Orientation to Second Life at Macquarie University

Hi, welcome to Macquarie University – I’m

Jemma Jishnu

, the facility docent forthe virtual Learning and Teaching Centre.If you already have an avatar, and Second Life loaded onto your computer, just visit http://tinyurl.com/djcd5x‐ and click ‘teleport’ to visit MQ on theeducational community islands of Jokaydia.If not, here’s a guide to getting started. It’s recommended that you take aroundan hour to download the application and set up your avatar and then spendanother hour fun‐learning your way through this orientation.Don’t get hung up on ‘is it a game’ and ‘what’s the point’, just keep an open mindand take your first steps into one of educations fastest growing sectors – VirtualWorlds.

How do I join Second Life?

Visit http://www.secondlife.comand head to the ‘join’ page.The joining process that starts here will take you through a form where you'll beasked to fill in a number of fields.

There is no cost to register

. You must be over 18 years of age.First choose not to join a community at this stage, by clicking "

Skip this step".

Then fill in the username, last name, birth date and email address. Please notethat once you have created an avatar, you cannot change its name. It willrepresent you. The surnames are from a list and you choose first name. Somepeople choose their real name, others a pseudonym which often is a word, not even a name. The point is, choose well, you can only set up one avatar per emailaddress you provide to Second Life.

2. Choose an appearance.

Almost everyone will set about transforming their avatar’s appearance once theyhave go to grips with the user interface of second life, so the choice you make inthe next step is neither final or critical.