A candid discussion (started in March this year; last reply December 15) of the use of Second Life in education can be found on this page on the Classroom 2.0 blog. Found via the Edublog Awards. The following is what I extracted from the discussion:
Some (potential or actual) applicationsdescribed
Learner flies around an expanded 3D model of an eye to learn its parts and their functions
Build an internal combustion engine to demonstrate how the parts of it work so they can get up close and personal to see it actually in motion without being burned
Build a space station — pick your lesson plan here between astronomy, physics, materials sciences, math, geography …
Use a 3d model of the solar system to teach about the planets
Education UK – An island in Second Life supporting teaching and learning
Eduisland II
Simulations for nursing students to use as pre-tests for their clinicals
Issues raised
Cost of buying islands
Cognitive overload dealing solely with the interface and navigation controls (including learning them)
Going out of the classroom model
unfamiliar, hard for people to grasp educational uses quickly
less than 5,000 active teen residents on the Teen Grid (source)
Not a viable teaching platform in the US because it’s not accessible (to all students). Regulations 504 and 508 prohibit the use of these technologies to actually teach a class for any institution receiving federal funds. That said, a lot of institutions are using them anyway on the grounds that ‘we don’t have any blind students’
Controlling the learning
Expensive, funding required
Very time-consuming – ‘bleeding edge’
Bandwidth-hungry
Most people are not early adopters
Hardware requirements are too much to ensure equal or ubiquitous access
User contribution aspect of SL seems significantly more technical and difficult to participate in
Lack of focus on rigorous content, e.g. ‘advanced math and science skills’
Not currently developed to the extent where it is efficient for a teacher to utilize its full potential
Safety
Interesting mention
Google SketchUp – ‘a free, easy-to-learn 3D modeling tool that enables you to explore the world in 3D’
River City – ‘A Multi-User Virtual Environment for Learning Scientific Inquiry and 21st Century Skills’
Runescape – a browser-based MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)
TappedIn – ‘The online workplace of an international community of education professionals’; ‘a groupware website with integrated chat and a geographical metaphor (offices, buildings, etc.)’
Project Darkstar – ‘a research effort aimed at simplifying the process of developing multiplayer online games that can be deployed on a massive scale and made available to players using virtually any client device’
Sloodle – ‘an Open Source project which aims to develop and share useful, usable, desirable tools for supporting education in virtual worlds, making teaching easier’
Croquet – ‘a powerful new open source software development environment and software infrastructure for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses on and across multiple operating systems and devices’. See also this group for Croquet/Secondlife/OpenSim 3D virtual classroom users and developers
Beth Ritter-Guth over at The Stingy Scholar made the list with hyperlinks. I’ve linked the videos here, so you can view them more directly.
1. Beth’s favourite. Kurt Vonnegut, author of her favorite short story ever – Harrison Bergeron – was in SL:
2. ‘U2 on YouTube from SL‘ raises awareness about One.org (a charity to end AIDS):
3. ‘Second Life: Get One’ has many zany images that demonstrate the possibilities of SL:
4. ‘Machinima: Text 100 in Second Life’ demonstrates how SL can be used in business, and the discussion points can be applied to education, as well. Beth thinks it is an advertisement for the company that put it together, but you can go ahead and ignore that part:
5. ‘Tour of Info Islands’ is awesome because it really shows the potential of SL for the nerdy-cool folk like me.
6. A wee video about the making of Suzanne Vega’s SL Guitar is pretty wicked, too:
7. Suzanne Vega sings Tom’s Diner in SL. She was the first Big Name recording artist to show up and be cool in SL.
9. Beth is a huge fan of Sun MicroSystems for their support of the SL platform. Here is a video of the Sun Pavilion and their first press release in SL. Visionaries:
10. Finally, Beth hopes this exists in SL because she truly is an addict of the Game Show Network, and – she hopes the Price is Right is in SL, complete with neutering ads by Bob-the-Boss-Barker.
The online version of ‘The Week’, a US magazine which looks at the international media, ran an article in February this year about virtual worlds. Second Life is referred to as ‘the most talked-about new game’ and dominates the article. Looks like a good introduction to the topic of virtual worlds and issues related to them. Go to http://www.theweekmagazine.com/news/articles/news.aspx?ArticleID=1930
Found a ready guide to help figure out what to do with Second Life. The contents table looks promising. Heck, the fact that it has a contents table is promising:
1. Introduction and History of this Document
2. Getting Started
2.1. Physical Setup
2.2. Bandwidth
2.3. Downtime
2.4. Introductory Material (Books, Blogs, Wikis)
2.5. The SL Forums
2.6. Orientation
2.7. Choosing Last Names
2.8. Choosing First Names
2.9. Setting Up User Groups
3. In-World Dynamics
3.1. The Lindens
3.2. Money and Stipends
3.3. Unsafe, Mature, PG
3.4. Creating a Safe Lab
3.5. How to Report Abuse
4. Sample Assignments
4.1. Avatar and Identity
4.2. Build a Chair
4.3. Simple Scripting
4.4. Compare to Snow Crash
4.5. Scavenger Hunt
5. Classroom Objectives, Issue-by-Issue
5.1. Cooperation Games
5.2. Reputation Economy
5.3. Sharing economy
5.4. Monetary Policies and Gaming Economies
5.5. Grey Markets5.6. Business Simulation
5.7. Real Estate
5.8. Intellectual Property
5.9. Sweatshops
5.10. Class and Status
5.11. Subcultures
5.12. Religion
5.13. Marriage and Relationships
5.14. Death and Dying
5.15. Race
5.16. Gender
5.17. Crime and Punishment
5.18. Legal
5.19. Anti-Terrorism and Military Training
5.20. Avatars and Identity
5.21. Experiments in Government
5.22. Disabilities, Illness, Awareness
5.23. Gambling
5.24. Geography
5.25. Language and Culture
5.26. Art, Public Art, and Theater
5.27. Biology
5.28. Mathematics
5.29. Programming
5.30. Physics
5.31. Astronomy
6. References
7. Acknowledgements
APPENDIX A: Dailey Bibliography
This is the promotional video for the NMC Campus entitled ‘Seriously Engaging’. NMC stands for New Media Consortium, which is ‘is an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of nearly 200 leading colleges, universities, museums, corporations, and other learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies’. (See this NMC page.) The NMC Campus is an experimental effort developed to inform NMC’s work in ‘educational gaming’. (See this About page for the NMC Campus Observer.)
Posted by gimster 
Posted by gimster 
Posted by gimster 
