Weekend of Learning

About the Weekend of Learning

The Weekend of Learning is a series of classes hosted by mentors for the residents of Second Life once a month on the weekend closest to the 15th of each month.

The next weekend of Learning will be held on Aug 15th,16th and 17th at Tenera

Information for Students

There's some great classes offered as part of the weekend of learning have a look at the Mainand Mentor Coaches page for the listed weekend of learning classes plus others offered by Mentor coaches around Second Life.

Information for Mentors interested in Coaching

Coaches Meeting 2pm Wednesday Aug 6 for coaches interested in participating in the August Weekend of Learning at Tenera.

We're aiming to get as many mentors as possible to teach their favourite things in second life, this could be building, scripting, wiki-ing, getting help in SL, texturing, sculpted prims, machinima, team building, land management, groups, appaearance editing, event hosting, Question and Answer sessions... the list is endless whatever you feel confident in talking about and sharing with people come along and share it with the residents of SL!

Don't worry if you're teaching the same thing as another person, if they're at different times then it means more ppl will be able to come at different timezones.

Once you've decided on a class list it in 2 places for maximum exposure:

• Second Life Events - Log into secondlife.com/events, pick a date from the calendar and click Add Event and fill in the details. To help the weekend add this to the bottom of your event listing :

This class is part of the monthly Weekend of Learning held at Tenera, have a look at     
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mainland_Mentor_Coaches_Class_Schedule for other classes that 
might interest you!

Classes hosted by Mentors as part of this weekend implies no direct endorsement from Linden Lab. 
The opinions and methodology used in this class are not necessarily endorsed by Linden Lab. 

• Mainland Mentor Coaches Schedule - Log into wiki.secondlife.com and go to Mainland_Mentor_Coaches_Class_Schedule and add your class to the others there by copy and pasting one of the existing classes and filling in your details. If you need help with adding your class to the wiki page feel free to IM Simon Kline

Improvements / Suggestions

To make the Weekend of Learning a successful monthly event it's important to keep working towards better ways of teaching and spreading the word about it. These are the current suggestions:

Suggestions implemented so far:

• A large clock for teaching area to remind teachers of the time A new clock has been rezzed above the screen in the main teaching area. This has been set to share with group so teachers can move it if they wish.
• Set up a reservation form for the teaching areas The Mainland_Mentor_Coaches_Class_Schedule page can act as this. If you mouse over the images of the various teaching areas at the top you'll see they're called area 1, area 2 and area 3, please specify the area in your class listing there and make sure you're not in the same area at the same time as another class :)
• Meetings for coaches who want to be part of the weekend of learning to help them with their ideas The next meeting is Wednesday Aug 6 at 2pm. Please IM Simon Kline if this does not suit and we'll add more meetings prior to the event.
• Make more meetings for coaches discussing the issues they have in teaching or tricks. as above
• Better time reservations sign more like what colleges have so one can walk up and see the schedule. Once classes are set on the wiki page, a sign graphic will be created to show the classes in calendar form and displayed around tenera and available for anyone that wants a copy.
• Simon's Flickr photos are just of HIS weekend experience lol - I didn't think to take any of my own sadly (too much else to think about) :-( Perhaps in future we could have a photographer floating around the classes for 5 minutes each time, to take some pictures? We can talk more about this at the meeting but it would be great to have more photos and yes it's hard for the teachers to take the photos so anyone that's free when the classes are on come and take a pic! There is a Flickr group for our pics now, called Second Life Weekends of Learning. Don't forget to add yours to the Volunteers Flickr groups too!

Suggestions yet to be implemented:

• Create a 'Weekends of Learning' group to keep students informed of classes. Another topic for the meeting agenda! Mia Linden is currently working on a related project and so we're partially waiting to see what she comes up with. A group is probably the ultimate solution tho.

Comments from Coaches

• As to the venue, Tenera seems a very good, suitable place to hold classes.
• I hope these Learning Weekends continue.
• I would like to say that this weekend sure was better than last one, more students came and it was just fun. I hope next weekends will be as successful and fun and more students will come.