a great way to educate people and look forward to what Second Life will be able to offer in the future of education.

I plan on taking the other two Second Life classes and look forward to learning even more than I have already learned.

Immersing Myself in Second Life

For my final project I decided to do a compare/contrast between three concentration camps in Bosnia and three concentration camps in Germany.  My overall purpose for this project was to provide an education experience to promote knowledge on subjects that not everyone has been exposed to or even knows about, especially in Bosnia and Hercegovina.  Knowledge is everything and having knowledge about horrible things in history will perhaps prevent future occurrences.

The first set of photos documents my building and placing of objects in my space to hopefully provide the visitor in a complete immersion experience.  The experience begins in the war in Bosnia and Hercegovina from 1992-1995.

The tour continues to Trnopolje concentration camp and the plates and cups located below the display represent starvation.

Next is Omarska concentration camp, which was the most brutal of all concentration camps located in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

 

Traveling on to Keraterm concentration camp.

Moving on we find ourselves in Germany during the war in 1941-1944.

I chose the following concentration camps as they were the closest to Bosnian concentration camps as far as how long they were in operation.  The first is Sajmiste concentration camp.

Next is Majdanek concentration camp.

And finally, Maly Trostenets concentration camp.

I wanted to give an overall feeling of death in my display for all those who lost their lives in such a horrible way.  I chose to use dead items to add to the overall effect of death, despair and loss.  Here are a few pictures:

 Dead oak tree.

    In the background you can see dead bushes and hedges.

Gnarled dead tree.

    Dead willow tree.

A thornbush.

    A thornhedge.

To pay homage to all of the victims, I wanted to create mounds for all of the bodies that were buried in Germany and Bosnia and Hercegovina.

To aid in the visitor finding their way around my space, I created a large sign telling them where to begin and also placed metal fences and skulls as a guide throughout my display.  Here are a few pictures:

 

 I also built a rock display to show my building skills.

For my final picture, I thought that it would be nice to fly over my space to see what it looked like from above:

 

I hope that you enjoyed walking through my display.  

Bibliography

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/poland/majdanek/Majdanek01.html

http://www.inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2011/volume_3/number_1/the_maly_trostenets_extermination_camp.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maly_Trostenets_extermination_camp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keraterm_camp

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Keraterm_camp/113538698695061

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omarska

http://www.fontbonne.edu/academics/undergraduate/departments/englishcommunication/bosnia_memory_project/omarska/index.php
http://www.fontbonne.edu/academics/undergraduate/departments/englishcommunication/bosnia_memory_project/keraterm/index.php
http://www.fontbonne.edu/academics/undergraduate/departments/englishcommunication/bosnia_memory_project/trnopolje/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trnopolje_camp
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/malytrost.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sajmi%C5%A1te_concentration_camp

My "Fenced In Space" on Fontbonne Island

In trying to design a theme for this week's project, I decided to build items that represent relaxation and hope.  For the relaxation part, I believe that it is important to be able to take time to relax and I definitely do not do enough of this.  For the hope part of it, the light at the top of the lighthouse symbolizes hope for more relaxation in the future (at least where I'm concerned). 

I started with a rock base and then I decided to build a lighthouse to put on the base.  Here is the base and my various stages of construction of the lighthouse:

I searched and searched for a light script but was unsuccessful, so I decided to build a yellow square to represent the light at the top of the lighthouse.

While I was working on the lighthouse, I decided that I needed a pier and then a boat with pillows and a book on Shakespeare to read.  I also decided to add a fishing pole to try my hand at fishing.  Here are a few photos of my building process:

 Here's an overhead view of me sitting in my boat.

 Here I am looking out over the horizon.

 Here I am sitting and then standing while waiting for a fish to bite.

I decided that I needed a rug for the pier, so I built a round rug and put a fishnet pattern on it.

I wanted to define the perimeter a little better, so I added a few rocks.

Here is the rock perimeter that defines my space as well as serving as a place to sit if I have visitors.

I hope that you enjoyed this mini tour of "My fenced in space" on Fontbonne Island.  I am proud to say that everything that you see in my space was 100% built by me.