‘Second Life’ develops education following
I know another article on Second Life. It seems to be all the rage in the media at the moment. I’ll be posting about other elearning issues next week.
Anyway this is a shortish article on Second Life and a very good intro if you haven’t heard f it before or need to know a few more details. The last half of the article looks at a few proposed projects planned for SL. The resource intensive nature of the Second Life (in terms of requiring hi spec machines and broadband access) are also touched on as well as issues of adult only areas.
Virtual world being used by some educators and youth groups for teaching, socialization
By Justin Appel
Some case studies are provided:
“At Seton Hall University, students taking Danielle Mirliss’s Industrial and Organizational Psychology course this fall were able to use Second Life as part of a virtual team-building exercise. In it, students were given a cover story in which they were working for a public-relations firm that was building a piece on the best places and people in the Second Life world. The class spent two hours completing a structured scavenger hunt within Second Life, followed by completing a wiki and a survey.”
And also prjects geared around research techniques ” Bradley University is one of the first colleges to adopt a course taught almost entirely in the realm of Second Life. Ed Lamoureux, associate professor in the Multimedia Program and Department of Communications at Bradley, has put together a course entitled Field Research in Second Life, which is to be taught during the school’s winter term in January with a possible repeat in May. The course aims to teach real-world field research, adapt field research techniques, examine the potential of large and immersive online communities as teaching and learning environments, and expose students to this large world that has many purposes other than just gaming.”
Also finally the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga plans to ” use Second Life in several ways. Continuing Medical Education activities have been planned in which physician participants, through their avatars, will have the opportunity to see lab work and vital signs of the virtual patient avatars in Second Life. They’ll also be able to ask questions related to patient behavior and risk factors. After gathering the patient data, the physicians will use web resources for treatments. Miller hopes that clever scripting might eventually allow for avatars to reflect better conditioning through exercise done in the real world.”
However it’s worth noting that…. ” Despite Second Life’s immense popularity, the appropriateness of its content for students is an issue. As with the web itself, there is a range of seedy activity available to users: Gambling, stripping, and virtual prostitution are easy to find if you look for them. ”
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