Christmas is fast approaching and we’ll be announcing some celebratory events inworld very soon!  However, I’m very excited to announce today our first Annual Christmas Rental Offer and Fundraising Appeal at jokaydiaGRID!

In honour of the festive season we are offering a 50% discount on setup fees for all new sims on jokaydiaGRID until the 5 January 2011. That means – you can have your very own sim for only $25.00au one time setup fee + $25au per month rental fee!

Sim rentals at jokaydia include: Full region connected to the jokaydiaGRID, Light scripting – limited timed/physics scripts, Up to 25 Avatars concurrently depending on build/activity, Full terraforming rights, Parcel media movie & MP3 streaming. Estate Managers. Parcel divisions allowed, Access to jokaydia Community resources including events spaces, SLoodle tools and other goodies!

For more information and to signup for your new sim click here.

But wait… there’s more!

As well as offering this Christmas discount to new residents, jokaydiaGRID will also be supporting Plan Australia’s Because I am a Girl’ Campaign, by donating $10.00au for each new sim rental created between Wednesday 8 December 2010 – 5 January 2011 to their ‘GIRLFUND’.

Help us help to help Plan’s global campaign to fight gender inequality, promote girls’ rights and lift millions of girls out of poverty and join the fabulous jokaydiaGRID Community at the same time! (Records of the doners and the final donation will be published @ jokaydia.com.)

Who Gets the Cash?

This year we’ve chosen Plan’s ‘GIRLFUND’ as the organisation we will donate to. TheBecause I am a Girl’ Campaign is a global initiative designed to fight gender inequality, promote girls’ rights and lift millions of girls out of poverty. From their website:

“The campaign is based on a series of reports titled Because I am a Girl: The State Of The World’s Girls. To be published between 2007–2015 from Plan International, these reports examine the rights and needs of girls throughout their childhood, adolescence and as young women – and how they are uniquely placed to break the cycles of intergenerational poverty gripping many people in developing countries.”

To find out more, check out the Because I am a Girl’ Campaign or watch the video below.

Plan is one of the largest children’s development organisations in the world. They work with communities in 49 developing countries and raise funds to support their work in 21 countriesaround the world. They aim to actively involve children, and work at a grassroots level with no religious or political agenda, with the goal of transforming the world for children. Find out more by visiting their website.

But I am already a resident or I just like to visit… how can I help?

If you’re already a resident, but you’d like to support our annual fundraising efforts, you are more than welcome to make a donation to the cause. Simply click on the button below to donate via Paypal. We’ll make sure your funds are added to our donation which will sent to Plan International on 6 January 2011. (Records of the doners and the final donation will be published @ jokaydia.com.)

Why Are We Doing It?

One of the things the jokaydia Project has always strived to do is support initiatives and activities that support positive change – whether that’s in how we work and collaborate together inworld, how we deliver learning and teaching in virtual environments or by promoting social issues of importance. This has included fabulous projects like the Virtual Classroom Project, Blue Day, our fundraising activities for the Cancer Council in South Australia and most recently our involvement in the 3D AIDS Quilt.

Our Christmas Rental Offer and Fundraising Effort continues that philosophy and will become an annual event which gives us the opportunity to help to support those who live in poverty around the world. This year we have selected GIRLFUND, as we believe that the inspiring work that PLAN are doing has real world impacts for women and girls around the world.

Dates and Deadlines

This offer is open from 9am Wednesday 8 December 2010 AEDT until 9pm Wedneday 5th January 2011 AEDT.  Your sim order must be received within this period to be eligible.

For more information and to signup for your new sim click here.

Developments at jokaydiaGRID Landing Point

We’ve had a fantastic week at jokaydiaGRID this week and firstly I must welcome all of our new residents! It is wonderful to see so many new faces and also old friends from Second Life visiting us! During the course of the weekend, we’ve had more than 60 new accounts created and Azzura and I have had the pleasure of meeting lots of people on their very first jokaydiaGRID Rez Day! Too exciting!

Thank you everyone for joining us on this fantastic adventure in Opensim! I hope that we can continue to support educators and artists to explore amazing and inspiring uses of virtual worlds – discovering the best uses and best practices for each of our homes in the metaverse! Stay tuned as we begin holding more regular community events and activties inworld!

Also, if you have a mad scheme, fantastic idea or suggestion you’d like to share with us, we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to email jokay@jokaydia.com.

jokaydiaGRID Rentals – Our Grid is Growing!

jokay and Azzura at jokaydiaGRID Landing Point

In other exciting news, we’ve also had a number of new sims spring up on the grid this weekend, and we’d like to welcome our new Sim Owners to jokaydiaGRID!

• Longtime jokaydians Pandora Kurrajong and Sapphire Ceawlin have moved into Edvirons to explore various uses of opensim including working with teens, SLoodle and professional develoment for educators
• DawnRyder Wycliffe has moved into a huge 6 sim estate – with plans to explore various uses of virtual worlds for education. She has lots of experience from Second Life – and I CAN’T WAIT to see what emerges at the Rising Hope campus.
• Pathfinder Lester aka John Lester who we all know from his years of support for virtual worlds educators has moved into a lovely sim called appropriately ‘Pathlandia’. You can keep up to date with his exploits both at jokaydiaGRID and on the hypergrid on his blog – Be Cunning and Full of Tricks.

Pathfinder moves to jokaydiaGRID!

At any rate… thank you to ALL of our sim owners for choosing jokaydiaGRID to setup home in the open metaverse! I am so looking forward to being part of your opensim adventures and I’m sure you’ll all enrich the jokaydia Community!

Joining jokaydiaGRID

jokaydiaGRID Rentals!

If you’d like to join us on jokaydiaGRID, please feel free to get in touch. We are offering sims for rent to educators, artists and like-minded business people who are interested in exploring the uses of all virtual worlds, but especially opensim and we’d love to welcome you to our community! Our grid is PG-rated and supported by a community of educators and technologists who’ve been working in and exploring virtual worlds since 2006.

Rental Costs:

• $50.00 AUD one-time setup fee
• $25.00AUD per month for each sim (region).

What is included:

As a special deal for our jokaydiaGRID residents, we also offer you FREE access to our Islands of jokaydia in Second Life resources – including a Sandbox, 2 events spaces, Edusquare – our virtual worlds education directory, Bar@jokaydia, the Beach and various other informal spaces.  Please contact jokay Wollongong for further details or to make a booking to use these venues for private events!

But wait… there’s more! Special Offer for October

To support new residents who are making the transition from other worlds,  jokaydiaGRID is offering FREE Setup until the 30th October 2010! This means a saving of $50.00 aud for all residents who join us during the next few weeks!
To get your rental request started, simply complete the form here and jokaydia Support will be in touch!

Seeya in the metaverse soon!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on cleaning up the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life, preparing our new environment at jokaydiaGRID and generally giving the jokaydia Virtual Worlds presence a little makeover! Over the coming weeks you’ll start to see lots of new resources and tools popping up around the place, and I invite you all to click on things, try things out, explore and share your comments and feedback!

So without further ado, I introduce our new jokaydia Rental pages!

You can visit them at: http://jokaydia.com/rentals

I’ve used an opensource tool called ‘Open Realty’ to set this up, and hopefully it will provide much easier ways for both prospective and existing tenants to get an idea of the spaces available.

Also from an administrative perspective it makes things much easier for us to manage, especially now we are working across multiple spaces in the metaverse! (woot!)

Additionally, now we have decent html on a prim tools with Viewer 2, these listings can now be easily viewed both on the web or via the viewer at the jokaydia Landing Point (SLurl)

You’ll find listings for both the Islands of jokaydia and jokaydiaGRID here, as well as information on our rental services and the jokaydia Covenant. Check it out and lemme know what you think!

One thing to note – the new jokaydia Rental deal provides that all Second Life residents on the Islands of jokaydia receive a ‘Pioneer’s space’ on jokaydiaGRID. This means you get a new virtual worlds space to play in for no extra cost! I hope everyone will enjoy these spaces and use them to explore options for using OpenSimulator spaces, and especially our multigrid experiments!…. and you can use the jokaydia Rental pages to find one!

For further information check out the jokaydia Rental Pages or contact jokay Wollogong inworlds!

As many jokaydia residents already know, I’ve been working on updating and preparing our fourth sim on the Islands of jokaydia ready for new tenants over the past few weeks. So I’m pleased to announce that we’re open for business! I’ve designed jokaydia Waters a bit differently to the jokaydia mainland sims – creating a series of mini-Islands as well as community spaces.

First (and most fun!), I’ve created a magical mountain to explore. Mt jokaydia includes a beautiful castle and tower and gardens. It’s even home to the amazing ‘Lucretia Morgenstern ‘ our Island dragon! (Named by jokaydia resident Pandora Kurrajong in Twitter!)

The castle and mountains provide a new community space for all residents and visitors to the Islands and will be used to host events, gatherings, meetings and classes in the coming months.

There are also 7 mini-Islands on jokaydia waters which will be leased to new residents. They offer 25% extra prims and a little more privacy. They will make great spaces for projects and classes, or a lovely beachy personal space!

As with the other rental arrangements on jokaydia, all tenants also gain free access to our extensive collection of community spaces and resources.

Details of each of the mini Islands is included below, or you can see our complete list of rental properties, including jokaydia mainland spaces still available on the Rental Properties page.

jokaydia Waters Mini Islands 1

• Space: 2048
• Prim Count: 585
• Location SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20Waters/43/35/23
• Cost: $55.00 au + 10% GST per month

jokaydia Waters Mini Islands 2

• Space: 2048
• Prim Count: 585
• Location SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20Waters/98/69/23
• Cost: $55.00 au + 10% GST per month

jokaydia Waters Mini Islands 3

• Space: 2048
• Prim Count: 585
• Location SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20Waters/166/41/22
• Cost: $55.00 au + 10% GST per month

jokaydia Waters Mini Islands 4

• Space: 2048
• Prim Count: 585
• Location SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20Waters/221/71/22
• Cost: $55.00 au + 10% GST per month

jokaydia Waters Mini Islands 5

• Space: 2048
• Prim Count: 585
• Location SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20Waters/163/92/22
• Cost: $55.00 au + 10% GST per month

jokaydia Waters Mini Islands 6

• Space: 2048
• Prim Count: 585
• Location SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20Waters/205/162/22
• Cost: $55.00 au + 10% GST per month

jokaydia Waters Mini Islands 7

• Space: 2048
• Prim Count: 585
• Location SLurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20Waters/214/212/22
• Cost: $55.00 au + 10% GST per month

We’ve had a couple of new residents joining us on jokaydia over the last few days – including the lovely Dewi Kittaj! You can see Al, Sapphire and myself welcoming her to her new plot on jokaydia II above. She’s moved in just near the fairy garden.

Dewi aka Lauren O’Grady is a wonderful educator based in Melbourne Australia, who (as her Twitter bio states!) is passionate about elearning and purposeful learning for all. She is currently working as an Interactive Whiteboard Specialist with Edsoft, after winning the  ICTEV Teacher of the Year 2007 (wow!)… so I can’t wait to see what she does with her new space on jokaydia! To find out more about Lauren’s work, check out her blog – All teachers are learners – All learners are teachers.

Dont forget to drop by and visit Dewi in her new space (SLurl) to say hi and check out what’s she’s up to!

Welcome Dewi! 

As posted previously, we have a number of new rental spaces available – both on jokaydia I and jokaydia III. I’ve posted the list and SLurls below, but if you’d life full details of each parcel, please check out the Rental Properties Page. For further information please contact me via email or IM jokay Wollongong inworld.

 Parcels Available: 

• jokaydia Rental Property No. 20, jokaydia II sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20II/186/147/26
• jokaydia Rental Property No 21, jokaydia sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/216/168/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 22, jokaydia sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/223/225/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 23, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/224/6/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 24, jokaydia sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/183/240/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 25, jokaydia sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia/115/245/23
• jokaydia Rental Property No 26, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/178/15/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 27, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/45/26/21
• jokaydia Rental Property No 28, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/35/63/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 29, jokaydia III sim): http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/29/93/21
• jokaydia Rental Property No 30, jokaydia III sim:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/22/135/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 31, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/26/166/22
• jokaydia Rental Property No 32, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/60/155/23
• jokaydia Rental Property No 33, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/107/125/24
• jokaydia Rental Property No. 34, jokaydia III sim: http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/113/145/24
• jokaydia Rental Property No 35, jokaydia III sim): http://slurl.com/secondlife/jokaydia%20III/152/129/23

As reported in my previous post, we’ve grown! About a week ago the Islands of jokaydia Estate in Second Life grew to 3 sims, and we’ve been impatiently waiting for our 3 sims to be moved together. So it was particuarly exciting to be inworld and standing on jokaydia III when the other islands rezzed in a few days ago!

The new space on the Islands will house a number of new community spaces – including a bar to hang out in (for slammed!), a new auditorium space and an extended Newbie Garden.

There will also be lots of space for new tenants, so if you’re interested in grabbing your own little plot on the Islands of jokaydia, get in touch! ;) I’ll be making formal announcements about new spaces for rent very soon!

We rented our final plots on jokaydia II this afternoon – and Im very happy to be welcoming a wonderful team to our community! Al Upton and Sapphire Sapphire Ceawlin have taken a large space and will be working together to explore how they might use virtual worlds in K-12 education, and SL for PD activities.

With their wealth of experience from their work in Quest Atlantis, I can hardly wait to see what Al and Sapphire create together! Don’t forget to drop by and say hello! You can visit Sparks and Flames here (SLurl).

For those of you still interested in joining the jokaydia Community and renting land.. never fear! We will have some new space available shortly. If you’d like more info, please contact me.

A few days ago, we welcomed the lovely Annabel Recreant to the Islands of jokaydia! The welcoming party above helped Annabel with some dancing and fun, and she’s already started building a really interesting space on her new plot.

Annabel works in History/humanities education and will be exploring ways to use her space for professional development and networking with the K-12 teachers she is working with. Dont forget to drop by and say hello! ;)

Welcome Annabel!

I’ve just completed a list of the Venues and resources that are available to residents and visitors on the Islands of jokaydia. You can view it here, complete with images and SLurls to each of our venues.

One of the aims of the Islands of jokaydia is to enable our residents to hold events in Second Life easily, and without having to setup elaborate spaces of their own. This collection of spaces have been designed to allow for that, and also to illustrate some of way Second Life can effectively be used for learning and community building.

Residents on the Islands of jokaydia please note – you are welcome to book in to use these spaces, as they are included as part of your rental deal. To do so, use the jokaydia Google Calendar or our jokaydia Events Booking form.

Many of the spaces are also available to other groups and organisations. For further information on the types of spaces and services we can provide email Jo Kay or visit our Virtual Worlds Services page.