New Avatar Help

By Existential Paine

My way of trying to help fellow new avatars get started in Second Life is by offering the following tips.

Orientation Island

I was so anxious to get into Second Life that I spent all of 5 minutes on Orientation Island. Bad move on my part! Spend as much time as possible there getting familiar with Second Life and you can also set Busy so no one bothers you (highly recommended).

Know Your Platform

Know how your specific platform works with Second Life. There are a lot of people willing to help when you are exploring but many only know it from their platform so don't get frustrated when they offer it from their platform perspective. Here is a great list of shortcuts to get you started. Oh, remember that Apple + Click is equivalent to right clicking.

Terminology

Beyond a lot of Instant Message language, there are also some terms and abbreviations used in SL that will be helpful to know:

Avatar: Your digital representation
In World: This refers to happenings within Second Life
Second Life (SL)
Real Life (RL)
Teen Grid (TG): The teen portion of Second Life
Second Life Time (SLT): This is equivalent to Pacific Standard Time
Main Grid (MG): The adult portion of Second Life
Animation Override (AO): A way to make your avatar act and move in different ways such as walk in a unique way
Prims: The building blocks of Second Life. Everything you see in SL is constructed with prims.
Teleport (TP): A way of quickly transporting to a different location
Linden Dollars (L$): The currency in Second Life; roughly speaking, 1000 Linden dollars equals 4.00 US dollars
SLurl: This is a Second Life URL and offers a direct link to an SL location.

Training Help

After Orientation Island, there are some other spots worth visiting to help you grow and some tutorials to watch and try:

• Education Island (a nice place to go right after Orientation Island)
• Monday nights at 5pm SLT: Excellence in Instruction Series at the Literature Alive! Headquarters
• Thursday nights at 6pm SLT: ISTE socials on ISTE island to begin networking, get some tips, and setup tours
• Tutorials to watch and try

Adapted from Existential Paine's TechLearning Blog, We've All Been There so Have a Heart