Second Life and Education
Second Life is a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) which has created quite a stir in the physical world. The Second Life world is built by the residence and has its own striving economy! Here, one can find businesses (IBM; Toyota), malls (clothing, furniture, and animations), clubs (DJ and Live entertainment), meditation (with or without audio) and schools (recruitment, classes and offices). If it can be done in the physical world, it can be done in Second Life. At the time of this writing (Tuesday, July 1, 2008; 3:55 PM), the number of individuals “in world” at the same time is 57,900. Imagine all those avatars (the virtual person behind the physical person) gathering and exchanging ideas! Over 300 universities and colleges are represented in Second Life. Some represented are: Princeton; St Clair; Arizona State; St. Joseph; California State – Fresno and many, many more. One school has provided a scavenger hunt in Second Life to enhance and ensure the reading of the literature, while another used the virtual environment in a digital art and theory class. Oshkosh College of Nursing has their nursing school in world, while Chicago State University and University of Illinois use this virtual world to assist the Illinois Department of Public Health to teach safe sex! There is so much to offer in this environment that it all cannot be placed in one blog In the course of the last year, I have ventured into this virtual environment called Second Life. Here, there is a whole other world outside of the physical. As with any technology, just because it’s there does not mean it should be used. Education is about learning and gaining knowledge. Second life provides this in an atmosphere of creativity and involvement. Here, a person can hear the birds sing; see the planets and stars rotate around the sun...even create their own galaxy. One can discover architecture and build a nucleus for demonstration. The virtual environment has the capability of providing more than the average classroom, it can expand on the imagination...
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Cool blog!
It is cool to see these blogs and be able to get information informally from different areas!
X perience
I discussed online environments with my aunt and uncle this summer. They were both educators, and my uncle taught some of the first online courses in the world in the 90's. Nonetheless, they are both skeptical about virtual environments, without knowing anything much about them. We had an interesting and civil discussion, chiding the typical ills of videogaming, disengagement with the real world (physical! thanks Ellen W.), and so on.
After talking to these wonderful, sane minds, I concluded that a person must experience it for themself to have any basis for judgement, otherwise the preconceptions of such alien things will always overpower their ability to conceptualize these things.