Aubree Lawrence

I chose this internship at Cambridge Community Television because of CCTV’s long-standing commitment to community, education, and being on the cutting edge of exploring ways technology can help empower communities to find expression through media tools.

My learning goals for this internship include:

Building and planning skills in Second Life
How to present Second Life in a way that helps others understand its potential.
Approaches to explaining SL to audiences who are unfamiliar with the platform and/or it’s potential.
Curriculum writing skills by closely documenting the process so others have a roadmap for launching their own presence in SL

Technology becomes more pervasive by the day. It is here, is staying, and we have an opportunity – actually, a responsibility – to make sure that the technology is developed with not just commercial goals, but civic and educational goals as well. I hope to continue to lead projects that explore ways technology can be used to enhance our lives. This internship will give me my first experience of developing and implementing an entire SL project molded by educational and civic goals.

Success of the internship:
A built out presence of CCTV in SL. A handbook detailing the methodology (and outcomes of the methodology) used.
Lessons are critical – both successes and failures, therefore there will also be a blog that tracking the project
A roadmap or manual of sorts that can act as a resource guide (hopefully an inspiration guide too) for others who are considering pursuing this idea.

My academic goals. I will be working on my Master’s thesis at the same time as this project. My thesis is going to be exploring ideas of embodiment in SL. Every exercise in theory is valuable, and asking the question “what is the role of local access in a virtual world” will be an exercise in posing and answering challenging questions that balance theory with real world practical outcomes.