Another year in the WaHeLut worlds portion
of the Cornell University education project
based on the ActiveWorlds platform has begun!

CTCuni morphed into CUni, the platform has been upgraded (thank G'al), this nifty doodly child's drawing is available in the WA, the UI has had a lot of changes, and I can't see where the name of an object's builder is stated. That last is annoying, but the information must be shown somewhere - hard to keep track of which students are doing what, otherwise.*

I had decided I didn't really want to do it again (as I became an unpaid volunteer at the start of last school year), but after speaking with Mothra I decided to do support (clean up, organise, fix things, interface with Cornell) but not work with children. It's too much when I'm alone with the students and particularly as time goes on and they don't know me. One reason for my lack of interest was that we built but didn't seem to use what we had built (mostly due to lack of computers). We decided to use the builds but not build afresh. Much better for this year. Although Mothra's class has 4 computers between 16 students (horrid), the new principal is trying to restore a computer lab** and if he manages it would help a great deal. Tiff is writing a grant. I repeated what I've been saying for years, which is that a mobile, wireless computer lab would be very useful for Wa He Lut. Space is at a premium in the building. When I specified all my needs for my artroom to the architects (after the flood destroyed the school), I asked for a walk-in storage room, flatfile, drawers, cupboards, etc. and got it all (and everything else I asked for, including an etching press***). I'm not sure everyone else said what was needed as storage is an issue in the building.

Anyway, another year begins. This is Year Four, I reckon.

*For instance, last year Tandy duplicated billions of things and I was able to turn off his build privilege and get Mothra to heap scorn upon him.
**I just couldn't believe it when the computer lab was dismantled - I always thought it was partially because they wanted to get rid of Mike but were scared of him, but that might be a flight of fancy.
*** that I had built by Takach in Albuquerque - now I don't know what's happened to it - I hope it's ok and valued even if not used. I should dig out the video I made of the tour I was given when Judy and I visited the factory.

Labels: Wa He Lut