Jun 25 2008
#22 Second Life in education
What do I know about Second Life? Well not a lot. I have heard about it and have a very rough idea but nothing much else. I did not really think I was all that interested but looking around I see just how many people are using it. I also see just how much you can choose and personalise when setting up, much more so than MySpace, Facebook etc.
The range of options for using Second Life for educational purposes was a surprise. The SLED (Second Life Education) community has lots of ideas. There is a SLED wiki and SLED blog look good too. The ‘SLEDevents in SL’ calendar anticipates events in Second Life of interest to educators. I was amazed loooking at the just the June page. So many different subjects can be explored using Second Life.
Second Life in Education. Sarah Robbins, doctoral candidate at the University of Indiana, aka Intelligirl, talks about her experiences using Second Life in her classrooms. Long video but good information
Another overview was from Experiencing E-Learning blog post Notes from a keynote “Why do we need a second life as why we can, and should, use second life. This also lead me to some other resources that would be useful in understanding or getting started. Video Tutorials on the Second Life wiki are good.
Will I be using Second Life at my school any time soon, if I could? Probably not. I see that there are some great ideas but at the moment the time and energy needed to prepare myself and then invite in a class, means that I will not yet pursue it! Could I convince some of th teachers to do it, again, not yet.
I’m in a similar place with Second Life; I think it’s interesting, and I do read some of what educators are doing there. It isn’t something I’m going to do for my job though. Partly that’s because my audience (and many of our facilitators) aren’t very technical; they’re still struggling with blogs, wikis, and other easier technology. With a different audience or more time for them to get ramped up, I might use Second Life.
The other issue is that because this is so bleeding edge, the technology requirements and challenges are just too much for our goals. About 10% of our students currently are on dial-up; obviously, they would be prevented from taking a course in SL. Many more students wouldn’t have fast enough computers or good enough video cards to do SL.
For me, at least, the problems outweigh the benefits right now. I can see the benefits of having a virtual world like this, but it’s a few years from being something I see myself incorporating into the courses I design.