About You: Your Avatar, Your Profile, Your Preferences
Your Avatar
This is you! That is, it's the digital representation of yourself in Second Life. Virtually everything about your avatar, except for your name, can be changed at any time, as often as you like, and those changes appear instantly. This allows you to present yourself to the Second Life world in any fashion that you like. It also allows you to experiment with different presentations of yourself.
Learn more about customizing your avatar's look
If you find you don't like the name you chose for your avatar, all is not lost. While you can't change your name, you CAN make a new Second Life account and choose a name that you like better.
It is not uncommon for people to have more than one Second Life account (that is, more than one avatar). Some people just want to start over. Others have other accounts for a variety of reasons: 1) to separate business and personal activities and identities, 2) to experiment with different identities, 3) to relive the "joining" experience, 4) for other pragmatic reasons, such as testing products they've created or as a place to store backup copies of items.
When people have more than one avatar, the one they use most and which represents their primary identity is called their "main" avatar. The others they have are called their "alts" (alternate avatars).
Your Profile
This is a place where you can tell the Second Life world more about yourself. To see and edit yours:
- Choose the My Profile "business card" icon at the right side of your screen
- Then click the "Profile" button
- When the profile window opens, click "Edit Profile" to make changes to it
People will look at your profile! It's very common to look at the profiles of people you encounter. To look at someone else's profile, right-click on their avatar and choose "Profile", or if you know their avatar name, you can use Search to find their profile.
Your Preferences
You can also customize your Second Life viewer. To do this, from the top menu bar, choose Me and then Preferences.
Some useful Preference settings:
- General:
- Start location: My Last Location
- Start location: Check "Show on login"
- Away timeout: never
- Graphics:
- Click the "Advanced" button
- Set Draw Distance to about 128-256m (or higher if your computer can handle it) to be able to see farther. Note that a higher draw distance may slow down your Second Life experience.
- Sound & Media:
- Adjust the volume for individual sound sources to suit your preferences
- Chat:
- Put a check next to Bubble Chat if you like to see people's text chat appear over their heads
- Check: Play typing animations when chatting
- Check: "Email me IMs when I'm offline"
- Move & View:
- Uncheck: Tap-tap-hold to run
- Privacy:
- Check: "Only friends and groups know I'm online"
- Check: "Save nearby chat logs on my computer" and "Save IM logs on my computer" and "Add timestamp to each line in chat log" - this lets you review a transcript of a class or meeting. Note that only text chat will appear in the transcript. Anything said in voice chat will not be recorded.
- Setup:
- Check: Use my browser
- Advanced:
- Check: Show Advanced Menu
- Check: Show Advanced Menu
Visit in Second Life
Need an avatar? Help getting started
Nursing Education Events
Jan 16, 2013 Workshop: "Meaningful Use" more info
NBC 5 TV - "Learning in a Virtual World"
UTACON in SL grant and research activities
