Library almost ready

There are only some minor tweaking left to be done in the library. It is now almost as we want it. The scripts are working fine except for the chairs, they need new scripts. It feels so weird to sit on the armrest. If somebody have a suitable script for chairs swishing about in their inventory, send it to Pure, please, we can make use of it. The book collection is not in its final state. The thought is that it should change over time and hopefully it will increase in quality and number.

Mosaic Opening Party: meeting n. 1

First meeting in Mosaic to organise the opening party.

Who was there?
Wong Braveheart is Online
Wong Braveheart
Abdullah99 Learner
Oday Aprendiz
Jane2307 Learner
JacobWang Parx
Anna Begonia


We decided that:
a) The party will be on the weekend.
b) The party will be repeated twice, so that everybody will be able to come
c) The first party will be on Friday 28 at 7.00 am SLt
d) the second party... will be decided in tomorrow meeting.
e) we want music and dance,
e 1) we will be looking if we can find a DJ among students, otherwise we will put a radio on.
f) Anna Begonia will be in charge of the catering
g) there will be social games
h) and there will be prizes
j) Jane will explain the games to the students

Wowow what a students we have!!!

Everybody at Languagelab are very impressed with the wonderful job students are doing!! And we all agree with them: yes, Languagelab students are doing a great job. Do you want some examples?

Here we go:

Txell Darcy offered her magic table and prepared a wonderful board with link to resources for our homeworks.



These are all links to web page that can help you while you are making your homeworks. Just click on them...
And the table? For each person who sits down, a nes chair appears, so that it can host many many students.
A wonderful place in the sun to make your homework with some friend!
Jane2307 Learner and JacobWang Parx are alrady thinking of many ideas for helping you with your homeworks and with your learning. If you want to collaborate, get in touch with them!

Feel like reading a book? Our librarian Abdullah99 Learner, Heimlaga Svenska, Pure Friend have worked very hard to offer us a low prim and efficient library. And here is how it looks.



here are Jane2307 Learner and JacobWang Parx (with some conection problems) checking if the chairs are confortable.
We will be always looking for new free online books, so if you know of any, contact the Library group.

And now we are ready for the many activities students would like to do!!! Any idea? Paste you notecard on the board in the porch or contact Anna Begonia.

The groups... and new ideas!

Student Common Room Groups
Study Corner: Txell Darcy, JacobWang Parx, Jane2307 Learner
Food and Drinks: Zhefeng Key, Ayana Choche
Library: Heimlaga Svenska, (hi hi, he does not know it yet) Pure Friend, Abdullah99 Learner
Sofas and cosy corner: Amparia Ecksol, Oday Aprendiz
Relax and game : Wong Braveheart, Bashar Learner, Virtualriver Cazenove
Garden: Hecate Juliess, TR Parking


Activities:
World/quiz of the day: Pure Friend, Virtualriver Cazenove.
International idioms week: Heimlaga Svenska.
Opening party:
End of the year/Xmas activities:

student common room calendar

The student common room calendar is working again. You can check it online or on the board in Mosaic... (the Student Common Room official name).
It's there to help all student organise their meetings, events, parties and whatever they want. If you want to be added to it, please contact Anna Begonia.
For those who can access it already, we set it to SLT, so that we do not get confused (since we are all coming from different countries).

Things are taking form

Students working in the middle of the night


The activity is frantic at the student common room! Every time I go there there are some students working, preparing things, organising themselves! Sentences crossing eacho other int the chat, voices coming from all the different part of Mosaic...
I'm discovering that many of our classmates are very skillful, and they have their inventory filled with nice things they are willing to share. The atmosphere is very nice, a bit cahotic some times, but I'm Italian, so I have no problem with caos :o))















Let's see what we have already ready: The Relax and games group has prepared this nice corner: very confortable... and dangerous: once you lay down you would not stand up anymore.

Then we have a very primising library corner.















and on the wall nearby someone wrote a very nice quote:














So we said: YESS, we need some flowers here around. And here are Hecate Juliesse and TR Parking in the Gardeners Group.














that's nice. And what about our cosy chatty corners? Oday and Amparia did a great job: Amparia more colourful and oday more "serious" but very stylish.




























And when I left, Txell was at work with the study room. To spare some prims, she will be using a special magic table with chairs: sit there with some friends and you will see how nice and practical it is.













Come to see us and join us, there will be always something to do, or someone to help. It's a good way to meet new friends and... you know, you will have to talk in English all the time!!

And we have a Charity corner: where Noddy Shepherd will keep us informed of Charity events going on in SL. If you know of any, or you are interested in participate in any, you can contact her.

We need people for:
a) Opening Night group: to organise a nice party for the official opening of Mosaic.
b) Xmas/new year group: are we not going to decorate the place for Xmas?
c) Xmas/new year activities group: are we going to do something special for the end of december/begining of jannuary?


And that's all folks :o))

Proposal for an activity at Mosaic

Expose yourself
or how I made a fool of myself in SL

When we make a fool of ourselves it is a damning piece of evidence that we are human, so why don't we take advantage of that and have some fun.
I'm thinking of an incident which was embarrassing when it happened but now gives you a hearty laugh when you think about it.

Let us take my story as an instance of how things can turn out.
On a regular basis I meet a Mexican lady in SL. A cheerful lady, very serious in her attempt to learn Swedish and I do my very best to help her. The incident took place when we tried to solve how to pronounce the Swedish vowel ä, which seems to be very difficult to pronounce for novices in the Swedish language. It sounds similar to the English bad, habit and similar words, but with a much broader accent. Well, I thought my head off, looking for a suitable word that could serve as an example.
Then I had it, it was like a bolt from the blue, a brilliant idea, a real stroke of genius: try to say BÄÄÄ, like the sheep.
Silence... then I heard a gentle voice in my headset: but our sheep, they speak Spanish.
Of course not, Mexican sheep do not speak Swedish. How !"#¤%&/& (translation depends on the readers imagination) dense can one be before someone hand over a ticket. For some reason the headset felt very warm not to say hot.

Ok, now we need a volunteer in case this proposal strike somebodys fancy.

New student homes name!

Here is the provisional sign with the new name of the common student room
Are you good at graphics? Can you draw? Would you like to try to make a new, nice sign for Mosaic... The student's home?

Get in touch with Anna Begonia.

The library is under construction

If you have links to nice reading you want to share there is a box where you can drop a notecard.

And the winner is....

1. Chose the name of the student common room you like best. You can choose only one.
Response

mosaic… the student’s house (26.3%)
Seriously Fun House ( 15.8%)
All in one (10.5%)
The Hill Billy Barn (15.8%)
Gimme Shelter (0.0%)
The Languagelab Shelter (15.8%)
Shelter Learners' Inn ( 5.3%)
Brainstorming ( 5.3%)
warm area (5.3%)
answered question: 19
skipped question: 1

2. About the front windows in the Student common room

I like them as they are, I do not want to change them. ( 25.0%)
I would like them to be phantom, so I can walk inside tbrough the windows. (40.0% )
I like open spaces: I do not want any window altogether: take out the wall and the window.( 5.0% )
answered question: 20
skipped question: 0

3. As you know not everybody of us can see Youtube vides, due to national or tecnical
restrictions or because they are using a client that does not support it. Knowing that (and may
be you are one of those students that have problems for watiching videos) would you like to
have a media player in the common room?

Yes, I would like to have a media player in the common room (90.0%)
No, I would'nt like to have a media player in the common room (10.0%)
answered question: 20
skipped question: 0

Coffee for all

Zhefeng put back the coffee stand, the one that disappeared misteriously. He as well tried to build a vending machine with the help of Anna, but there was a problem with the script, so... the vending machine will be "improved" in future.

work in progess in the student common room

News from the student common room!!

We painted the walls white, so that the place is more bright.




We built some stairs. Now it's easier to get in



We added two boards: one for the events (if you want to be added to the google calendar, please contact Anna Begonia) and the other one is for leaving messages, etc.



Need help with your work group? Come and see Anna Begonia!
you can check when she's online on the student room board or in the google calendar!
Are you going to organise some event for the student common room? Ask Anna Begonia to add you in the google calendar. In this way all the students will be informed!

Need advice and help?

Anna Begonia will be in the student common room to help you and your work group:

Thursday 20th November: 10.00 am - 11.00 am SLT
Friday 21st November: 2.0 am - 3.00 am SLT
Saturday 22nd November: 6.00 am - 7.00 am STL
Sunday 23rd November: 8.00 pm -9.00 pm SLT

see you in world

Polls, working group and online help

The Student Common Room Name poll is going very well. We will close it on Friday at 6.00 am SLT and publish the results on Saturday. So if you haven’t voted jet, hurry up.

Let’s help us organising the Student Common Room: we need you!
Could not come to the last meeting and was left out of the work groups? Send an IM to Anna Begonia and she will help you to join one of the already formed work group or see what else it is needed and form a new group. There will be things to do for everyone!! :o)

Are you in one of the work group and need technical support or help of any kind? Check in the blog (http://scrmeetings.blogspot.com/2008/11/need-advice-and-help.html) for the time Anna Begonia will be online to help you. You can meet her in the new Student common room, in its new location.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Student%20Homes/133/104/29

See you in world!

Problem with two names

A very expert SL student just told us that we can have some problems with two of the names that we are voting for the Student Common Room.

- Seriously Fun House (SFH). The abreviation SFH is the same of a well known SL group Support For Healing (SFH). That's why we keep the name, Seriously Fun House but not the abreviation.
- The Shelter. In SL there is another well known place, with very high traffic, called The Shelter: a group for new SL residents. In this case, new Languagelab students, not very expert in SL, could get confused and end up there instead than in the Student Common Room. We all know how it is difficult to be a newbie, and we want our Common Room to be a welcoming place, not a confusing one.
Therefore we are changing The Shelter to The Languagelab Shelter.

In case you had voted one of those two names and now do not like the new version, contact Anna Begonia who will try to find a solution.

Ask your friends in Languagelab to vote, vote, vote! all names are rather even... This will be a very difficult decision!!

Organising ourselves in groups

Remember to vote the name of the student common room!!
Here is the link to start voting on...

1. The name of the common room
2. If we want windows or not
3. If we want a media player or not

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=pO8Vc6TLujpfG_2fHBDN9uLQ_3d_3d

vote! vote! vote!


Today we started to organise ourselves in groups!

people attending (not everybody was able to stay for the whole meeting)
Wong Braveheart
Amparia Ecksol
pure Friend
JacobWang Parx
txell Darcy
Wong Braveheart
Khalid Jumanya (who paid us a visit :o))
Ayana Choche
Bashar Learner
Zhefeng Key
soso Melson
Jane2307 Learner
Oday Aprendiz
Eddyw Learner

we went to the student common room building in it's final location. (once you arrive, you will see a small building on the left. Here it is!! Soon you will find a direct teleport)
We rezzed the map with the result of the past meetings and we started organising working groups.

There are still many things to do, so if you want to be in charge of a working group, get in touch with Anna Begonia. If you want to join one of the work group already opened, please contact the avatar in green (who will be the person responsible of the group).
Here are the working groups already opened.

Student Common Room
Study Corner: Txell Darcy, JacobWang Parx.
Eating and drinking vendings: Zhefeng Key, Ayana Choche
Library and papers rack: Heimlaga Svenska, (hi hi, he does not know it yet) Pure Friend, Abdullah99 Learner
Coach and sofas and general furnitures: Amparia Ecksol, Oday Aprendiz
Relax and game corner: Wong Braveheart, Bashar Learner, Virtualriver Cazenove

Activities:
world/quiz of the day: Pure Friend, Virtualriver Cazenove.
International idioms week: Heimlaga Svenska.

al the students in the working grups can ask to be added to this blog, so that they can inform the rest of the student on the progress of their work.

If you have any problem, need advice, need sitting balls, vending machines, help with textures, help with building, help with simple scripts, help for anything :o)) you can always count on Anna Begonia.


As well each group was given a board to write messages for its group on it (and leave in the student common room while we are still organising the different spaces.
We will try to set up a googlecalendar or some other device to cohordinate and organise
meetings, parties and events.


If you have anything that you want to share you can:
It it's a piece of forniture: post it in the flickr group http://flickr.com/groups/938740@N21/ (you can contact anna begonia, heimlaga svenska, txell Darci and Amparia Ecksol for more information)
if it's a game, a book, magazine, a vending machine, etc, you can contact the person in green of each group.

let's start voting!

Here is the link to start voting on...

1. The name of the common room
2. If we want windows or not
3. If we want a media player or not

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=pO8Vc6TLujpfG_2fHBDN9uLQ_3d_3d

vote! vote! vote!

Monday: 5th meeting

Another day of very good participation, although not everybody could stay for the all meeting. For instance, anna had to left after 30 minutes, but Pure took the lead and was elected the secretary of the meeting.
And a very productive one indeed.



Here is what our secretary Pure wrote down in the notecard:

Students Who came to the meeting:
Anna Begoin
Ayana Choche
Abdullah99 Learner
Amparia Ecksol
Txell Darcy
Khalid Jumanya
Pure Friend
Oday Aprendiz

We discussed different things ……

About the name of the room and Anna decided that we will vote on the site to decide which name it will be more suitable.

Also we talk about the furniture, the plants and the flower and we decided to put it on flicker "If anybody have furniture, freebie or anything upload it to flicker" and we will vote…..

Pure thought if we can put on some small blogs or lesson every day, or every week. Amparia thought if there was the possibility to set home here for student, so you don't waste time in tp

or just a name of useful link to improve our English in easy way

but we think we can't decide now about who will do it. I think that some volunteer should coordinate them

The building

Amparia suggest that we need more light, It's so dark.

Txell suggest that we need stairs to the second floor.

How would you like to organise it's space?

_each "zone" or corner for a definite proposal<<<

and that should be in yellow because if u see the map in the blog you will see that there are different zones and so each one with a purpose"

_ a reading corner (still to discuss and decide)

- At my school we have the quiz of the day where each day we get a general quiz that sometimes gets us interested in… providing that can also be interesting… makes us know more about stuff around the word. (still to discuss and decide)

_I think it should have a lot of English books. If I have free time and no class, I can go there and enjoy, or I can discuss the content of these books with students here.<<<<< We think to make a small library.

_write idioms common in our languages with the English translation. (1st activity: write idioms of your culture, but translated in English. discuss it 2 days, and invite teachers

- different parts (a study corner, a corner for relaxing in privacy or small groups, a corner with a table for many people to chat or play or study or discuss)

- the same corners both outside and inside (studying can be nice outside as well, perhaps with a pillow under a tree or by the water/beach)

the study corner will be outside, near

_a space for presentations (short workshops, etc

I think that this space could be the same as TV and stage

people can use the stage for presentations

- announcement corner, where students can put notices and info (no monetary transaction allowed)

Amparia suggest the wall in front of the sea.

_a big map on the wall for students to see where other people live (perhaps with pins to indicate where we are) <<<

Sunday: 4th meeting

Good participation, although not everybody could stay for the whole meeting:

Heimlaga Svenska
Bashar Learner
ling Markstein
txell Darcy
Cnliuyin Learner
Lulu Learner
Najjar Learner
Abdullah99 Learner



We started talking about the name. We agreed that we had to many names and that to start a survey to chose the final one with so many names could be very dangerous: what if each student gave his/her vote to a different name? So we decided to take out fo the lists some that would be very general or could be misundestood, or coud be offensives.
See the Ugly-page for updating

We decided to have the open side (let's call it the porch) facing the sea. On the corner opposite to the study corner there will be a relax corner, with games and pillows to lie in the sun (and distract the serious students who will be studing he he)

We as well discussed where to put the library, the tv set and the presentation corner, and wether we would have liked to enlarge the window.


txell Darcy is offering her misty tool table for the study corner, so that when it's empty, we will not use too many prims.

We saw that the flickr that anna prepared did not have the right setting. Now we have a group scrm2008 http://flickr.com/groups/938740@N21/, where you can add the furniture (copy, and better if full perm) that you want to share with the student common room.

We as well talked about the "one word a day" and "one question a day" proposal. We liked a lot the idea. Heimlaga Svenska proposed to make as well idioms of the student's country translated into English. We discussed it because we liked the idea but we thought that it could be confusing, and that we would have learned Finnish idioms thinking that they were English ;o). So we decided to make an International idiomatic week, as soon as the common room will be more or less ready.

And we have already ideas for Xmas... lol. We really think that this place will be a unique opportunity to create activities and little games.

See you tomorrow (for a quick-30 min meeting).

Sunday meeting will be decisive!

On sunday Sunday 9th November 9.00 – 10.00 am SLT

Big Name Brainstorming!

Have a look at the names in the Ugly-Webpage http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddgpgdnb_137gmmbvkc7&hl=en Which one do you prefer?

We will be talking about it and many more things.

See you tomorrow!

meeting 8th November

Great paricipation to today meeting.
Bashar Learner
Zhefeng Key
Wong braveheart
Oday Aprendiz
Melly Learner
Lucifer Learner
Logi Learner
Eutropia Carter
Donatella Benoir (who honoured us with this visit and brought with her a good number of students!)
Cnliunyin Learner
Brandywine Diesel
Ayana Choche
anna Begonia
Gerard Latte
Heimlaga Svenska
txell Darcy

I hope I did not forget any :o). Of course, not everybody could stay for the whole meeting.

We started summarising the state of the art of the Common room, and visiting the inside of the building for those who did not know it.
And then we started making decisions.


We decided that the study corner will be outside, in the sun. You can see here the corner we chose for it.


We also discussed on the opportunity to make the windows and walls on the front phantom or to delete them altoghether. Since it's a difficult and controversial issue, we decided to vote on it.

However we all agreed that it would be nice to have flowers, near the windows.

For the chat-corners, we think that we can keep it as they were in Millie's caffe: near the windows.

Many of us find disturbing the splashing sounds of the whale, and Anna Begonia will talk with the Direction to see if it is possible to delete the sound and the whale altogether.



A student offered a coffe stand, that already had a big success and everybody was tasting the delicious coffes it serves. So we decided that, prims permitting, we will have it.









For chosing the furniture: anna begonia opened a flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/32219511@N03/ where everybody who is wiling to share some armchairs/sofas/ coffe table for the chat corner can upload their photos. If you prefer to pubblish them on your account, add the tag scrm2008.

photos will have:
name of object (the same you have in your inventory)
description of perms (also recolor) (only copy objects will be accepted, better if full perm)
name of the student offering the object
a number (progressive) that will be used to vote (we will use survey monkey)


The meeting ended in final location of our student room. Everybody liked it a lot. We are looking forward to move and start working.





See you tomorrow!

Meeting 7th November

Our final location!











2nd Student Common Room meeting. As well this time we had good participation:


Virtualriver Cazenove
Oday Aprendiz (who came as well yesterday but I forgot)
Nj Learner (who participated to the 1st meeting as well)
JoseY Kaligawa


We went to see the new, definitive emplacement in the Students' dorms sim, and we learned that we will have a small sandbox for students.
Oday will surely make good use of it, since he already started to build. He promised that he was going to clean everything before leaving, because otherwise we could have complaints from the direction of the school and the Town Hall authorities.



We talked about the possibility to have games. Everybody agreed that games are very good to talk with other students and they are fun.
We undestood that gambling, money prizes and alcoholic beverages will be not allowed because of the wide cultural variety among students, and not in all country these practices are legal or considered aceptable.
We as well discussed why it is impossible to open the sim to our friends that are not from Languagelab, and Anna Begonia explained that it is because Languagelab got attached more than once by griefers and that when the sims were open it happened to find articles left around that were hem hem not PG, so to say.

Therefore it was decided that the Student Common Room will have games, and that the game corner would be in an open space, to allow anybody to took part and observe.
Virtualriver asked for a Karaoke, and a pizzeria game. We do not know it and Virtual has to explain it better. We decided that we can give freebies as prizes.

NJ offered his acquarium, and we said that if we have enough prims, it would be nice to have one.

Meeting 6ht November

Many people came to the first meeting for the Student Common Room. Not everybody could stay till the end, but the discussion was animated and productive.

Nj Learner
Heimlaga Svenska
Abdullah99 Learner
Hoshy Schnyder
txell Darcy
anna Begonia
mhm Hope I'm not forgettin anybody.

We saw that there are some issue that will be decided in each meeting, others, that may be will be more complex, will be discussed in meeting but voted at the end of this meeting process.


things we will vote:
a) the name of the Student Common Room (more ideas were given, and there is still time for more interesting names.
b) the possibility to have a media player to share videos about our contry or culture.



Things we woul like to have but we know we have to be careful about:
a) a speaker corner.
We know that it can be very intersting but also very dangerous, because it's easy to be carried away by the passion of our speech, and so we decided that no politics no religions topics will be alowed, and that it will be used only to incrase mutual understandment and harmony between people of different coutries.

things that we will have:
a) a book shelf. With books available on the web (all formats, probably organised on a web page/collective delicious to spare some prims) and SL books. everybody will be able to contribute to the common library.
b) a teleport to all city people palces
c) a link to class/city people shedule

furniture:
a) sofa and armchairs for confortably corners
b) big table with chairs. (probably some misty tool table and chairs, to spare prims, and because they are nice and fun)
all chairs/sofas/armchairs will have to be full perm, so that if in future we need more we can make copy without turning it in an arlequine thing.
general organisation

For deciding the forniture we will organise a flickr page, where all students will be able to post what he/she/it would like to share with the group (remember, full perm), and will write a number (progressive) to identify it. At a given point we will vote to decide which ones we will be using.

On the ugly-webpage, anna begonia will mark in yellow those topics that have been discussed in each meeting, so that the progress will be visible to everybody.






If you want to have a look to the ugly-webpage where we collect ideas and proposals, (and where you will be able to see the time/day of the next meetings) click here
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddgpgdnb_137gmmbvkc7