I’ve made what I’m calling an Optisphere to show a panorama of the Martian landscape. It’s a simple spherical prim with a texture on the inside, but I think it’s fun.

I’ve been venturing outside the protective bubble of Elihu Island to check out educational sims in SL. I’m popping stills and grabbing some video to use in a short video we can use to show faculty what is possible in SL. I’ve also done some thinking about some clever machinima that might catch some faculty interest.

I’ve crawled the web and found a bunch of information on how people are using GeoWalls. I’ve compiled them at http://del.icio.us/yale_itg/geowall. I also received a quote from Zach Boxrud at ProjectorPoint, a company in Minnesota that does a lot of these for schools.

The next step is to get some faculty interested in trying one out with their class. I’ve approached Jeff Kenney in Astronomy and have emailed Mark Brandon in Geology. It would be really useful to actually have a set up to show, though, when I explain it.