Acuppa Tae

Acuppa Tae (known as Tae) is an avatar developed in 2006 to design and teach the award winning module Virtual Environments: Is one life enough? along with Locks Aichi, a colleague from the Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre. They are based at the TU Dublin campus in the online virtual world known as Second Life®. At that time avatars in Second Life were required to choose a name from a preselected list, hence the alter ego. Theses days, however, Tae is more frequently known simply as John O'Connor.

In 2010 the module won the Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Dublin and in 2012 won the Learning Without Frontiers Award for Innovation in Further and Higher Education in London.

The class was joined by Prof Dudley Turner and his students from the University of Akron, Ohio from 2014 to 2018 and the module was a recognised course at each institution.

The module was reimagined again in 2021 as the International Student Project in partnership with Prof Murat Gülmez (aka Magua Theriac) at Çağ University in Türkiye and Lissena Wisdomseeker at Inspiration Island, part of the Whole Brain Health community in Second Life.

John / Tae is a member of the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium and in 2021 VWEC was asked by Linden Lab, the owner of Second Life®, to establish and manage the dedicated education space in the virtual world, known as VWEC Eduverse. He is on the Events Team that presents the Expert Talks series and the Working Advisory Committee.