Google Lively

I ran into Google Lively today, and was much impressed.

Here is my room (you will need the Lively plugin)

It was a little slow on my home internet connection, but I had fun choosing my room shell, furnishings, and avatar clothing. I made my avatar without hair to reflect my current state of baldness! I learned how to use the catalog and selected a number of different outfits, hairstyles, tables, chairs, and lights so that I could add things later.

I was interested to find that the catalog category with the most items seemed to be “goth”. I was more interested in “campus coffee house”. I did not find much in the way of paintings or posters that I wanted to use, and some things I chose in the catalog didn’t seem to be available once I got back to the room. But maybe I did something wrong!

I turned off the ambient sound, hoping it would remedy the “flicker” in the overlay panel, but no luck. It might be a bandwidth issue, so I will try it the next time I am on campus and have a much better internet connection.

There were quite a few items that corresponded to a classroom. Desks, tables, whiteboards, and filing cabinets. I was surprised that there were no books or laptops in the catalog! I decided that I didn’t want to build a ‘classroom” space that looked like a traditional classroom. So I went with the coffee house, an overstuffed chair, and a floor lamp. Right now, there is only enough furniture for me. I guess I need to allow people to add their own furniture!

I have, for a couple of semesters now, required all my students to get gmail accounts, primarily so that we can explore many of the google tools that are of particular use for teachers. We like to use the google spreadsheet, documents, and presentations. Maybe we will take a good look at Lively as well!