Meet Elaine Polvinen aka Finn1 Flintlock in SL

 Elaine Polvinen, MFA, aka: Finn1 Flintlock in Sl is professor and coordinator of The Fashion Textile Technology Program at Buffalo State College SUNY. Here is a link to my ABOUT ME page from my blog.

I have been teaching at Buffalo State since 1990. I have made it my mission to merge  traditional methods with ongoing advances in technology as well as to use technology to link all direct and indirect fashion related areas to reflect what is occurring on a global level in industry.

I was clueless to how the virtual world could impact education just one short year ago. Someone told me about an article and TV news spot focusing on a virtual fashion designer. To be honest, I was kind of cynical but still curious. It was several months later in January of 2007 that I first ventured into Second Life. My first experience was a total disaster but I persevered and was determined to explore more in this totally new and unfamiliar environment. Despite my total addiction to continual retooling on technology, I had never played a video game in my life and never participated at a chat room.

In January of 2007, I  initiated a group on the BSC campus (similar to what Beth Harris is now doing at FIT) and we called it The BSC SL Campus Pilot Group. The SUNY Research Foundation agreed to sponsor a virtual educational island. This article titled “Buffalo State Virtual Educational Island Sponsored by the Research Foundation.”(p 6-7) from the spring 2007 RF newsletter will fill you in on the sponsorship details.

The initial BSC SL Pilot Group is comprised of faculty, staff, administration and students who are exploring, researching and planning a campus-wide introduction to Second Life. Here is a link to a draft (more detailed) version of a SLCC07 presentation titled “Grassroots: A Second Life Campus From the Ground Up.” It will inform you about how we got the SL life project started at BSC.

Details of my initial experiences teaching fashion related projects can be located by clicking on this link from the SLCC07 presentation titled” Educational Simulations in Real Life for Fashion Technology Students.”

I am currently continuing the SL project with a small group of fashion students. I also have been actively researching for educational and professional collaborations in Sl that will result in large scale collaborative ventures to virtually link educational and business resources, that is how I was fortunate enough to meet Beth Harris, Shenlei Winkler and Nyla Kazakoff.

I look forward to and will be happy to share what we are currently doing in SL and answer any questions you may have at the upcoming presentations at FIT. Please send any questions you would like addressed at the meeting.

Here I am above meeting up with Beth Harris, aka: Max Newbold in SL on the BSC island showing her the current project the fashion students are working on. She is wearing a new outfit from Shenlei Flasheart’s Prim & Proper store  in SL. 

It is my hope that we as educators can collaborate and pool our virtual educational business and teaching resources to enable all of us to offer expanded virtual coursework to students covering multiple fields of study.