An Idea for Mentoring Newbies

I'm getting tired of standing around on Help Island saying things like, "Welcome to Second Life, here's how to fly, here's how to change your clothes, here's the exit from the island." Today I thought of a new way to provide a "New User Experience" and I thought I'd throw it out here for comment before I tried it.

One of the avatar choices for new people is a small blue dragon. I happen to have a large blue dragon av in my inventory...

What if I showed up on a Help Island and offered to take a group of newbies on a tour of Second Life? We'd be a big brood of dragons! This would be a real "learn by doing" exercise, involving creating an Outfit (a recovery outfit, so they could get back to their original appearance later), putting on a different Avatar from the Library, learning how to teleport, how to fly, how to use the Chat History, Search, and the Map...and it would be an opportunity to show a group of people a few of the wonderful places in SL.

Not only that, but it would give the other occupants of those places a little treat. It's not every day that a herd of dragons comes through your place.

/me calls shotgun!

Where and when?

edit: the only thing is that this doesn't really solve the problem of what to do with the never-ending stream of newbies... There are always more of the damn things!!

This is basically what the old "Greeter Experiences" were. I'm not sure why they were removed, although I have a couple of theories.

You'd have to be careful if you did it from a Help Island - you'd have to TP folks off it, and wherever you TP them to becomes their Home.

What a great idea but a few things come to mind.
I would try and keep the group small in number, and quickly move them off the platform. Too often for me, ill be midway through an explanation and another newbie will pop in and want to be caught up on what they’ve missed, or some will just poof away then return 3 minutes later.
Second, so many new residents are obsessed with working on their appearance right away and even after showing them how to save their appearance they may be a little apprehensive of some radical alteration to their avatar…. “but I doh wana be a dwagon”.
Maybe make a sign or notecard explaining in advance what you’re going to do with them and how long it will take and what they will learn. And tell them over and over that the beautiful shape they’ve been working on for the past 45 minutes is safely saved in their … I N V E N T O R Y.

I think you can only tell if you try it.

Maybe you're more of a teacher than I am... I can only work with one newbie at a time, given the waits involved. You know, "Tell me when you've clicked on the Search button." ... wait ... wait ... wait

I spent half an hour with a girl day before yesterday, only dealing how to buy, rez, open, copy to inventory, and wear.

This was what she wanted to learn.

It was painstaking, and we never got as far as attaching the skirt before I had to go.

I can't imagine that with a group.

Or were you thinking of something else?

I think you'll have to try it to see.

It could be fun.

I used to do something similar for new furries, since I carry a lot of freebies that would be of their interest. I really wish they hadn't gotten rid of the ugly default furry avatars; furries have a lot of their own unique issues starting off and without those default avatars, it's a lot harder to spot the newbies I could help most.