Hi, Thats me (Westley Scridde) my teen inworld Avitar (Westley Streeter Second Life). Sounds geeky hey! Don't worry I haven't turned geek infact I paddle and swim more than I ever have and am still particularly fit, so there goes that myth!
There is alot of buzz around about Second Life. Huge corporations are investing big dollars and time in discovering what it can be. So what is it? It is a virtual world where people can create a life, a new life. It is not a game although it does look like a simulation. Everything on the site is user generated. You choose your name, your look, your skin colour even your species! Learn more about Virtual Worlds here
And that is where the opportunity starts. Research suggests that there are vast numbers of people (young in particular) who are spending as much time online as offline. They want their presence online to be as, if not more, impressive that offline - and they are prepared to invest time and money to make it work.
So where are the opportunities - everywhere. Once you realise that it is just another economy you can begin to plunder. Take the case of the first graphic designer who realised that she could create cool new clothes that no one else had and sell them to those who preferred designer wear than the common threads supplied. She became and overnight millionare. Now the race is on. How do you best travel and what can I invent to make that better? How can I build better houses for people? How can I advertise etc..
Australian show Four Corners did a great documentatry that explains all about this brave new world. You can view much of the broadcast here.
The Research: I asked Chris Field (my son) to do a little research in the area. What follows is the result.....
Detailed here is a series of notes I have made on Second Life and the feasibility of its use as a medium in and through which to conduct and further education. For now it is somewhat haphazard while I gather sources and consolidate ideas.
Firstly, Why is Second Life potentially useful as a tool for educators?
Perhaps because it is a Virtual Reality Mediated Enviornment in the way that earlier versions were, but its also something else, because as much as it is owned by Linden Lab, it is vested in by a lot of different companies and organisations, which in effect makes it a sort of digital ecosystem in which we can see businesses utilizing a new market and competing, and, since after all this is a capitalist age, the fact that organisations are utilising SecondLife as part of their overall market effectively makes it part of the global market, and thus, a part of the world market. Competition and profit will generally ensure the continuation of this interest by businesses, which means, basically, that what we have in Second Life is the beginnings of a new way to interact with and conceive of digital information, not just another virtual world such as those that exist in a multitude of online games (world of warcraft, runescape, anarchy online) limited and prescribed, but a site for the expansion of the web. What we are seeing perhaps is another link in the evolution of information, if we can see it in terms of the invention of writing, the invention of books, the birth of the print press, the invention of the computer and the birth of digital information, the invention of the Web, the rise of Web 2 (which is more or less just a maturation of our social interpretation of the Web over time) and the next step is at this stage, the evolution of the Web from 2 dimensions and linear, to 2 dimensions and networked/blending of media), to three dimensional with blending of media.
Because Second Life is making use of competition, hence diversity, and because it constitues a market, and chiefly because it is primarily user generated content, which allows for change and innovation, and for a sense of ownership in the constituency, I do not believe that second life is transient... the hype may eventually fade, but the hype fades for all things, including that which is so well known and frequently used as it becomes commonplace. I think we are seeing an example of the future of digital information in Linden Lab, not to say that it will be the sole provider of this future, but that we are seeing the first attempts at conceptualising digital space as actual space.
The paper by Nicolas Johnson, The Educational Potential of Second Life (http://digitalunion.osu.edu/Research/CurrentProjects/EducationalGaming/Second_Life.pdf.) details a rather simplistic initial investigation of the educational potential of this medium.. of interest within his argument is the following statement (top page 8):
Perhaps because it is a Virtual Reality Mediated Enviornment in the way that earlier versions were, but its also something else, because as much as it is owned by Linden Lab, it is vested in by a lot of different companies and organisations, which in effect makes it a sort of digital ecosystem in which we can see businesses utilizing a new market and competing, and, since after all this is a capitalist age, the fact that organisations are utilising SecondLife as part of their overall market effectively makes it part of the global market, and thus, a part of the world market. Competition and profit will generally ensure the continuation of this interest by businesses, which means, basically, that what we have in Second Life is the beginnings of a new way to interact with and conceive of digital information, not just another virtual world such as those that exist in a multitude of online games (world of warcraft, runescape, anarchy online) limited and prescribed, but a site for the expansion of the web. What we are seeing perhaps is another link in the evolution of information, if we can see it in terms of the invention of writing, the invention of books, the birth of the print press, the invention of the computer and the birth of digital information, the invention of the Web, the rise of Web 2 (which is more or less just a maturation of our social interpretation of the Web over time) and the next step is at this stage, the evolution of the Web from 2 dimensions and linear, to 2 dimensions and networked/blending of media), to three dimensional with blending of media.
Because Second Life is making use of competition, hence diversity, and because it constitues a market, and chiefly because it is primarily user generated content, which allows for change and innovation, and for a sense of ownership in the constituency, I do not believe that second life is transient... the hype may eventually fade, but the hype fades for all things, including that which is so well known and frequently used as it becomes commonplace. I think we are seeing an example of the future of digital information in Linden Lab, not to say that it will be the sole provider of this future, but that we are seeing the first attempts at conceptualising digital space as actual space.
The paper by Nicolas Johnson, The Educational Potential of Second Life (http://digitalunion.osu.edu/Research/CurrentProjects/EducationalGaming/Second_Life.pdf.) details a rather simplistic initial investigation of the educational potential of this medium.. of interest within his argument is the following statement (top page 8):
"Students,
I predict, will be eager to participate in Second Life. In fact, some
educators argue that if we dont use technology to engage students, and
therefore teach them how to use technology in a way that inhances their
education, we are failing them."
His proposals for exactly what type of education Second Life may be used for are promising...for example,
The
investigation of the significance of the physical body in social
interaction, how appearance effects interpersonal relations etc, which
he suggests would work best as an ongoing journal in which students
document their experiences using a range of different avatars.
But
the more immidiately apparent uses for secondlife in the educational
sense involve its capacities as a mecca for user created content.. in
which case
Art Students could
develop and display artwork on secondlife (with computer designed
artwork surely becoming a more prominant trend and important skill in
this field). Art, also, is not limited to flat, digital images, but in
the case of second life, to buildings, textured, three dimensional
objects, art which incorporates sound and movement and so fourth.
Second life may well be the perefect frontier for experimentation
within the field of digital/ computer generated art.
The same concept applies to students of Architecture in
terms of being able to design a 3 dimensional blueprint of a building
(provided that they have a space paid for by their institution in which
it its possible to build structures) and students of Design (perhaps
more relevantly) can design the interior look of a room digitally,
accurately scaled, to give an impression of what the design would look
like in reality.
Johnson's
suggestion to use Second Life's capacity for designing spaces in
accordance to very precisely user specified criteria in order to
replicate microbiological structures (the insides of cells for
example), to assist students of Biology to
better understand thier topic is certainly an interesting and feasible
idea, though its actual implementation would require a high level of
expertise in the field of designing rooms and objects in Second Life...
Still within the Science bracket, Physics students
would certainly be able to conduct relevant experiments in second life,
which makes use of programs that do replicate real physical laws -
there are already locations within second life in which a number of
games making use of the SL physics engine have been created.
In as far as Chemistry, in
theory similar games could be created in second life in which objects
are designed in order to replicate chemical reactions when 'mixed
together' (risk free to the students should they accidentally mix
volatile chemicals!) - but once again the process of the design of the
objects and actions required for such a concept would be a complex
one.
Another
option Johnson outlines is the concept of 'international language labs'
or international collaborations in partnership with other schools or
educational groups on Second Life. This is by far the easiest and most
obvious means to utilise Second Life for education, but even this
option requires a fair amount of prior collaboration on the part of the
educators.
Short
of etablishing these partnerships, teachers could even ask students to
strive to join groups or meet individuals who speak the language they
are learning themselves and conduct conversation. This idea is
appealing on multiple levels, because it is an approach which allows
the student to be proactive, allows them to potentially meet a broad
range of people, and in the process of communication with them develop
their reading comprehension skills while picking up conversational
language structures at the same time from native speakers. Students
could be asked to return to class with something like a small, weekly
report in which they detail who it was they met, where, and what was
discussed in their conversation, these reports in turn could be used as
prompts to lead the class to discuss particular topics, such as certain
idioms, places, occupations, etc.
In
as far as international collaboration, there is in fact a website which
a few years ago utilized this concept to develop a number of
educational webpages created by a team consisting of students from
different countries who worked together to produce an informative and
well presented webpage on one of a series of potential topics, with the
best pages to be kept as informative web rescources.
The
same concept is applicable to second life, perhaps more so, because
these students could actually meet and design something together,
working on it at the same time, collaborating and using each others
ideas to design something such as a room within a gallery containing
information or links to web pages about a certain topic.
In
an article of Fortune published on the 23rd of January this year, the
appeal of Second Life to big businesses is enthusiastically detailed:
"...What's beginning to catch
the attention of IBM and other huge corporations is something potentially far
more profound than a new online pastime. It's the ability to use Second Life as
a platform for a whole new Net - this one in 3-D and even more social than the
original - with huge opportunities to sell products and services."
What such corporations are viewing Second Life as is a new market, a potential eBay, Amazon or
such web-monolith in which they are eager to steak a claim while the
game is early. The main interest of these corporations, besides product
sales, is advertisement, which brings us to the potentially very
lucrative opportunity for Marketing and Advertising
students to make use of a niche in which advertisement design, product
design, billboard creation and placement and marketing strategies
appropriate for this new frontier market. Since this skill is area will
doubtless be desired by many companies who seek to advertise and market
products on second life, the use of this medium is beneficial not only
to marketing students in terms of being faced with a fresh, topical
issue to work with and develop their skills generally, but is
beneficial in that it may well set them up for actual business
opportunities on second life, or other such Multi-User Virtual
Environments to come.
Sarah
Robbin's is one educator who is using Second Life in a fairly big way,
holding online classes and generally staying at the forefront of this
MUVE. On her online blog in which she catalogs her findings and
ponderings (http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/) she states:
In the past ten years, as online multi-player games have become more
advanced, academics have begun to take notice. Applying preexisting
methodologies borrowed from sociology, psychology, and communications
to study the spaces and the interactions in them have provided a solid
starting point for serious game studies. However, as others have noted
(Dutton and Consalvo, Squire, and Manninen) these methods are limited
to studying the communication itself and not the mechanics of the
environments that give rise to the communication patterns that emerge."
the
line between “game” and “non-game” is becoming blurred with the
development of new environments such as Second Life, There, and
Multiverse. These spaces share common characteristics with MMORPG
environments like World of Warcraft and Runescape but also have
elements not present in those spaces such as freeform object creation,
unlimited avatar customization, and stigmergic environments (persistent
spaces that can be altered by the user in ways that will be visible to
others). Aside from studying the elements of play involved in the
puzzle-like nature of games, what we’re really studying here are
multi-user virtual environments. What we’re looking at are new
communities, new forms of communication, new arenas of socialization...
The fact that businesses are tapping into the second life market tells us one very important thing.. SL really isn't a game. Its a market, a society, and as such is a place ... for an increasing number of people a workplace. Hence, students thus benefit from experience in Second Life in two ways, firstly to extend their educational environment beyond the classroom, to give them an awareness of the fact that education should not exist seperately from their lives, confined to the schoolgrounds. Sarah Robbins details this well in a Learning Times Green Room podcast interview when she states:
"What Ive noticed is that students see the class room as a designated learning area...they see learning as a very seperate thing from the rest of their lives. What second life does for me is that it gives me a persistent classroom, so middletown, our island is always there, and students who want to get to know other people in the class, of they want to talk to someone about assignment, they know [...] there's a chance [...] there'll be another student there hanging out, so allowing them that space where they can go, get to know eachother, hang out on a social basis and also talk about class seems to expand the time that they spend thinking about the work that they're doing on class."
Secondly to provide them with skills and awareness relevant to these new online environments that they may well have to deal with in their future careers.
While Robbins is perhaps the most recognised active educator on second life there are many others who have begun unpacking Second Life in according to its educational potential. One example is Rick Panganiban, an NGO professional who's blog discusses at one point the value of SL as a program through which to coordinate distance education:
The fact that businesses are tapping into the second life market tells us one very important thing.. SL really isn't a game. Its a market, a society, and as such is a place ... for an increasing number of people a workplace. Hence, students thus benefit from experience in Second Life in two ways, firstly to extend their educational environment beyond the classroom, to give them an awareness of the fact that education should not exist seperately from their lives, confined to the schoolgrounds. Sarah Robbins details this well in a Learning Times Green Room podcast interview when she states:
"What Ive noticed is that students see the class room as a designated learning area...they see learning as a very seperate thing from the rest of their lives. What second life does for me is that it gives me a persistent classroom, so middletown, our island is always there, and students who want to get to know other people in the class, of they want to talk to someone about assignment, they know [...] there's a chance [...] there'll be another student there hanging out, so allowing them that space where they can go, get to know eachother, hang out on a social basis and also talk about class seems to expand the time that they spend thinking about the work that they're doing on class."
Secondly to provide them with skills and awareness relevant to these new online environments that they may well have to deal with in their future careers.
While Robbins is perhaps the most recognised active educator on second life there are many others who have begun unpacking Second Life in according to its educational potential. One example is Rick Panganiban, an NGO professional who's blog discusses at one point the value of SL as a program through which to coordinate distance education:
"For
those accustomed to traditional forms of online learning, the
possibilities presented by a 3-D teaching environment make
correspondence courses seem antiquated. “Distance students have a very
disconnected feeling,” says Harvard Extension School instructor Rebecca
Nesson, who will be teaching her first class in Second Life this fall.
For the extension school’s typical Web-based courses, a student might
check in with an instructor from time to time, but interaction among
peers can be iffy, with no set protocol for making it happen. Nesson
chose to offer her course in Second Life “to make a distance-education
experience feel like a more substantial, more connected experience so
that they would have someplace where they could come and actually get
to interact directly with each other and with the instructors.”
(retrieved from http://www.rikomatic.com/blog/2006/08/article_on_educ.html)
The link below lists a number of educational institutions with virtual campuses and so forth on Second Life:
http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Top_20_Educational_Locations_in_Second_Life
and the following is much the same sort of thing:
and the following is much the same sort of thing:
This is the Second Life Educator's mailing List: https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators
