Joe Essid directs the Writing Center at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses in writing and literature. He is a Richmond native who attended the University of Virginia and earned a Master's and PhD at Indiana University. His research interests include technology in the classroom and Southern literary humor. His academic writing has appeared in Computers and Humanities, The Writing Lab Newsletter, and anthologies about technology and writing. He is a contributor to Style Weekly and has appeared in Eighty One and RVA. Ignatius Onomatopoeia is the "avatar" who represents Joe in the game-world Second Life. Ignatius will be wandering the virtual terrain of Second Life while his creator writes here about what may be either "the next big thing" for the Internet or the latest darling of the cyber-hip... the reader can decide.
E-mail contact: jessid@mac.com | Web address: writing2.richmond.edu/jessid

Location: Stuck Between a Wiki and a Hard Place

It was simple to come up with a first detailed assignment for my class.  I think it accomplishes a major goal in the service of Tenchi’s Law: Break the Ice.  I want students to state one claim about SL and defend it, after seeing a series of videos and reading some articles about the virtual world.

The next step is trickier. After the writers have an initial impression of SL, how do I get them to navigate to key locations?  Do I provide them with landmarks or do I embed SLURLs into every page of the Wiki?

In the end, students can be easily overloaded, but providing multiple ways to complete tasks is not a bad idea. Read the expanded entry about why I decided to give my class both landmarks and SLURL links.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts