Logging what you say and is said to you provides an accurate record for formal writing later on.  It's polite, if you are interviewing a person, to ask permission to log the conversation.

Making the log is easy; finding it is tough unless you think through what you are about to do.

To log, do this:

• open the edit menu in Second Life and choose "preferences"
• click the first communications tab and check the boxes shown with red checkmarks under "Logging Options"

WAIT! (here's the crucial step):

Under change path, I recommend saving the log to your desktop on either a PC or Mac. You won't have to hunt for the file later.  If you move it from that location and do another chat log later, a new file on your desktop will be made automatically.  NOTE that if you are using a public machine at UR, any files you save on the hard drive will vanish when you log off, so e-mail yourself the logs or put them in your Netfiles account.

Scavenger Hunt Prize: 100L for the first student to e-mail me a file attachment of a chat or IM log.  You may not paste it into the body of the e-mail (Techie note: Windows-Vista Word users, save it as an RTF file from the "save as" option, and then mail me the file.  Others, using Note Pad or earlier versions of Word, can just send the file).