VWEC Expert Series with Max Chatnoir
Channel: Spiff Whitfield
Date: 2023-04-15

Title:  Developing Genome Island for Teaching and Learning

Max will share with us how she developed Genome Island for Teaching and Learning and used scripting, as she taught herself those skills, to make prims work to demonstrate elements of her content.

About Max:  
Max taught biology for about 50 years, mostly at Texas Wesleyan,  before she retired in 2022.  When she first came into Second Life in 2004, she was looking for a place as immersive as World of Warcraft where I could teach biology online.  She had only a little experience in programming and no experience in building.  I started with a small parcel on the Second Life mainland, and eventually ran out of building space and moved to what is now Genome Island, once part of the SciLands in Second Life.  I moved my online nonmajors course to Second Life in 2007,  as soon as my university got computers that could run the browser.  I would like to tell my story to encourage  other educators to take advantage of the many advantages virtual worlds for teaching.  You don't need to be an expert builder or scripter -- you just need to want to share the world in your mind with others.