The Games and Gaming Special Interest Group (SIG) had a great started yesterday with 26 students hearing about Roger Stack's adventures in Second Life and Bernie's experience with WoW and The Lord of the Rings - The Battle for Middle Earth.

Roger talked about the 4.1 million users in Second Life (SL) and how hundreds of thousands of $$$ of real money change hands each day. A few people make their real life living in SL! He bought a property in Eldora some months ago - it's above the snowline - and he has built a gallery for some of his wife's art. That's his avatar on the left with the gallery behind him...

He's exploring the educational potential of SL - some believe that in the near future as bandwidth rapidly increases online interations will more often take place with avatars in 3D environments rather than just the text of chat or email. Many universities have already established annexes in SL.

More and more designers are using immersive worlds like these to try out their ideas... walking around, in and even through them. Recently the Half-Life game engine has been used to create a walk-through of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

Over the last year UNICEF has been hosting Global Kids in Second Life - teenagers from around the planet looking at local and global issues - see video clips.

After Second Life Bernie did an excellent presentation talking about WoW and Battle for Middle Earth - while showing off his new laptop

Here is his Middle Earth character Thrugg. Bernie took us on a bit of a tour demonstrating some of the features that makes this game one of his favourites at the moment.

Journalism Students Investigate Food Poisoning

Several students were rushed to hospital with cheese poisoning - and the journalism class were on the case - virtually! They were playing the Be A Reporter Game at News University and had to race against the clock to file a story by the deadline set by the Editor - who wasn't happy with sloppy work. All facts had to be verified and some of the characters in the game had to be interviewed several times before they told the whole story. But in the end several students saw a smiling Editor happy with their investigations.

The first couple of lessons were full on with interviewing and active listening, technology, reading The Mercury newspaper, more technology, writing a story, more technology... A little too much technology for some but everyone coped very well.

Students worked together to post their interviews on a blog - something new for most. Finding attention grabbing headlines and writing leads that capture the reader's interest didn't come easily...

The class watched EPIC 2015 and talked about the changing face of journalism as different media are converging and news services become more personalised.

The class has a great breadth of skills including writing, IT, graphics, photography and even video so it will be interesting to see what publications they decide to produce this year.