Michael and Terrans' learning, continued

Twitter is a recent social media tool that is catching on quickly while spawning different and better widgets throughout the last few months. It is an IM based mini-blog that is audible (with chirps and dings and tweets) and viewable as an ongoing conversation between “friends” in a variety of browsers and forums, including within the SL viewer. Many educators using new media, especially those who are fans and residents of virtual worlds are avid users of Twitter, and share web links to academic articles and other Web 2.0 media such as Slideshare, Flickr, personal blogs, and interesting happenings in second life.
A few weeks prior to this writing I saw and heard a tweet pop up that told of yet another Relay for Life event in SL that was taking place on an island designed as an amusement park, a message that told the “tweeterverse” that several of the most revered and popular female avs were positioned in kissing booths in order to raise money for the American Cancer Society. I had been to a previous event in-world a few months prior at which some of my educator acquaintances were auctioning themselves off as virtual dates. Hoping to participate in this noble philanthropy once again and looking forward to buying a kiss with one or more of the metaverse’s most stunning avs, I teleported directly from Twitterific (the desktop Tweet tool I now prefer) into SL to enjoy a few moments of diversion from this writing. As I arrived, I found myself at a teleport station on one side of the island that happened to be surrounded by a dance party. Activating my streaming audio, I walked the perimeter of the island to classic Motown tunes in search of the kissing booths.
As I walked through the 3D environment I barely missed getting squashed by a fifty foot T-Rex who was taking a similar tour, and spent sometime watching five of SL’s most attractive avs raking in two-hundred Linden dollars for three chances to throw a ball at the paddle that would activate their dunk tank. I paid my money, but never quite figured out how to throw the balls. Other fair-goers were doing quite well, and I spent a few moments enjoying the ladies and gents getting wet, some of them wearing bikini’s and Bermudas while other’s wore their Elizabethan finest. I found the kissing booths, and paid another two hundred Linden to enjoy a sustained kiss in the hands of a lovely av, who chatted amiably with me throughout that moment. Terran Timeless, my av who is gaining familiarity in academic circles in-world, toured these fairgrounds in three dimensions, walking through crowds of people and admiring the amazing textures and colors on the leaves of trees dappling gently in the breeze. My four hundred Linden (about $1.35 on the exchange rate for the day) added to a US dollar amount of four million dollars that SL efforts for Relay for Life have raised since the New Year. I logged off of SL to return to my work having been somewhere, in the company of others, having experienced a few unreal things that were as real as my fingers tapping keys and the good work that was being done.