Literature Alive! (disclosure: I am an owner of this group and have been involved in these developments) is running two events over the next few days.

On Saturday at 8am SL Time students from De Sales University will be judged on their material for the "Literature of the Progressive Era" display in a funfair on land contributed by Finger Lakes Community College. From tomorrow you can judge which of the elements you find meets the criteria best - you are not judging the build (most of it is bought from in-world or created by people other than the students), but the content in terms of how well it teaches you about the era in question - a era of significant social change. You have the chance to vote for the best group, who will win a RL cash prize and leave feedback for the groups via an anonymous web-form.

Literature Alive! has also converted the British Gothic Literature classroom into a haunted house, with some help (and extra prims for a while) from out hostess, the Alliance Library, on Eduisland 3. As well as giving you the chance to learn more about gothic literature and the British authors, there is a hidden red cauldron. Find this to win a small L$ prize. There are other games and activites too, and no commercial activity, just fun for Halloween.

You may remember Harvard Law School's extrusion into Second Life, via the Harvard Extension Program, particularly the Evidence at Large subject on trial advocacy and evidence that took place in January this year, exploring the Bragg vs Linden Lab case. It was certainly one of the more interesting and fascinating things I've seen and done in Second Life so far.

Tomorrow (Wednesday), at 4PM SLT (US Pacific), there will be a second mock trial. This one will be exploring the case/charges against Paul Addis - the man who allegedly set fire to the Burning Man ahead of time. Second Life users are invited to attend and observe, or to serve on the jury. If you're interested, get on down to Harvard's Berkman Island with a little time to spare.

Incidentally, if you haven't looked at this course (lectures and office hours are open to at-large participants - no fees and no enrollment) you really should take a good look at what they've got going on. It really is a treat.

(Thanks to Madison Kotobide for the heads-up)

Colourblindness isn't something I'm afflicted with, although when I'm having a bad day I've been known to wear sunglasses to use to a computer (actually I use prescription filters, but they're a very dark green, so they double as sunglasses).

But, there's a mac programme called Sim Daltonism that, given I work with a range of learners with specific learning difficulties and disabilities I just had to look at. The picture at the top is SL with the commonest form of colourblindness. The picture at the bottom is the same view, taken at the same time. Kind of sobering - even if the main thing it's meant for is to check how well your website works for colourblind users.

1. What was the context/situation/challenge for your immersive experience?
2. What were the particular characteristics of the situation that engaged you in an immersive way.
3. How did the experience change you? What forms of learning / personal development / change
4. came out of the experience?
5. What words/concepts/feelings would you use to describe the immersive experience?
6. What principles or lessons can be drawn from your story?

The witty and engaging Professor Robert J Bloomfield, JGSM, of Cornell University will be running a subject entitled Directed Studies in Business and Oversight in 'Second Life'. Professor Bloomfield is offering a 1- to 3-credit directed study to students interested in exploring and reporting on business and regulatory oversight in Second Life.

Second Life is a fertile ground for studying free market business in an unregulated environment - either because regulations do not exist, or the regulations that do exist for bodies claiming to be banks and stock-exchanges are not observed by proprietors - who may be dismissive or ignorant of the applicability of physical world regulations on their virtual businesses.

Students will choose course deliverables in coordination with the Professor and one another. Examples of likely deliverables include:

• Written analyses of key industries, with particular emphasis on Second Life stock exchanges and those industries with significant representation on those exchanges (including banking, real estate, fashion, media and entertainment).
• Written proposals for implementing regulatory and oversight bodies and practices within Second Life in a way that is appropriate and sustainable (perhaps by students at Cornell or elsewhere who enroll in future courses like this)
• Written analyses and development of software tools that assist business or oversight organizations in Second Life.
• Written analyses of the real-world legal implications of inworld activities (including tort, contract and intellectual property law, securities regulations, and taxation).

Class meetings will include panel discussions, lectures and interviews with Second Life entrepreneurs, journalists, and regulators, as well as executives of Linden Lab, and experts on the business, legal and technological aspects of virtual worlds. Many, if not most, of these meetings will take place in Second Life. Because minors are not permitted in Second Life, participants must be 18 or older to enroll.

Professor Bloomfield is the director of the Business Simulation Lab at Cornell's prestigious Johnson Business School, and an active writer at virtual worlds blog Terra Nova. His research uses laboratory experiments and mathematical models to examine the effects of financial market regulations on investor welfare, and to explore how psychological forces can alter the behavior of financial markets.

Sunbelt Software (a data and network security firm that handles everything from the end-user to the enterprise) has an island in Second Life. You may not have heard a ton about them, other than seeing a few folks wandering around with the Sunbelter last name, courtesy of their registration/orientation system - but they've been working hard on their Second Life presence for some months, catering primarily to their own community.

We got word today that they're starting up a series of Seminars on Sunbelt Software Island, targeting end users and home-office users. How people try to get at your stuff, and the security tips you need to prevent them, titled "How to keep the bad guys out of your PC". Each seminar series will be four sessions. The first session will be in the Sunbelt Auditorium on August 21 at 6PM SLT (US Pacific) - that's tonight - or repeated on August 25 at 6AM SLT.

The full announcement is here, on Sunbelter Software's blog. [Note: The seminars are in text, not voice]

• Empathy based learning
• Encounter based learning
• Exploratory learning