My Journey in Secondlife Part 1: Getting Started

I am a very big fan of technology, however I have always been a little resistant to social media, virtual simulations, and MMORPG's (I know "What else is there on the Internet?"). I have very little time in the real world to spare, much less engaging a make believe one. So over time I have caved on the whole social media thing, and it was better than I thought, but I have still held out on the other two. Well I am going to be trying out the virtual world in an upcoming assignment in my Emerging Instructional Technologies class so I thought this would be a great opportunity to blog about the experience from a virtual newbie perspective.

What is Second Life? Check the video Below.

I have to say that I created an account on Second Life about a year ago just to try it out and see what people had been talking about. Starting out in second life was relatively easy, installation, update, then boom your in. Now I had messed around a little when I created my account before, enough to have an Avatar already set up, so I started off on Help Island without having to do any of these steps. First off don't teleport off of Help Island until you have walked through all of the help topics, just some advice for the beginner. I found the most exciting term I could, in this case "teleport" looked good, what's the worst that could happen, and like a true man I moved on without following all of the instructions. It didn't hinder me too much, basic movements and the like were not to hard. I immediately hear and see many people interacting and making noises. Not speaking, not moaning so much, just a clucking into a slight screaming like noise, and it was irritating. Not a great start to my virtual experience but I moved away, found out how to teleport elsewhere and tried out a few things.

The end of the road....but I have a killer Zebra Skinned jacket.

After about 25 minutes of exploring I have some takeaways from my first in-depth virtual experience:

1. You can create your own wardrobe which was pretty cool. I would not have been able to figure this out on my own though. I watched a walk through video that showed where the options were and from there it was not to difficult. I ended up with a zebra skinned jacket and a clear conscience in doing so. Sweet!
2. I apparently found the end of the world, at least the area I was in (see image above).
3. You can fly by Pressing the E key. Very Cool!
4. If you fly over the water then stop flying it drops you into a sort of limbo of nothing-ness and gives error messages about completing your travel time. Oops.
5. There is no filter for any conversations that are going on. I walked on a few that would make a sailor blush. 

Overall my first real foray into the land virtual was OK. I can see the appeal to meeting others in the virtual world, it's big, colorful, and similar to that of a game. I will keep trying things out and see where it goes.
Has anyone used second life before? What was your first time like? How do you like it now?