NMC Campus Observer

NMC Teachers Buzz- Live From Otis College Gallery

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Jan 8, 2007 10:14am

What a great turnout we had today (40 avatars from across the US, as well as from France, Germany, the U.K.) for our visit to the Otis College gallery.

A great crowd gathers for NMC Teachers Buzz- a field trip to EduIsland to visit the Otis College Gallery.
posted by CDB Barkley on Eduisland using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Otis College of Art and Design is a professional art and design college. Located in Los Angeles, Otis began in 1918, when LA Times founder Harrison Gray Otis donated his MacArthur Park property for Los Angeles’ first public art college. They offer programs in fine art, architecture, communications, fashion and interactive product design, toy design and digital media.

We appreciate our host, SueMaeLA Escape, who manged to give a tour despite being at home a bit under the weather.

According to SueMaeLA:

We built this space to use as a demonstration venue for faculty. We want them to try Second Life and we felt they needed a space that they would relate to. We have several faculty now who plan to use SL in their classes ths spring.

What we have inside now is a gallery space, we have work by faculty and students now. We hope in future to have created exhibitions (perhaps classes can do that). Out back we have a fire pit and a “beach” for meetings.

The building itself has a unique texture, and is modeled after one of the actual Otis campus buildings, one designed for IBM in the 1960s to resemble a punch card. “We like to call it the ‘crystal punch card’ here because we could make it so much more transparent than in RL.”

Also on hand was Porterhouse Dobbs, who did the build for Otis’ Second Life Gallery:

After some discussion out in front, we toured the gallery, which features both student work and the work of Otis alumni:

The second floor is more open, and SueMaeLA reports that it was designed for meetings and class space. There is also a video player that allows you to see some RL videos about Otis College.

After that we gathered around back on the comfortable beach setting for more conversation. SueMaeLA described a strong interest in exploring Digital Storytelling in Second Life:

The Digital Storytelling class is the one most interested so far in Second Life. Storytelling is one of the things students really need to learn– they are attracted to glitz, but it’s really all about story. There are several types of classes that work with students on it– Digital storytelling is really a writing class, but they use the web and blogs, etc to make stories. One teacher is proposing that the student’s avatar becomes their main character.

And many present suggested this as a future Teacher’s Buzz Session topic.

We have more photos from this meeting on our flickr stream and you can find a full meeting transcript on the Campus Wiki.

Thanks to all the avatars who showed up today, a great kickoff for 2007.

Story filed under: Teacher's Buzz, Teaching and Learning

See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)