Web 2.0 and the law (and textures, too!)

We're stuck as far as being able to get into SL, so after spinning my wheels for a few days, have decided to bring in the legal aspects that govern online behaviors. Even though cyberspace is still (mostly) an anarchy, more and more legal statutes are being created to protect people and to bring order to chaos (I'll keep my own opinions to myself here in the interest of allowing people to make their own decisions. Just how far the government needs to go in protecting people from themselves is an ongoing debate).

We've been reading an article over the past two days, stopping to take apart the arguments and decide how we feel about them. The kids' attitudes range from outrage to fear to "just-ingnore-it-and-it'll-go-away." They'll be journaling on the topic tomorrow (ran out of time today) and I'm interested to see where their thoughts take them.

On a different note: the kids have been creating textures using Paint, Picasa and Microsoft Office Picture Manager (three really easy-to-use programs, two of which are already on the computers. Picasa's a free download and that was a easy, too). It took a long time to get the jpg's uploaded as we have 13 laptops all trying to access the same wireless port at the same time. Needless to say, we ended up splitting the class into groups and uploaded over three days' time. But they had fun playing. Now if only we can get into SL so they can see the wonders they can do with those textures...

Till later,
Thespis