Second Life Revisited

Second Life is a 3D virtual world which is owned and created by the users and is free to download. It was made public in 2003 by Linden Labs. Each member of Second Life creates an avatar, which is a virtual persona. Residents can also buy and sell property and build on the land. Colleges and Universities can actually buy private islands and build virtual campuses for their students. Generally the price for a college or university to buy a private island is around $980. However, Linden Labs will also let an instructor try out Second Life for a class for free. They will be provided a free piece of land for the duration of the course. Second Life can have many educational uses because it allows for interaction that is more involved than discussion boards or email. It is real-time interaction where students can voice chat and look up web resources at the same time.

Best Practices
It depends on how much interaction you would like your class to participate in using Second Life. Some courses are completely desinged in Second Life where there are weekly class meetings and course content is uploaded, or some just have a few semester meetings in Second Life. However, either way it is important to have an orientation session at the beginning of your course to show students the details of getting around in Second Life. Below are a few tips I got from one of my instructors when I first joined Second Life:

Tips for moving around in Second Life:

• Click hold means you click on something but don't release the button
• Click move means you click and hold, then move the mouse while holding
• Hold together means you press at the same time
• Click move mouse to look up down and around
• Scroll wheel to zoom view in/out, including into your head
• Escape key (hit twice sometimes) returns you to default view
• Four arrow keys walk/fly you in the direction pressed (1 or 2 at a time)
• Right click on things (yourself, others, objects) to see what you can do
• Home key starts/stops flying
• Page up/down flies up/down (and lands if you're flying down)
• Hold alt key and click on something to center/focus on it - scroll to zoom, move mouse to zoom and rotate horizontally
• Hold down ctrl-alt and click move to focus and rotate around an object from all directions
• Hold down ctrl-alt-shift and click move on things to pan across it

Top Tips for using Second Life in a course:

1. Have an orientation the first week. This will allow students to be more comfortable if they are new to the program and you can give them the suggested list above.
2. Set up a classroom or campus so students have a place they can be comfortable using. SL is open to everyone, and not everyone has an educational objective.
3. Make sure you are comfortable using SL. The more the instructor knows, the more they can pass on to their students.
4. Keep it structured. Not every student will feel comfortable expoloring this virtual world.
5. Establish objectives for the use of SL in your course.  

How does Second Life benefit education?

• Social Interaction
• Visualization
• Contextualization
• Informal Learning
• Immersion
• Simulation and experential learning
• Role play
• Community
• Content Production

Consider using Sloodle-accompanying Moodle with Second Life.

SecondLife:
http://www.secondlife.com/ 

Educational Uses for Second Life:

http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses 

Sloodle:

http://www.sloodle.org/moodle/

SLED (Second Life in edcuation):

http://www.sl-educationblog.org/

Encyclopedia of Educational Technology: Multi-user Virtual Environments in Education:

http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/muveseducation/index.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/stevenw/virtual-spaces-second-lives-what-are-the-potential-educational-benefits-of-muves-presentation

Capstone Project and Random Thoughts

As I was thinking about a Capstone project I have to do for a class, I was thinking really hard about how I can incorporate so many Web 2.0 tools into it and link them all together. With that thinking and planning I had an a-ha moment. For example, I could use Wordle in a different way. I could upload some text/paragraph about a topic and have students guess what it is about. Or with Twitter, it won't just be another boring "What I'm doing at the moment type of thing". I could relay pertinent information while we plan the trip such as tips, tools, things I found to look up, travel info, new information about trip, etc. Then while we are there we could use it to tell what we are doing, where we are, etc. to keep everyone at home informed.  I would love to use Ning so students can have a space online to share their experiences and knowledge. Before the trip it would be important that students know where they are going and to learn about the place more so using Google Earth and Google Sightseeing, YouTube videos, photos, etc. would help them become familiar. Listening to music of that region would also be helpful. Students could even take a virtual fieldtrip to Second Life and explore it there and then compare it to the real Maya Riviera or students who couldn't go on the field trip could still join us and learn about it online. We could even have virtual meetings online regarding the trip which can also be saved for future viewing. I never realized how well you can really stay connected with others through these Web 2.0 tools and how interralated they are. Talk about truly being connected to the world!