Flixn.com and Second Life

A great find from Jane Nicholls of ICTUCAN podcasting fame.

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I can see lots of uses for this little Web2.0 tool. It reminds me of Bubbleshare except that you use a webcam instead of still images. Flixn.com embeds in Blogger and I am trying here to see if it will embed into Edublogs as well (it doesn’t BTW).

I can’t wait until I get my new computer with a webcam attached. Roll on October, Apple! I will let Jane speak for herself. Click on the photo to see it working.

Jane, Sheryl and I had a play in Second Life today as well. Jane showed me around David Warlick and Will Richardson‘s Office. It was a bit of a cheek really and I virtually blushed when Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach turned up and we introduced ourselves. Image We were impressed when Sheryl flew about the place and started moving the furniture! We tried to have a group photo but the couch was too small and I am not very good at sitting down!

I keep on bumping into things. My avatar is a skinny young thing and my name is Scrumples Schnyder so if you see a skinny young thing with the name Scrumples Schnyder repeatedly bumping into walls do come up and say hello!

I have been a bit scathing of Second Life but it was way much more fun with a guide to give you a few tips on how to open doors & the like and meeting up with a friend as well. I will have a bit more of a play with this one.

Skype call to Rob Waddell in Valencia

Last night we had a bit of a highpoint for our podcasting and Skyping endeavours- through one of our Appleby parents we made contact with Rob Waddell, Olympic gold medalist and now grinder on Team Emirates New Zealand yacht in the America’s Cup challenge in Valencia, Spain. Image

Children had prepared fat questions to ask and we had all gathered back at school at 7pm on Monday night.

In order to overcome the problem of feedback when Skyping to a larger audience I plugged a splitter into the headphone jack and had one pair of headphones in one socket and speakers into the other. Perfect!

To add a little spice to the session TVNZ had got wind of it and were filming in Appleby, NZ while a second crew were filming in Valencia.

Rod proved to be an excellent spokesperson for Team New Zealand and had an easy rapport with the children.

You can view an edited version of the call on our podcasting page.

And to top it all off we made it onto the nationwide TVNZ six o’clock news tonight. How’s that for being globally connected with a rich, real authentic context!