Crystal Lee

Prior to this course, I had never heard of Second Life. Interacting in Second Life was a new learning experience, from learning to walk, run, talk, fly, and teleport.  I found teleporting to various destinations simple, but quickly learned that providing a specific location link to the group transports everyone to a common spot within a destination. The ability to chat via text or voice was convenient, especially if we were not logged into blackboard.

I feel as though Second Life as an instructional platform seems to work best in higher education. More mature students could benefit from the features available in Second Life. From a secondary educational perspective, I feel as though the majority of educational opportunities available in Second Life could not be utilized by middle school students due to the higher level of content. Although avatars personalize the learning experience, the appearances of some avatars are inappropriate for younger students.

In order for Second Life to be consistently incorporated into educational situations, a customized learning space would maximize the experience. To insure learning objectives are met, the instructor would need administrative access to input relevant content and displays. Field trips to various locations outside of the customized learning area would be taken to help learners experience virtual learning outside of their familiar domain. Second Life could be used in a training setting as long as trainees are taken to a specified remote area. Visitor restrictions would need to be enforced in the training destination to prevent unauthorized guests from interrupting training sessions. At the end of the day, I would recommend Second Life to educators in high school or higher education.

This is the first time I have experienced a 3-D virtual educational world. I was amazed at how much Second Life can offer students. Students can visit any place around the world and learn about various subject areas such as math, science, art, history, literature, and much more in Second Life. When I began creating my avatar, I was a little overwhelmed , yet pleased by the numerous options for customizing and personalizing my avatar. These options are greatly desired because many students want to create and personalize their avatar. 

As I began exploring Second Life, I realized how easy it was to chat, message, and engage with other avatars. These futures allow for easier collaborative learning amongst students. However, I would strongly caution parents, teachers, and students about the dangers and risks involved with the easy access of communicating with various types of people. For the most part, everyone I engaged with were polite and extremely helpful navigated through Second Life. Every environment in Second Life was unique and different from each other. Some environments like the Ed Tech Island and the Exploratorium, allows students to actively engage and participate through games and fun learning modules. Other environments such as museums and historical places, allows students to click on maps, artwork, and artifacts to gain more knowledge about that piece.

As our group project progressed, I began to understand why Second Life was implemented in this course. My group and I had many opportunities to explore, discover, and learn about new and creative ways of how to apply technology into an educational environment and modules. Second Life allowed for us to collaborate, discuss, and build upon our learned experiences as we developed our project. Together, we shared and lead each other through different worlds. Creating a group project centered around Second Life is ideal so that students can work together in their learning and understanding in almost any subject.

Marie Dennany Lara

My early understanding of Second Life was via negative news reports regarding teens and young adults that had become addicted to the 3-D virtual world. The media portrayed Second Life strictly as a fantasy game, stating that people danced, chatted and exchanged imaginary currencies. I never heard or read that Second Life had an educational purpose or agenda, and had further read that Linden Labs had had some legal problems with “virtual land deals” and therefore avoided the application. Personally, I do not like to play games that do not serve an intellectual purpose, so regrettably I never made any effort to explore what Second Life truly had to offer.

Following the instructions presented for this cooperative project, I slowly stumbled and struggled through the lessons on walking, flying and teleporting to the various islands within the shrinking educational community of this virtual world. I was frustrated to discover that numerous locations that I read about in my research were no longer around when I began to teleport. Even as I landed at Harvard Law School, I was greeted with a message that their location had been hacked and that the location would not be available for several weeks. Many other worlds were no longer being funded, following an increase in “land” prices in Second Life, and countless others were vacant and uninhabited when I “visited” their slurl. I was alone in this virtual world, but had become intrigued with the possibilities of what this environment could offer.

I hesitated to spend too much time in my quest to locate sources of knowledge and educational offerings within Second Life, for fear that I to would get sucked in. I truly, thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful example of a well-designed virtual museum that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum had crafted within Second Life, but saddened to hear that their funding for this project had been pulled as well. I definitely felt a purpose and instructive reward within Dr. K’s Chemistry Place while on the field trip there, but do believe I would have needed guidance when visiting. The lessons I take from these experiences exemplify the perception that many will abandon a venture that no longer has a financial incentive even when there is a clear cultural and educational benefit to the endeavor.  The other caveat is that I should have researched and examined for myself what Second Life was all about instead of leaving it to the media to dictate to me what the application truly was and is.

Insofar as the future potential uses for Second Life as an educational and training platform, there could be great benefits for this as long as Linden Labs would invest in the upkeep necessary to attract enough users to make this a profitable aspiration. The application was one of the first to combine social networking, messaging and chat features within the client program, but the company failed to make improvements and advancements in line with the technology. Microsoft offers end users of their Xbox 360 and One platforms a virtual avatar that is extremely lifelike; it interacts and realistically moves in sync with your every movement. However, Microsoft and others have not progressed into educational arenas with these types of technologies; actually very few companies have. Those interested in educational technology or simply in advancements in education are awaiting someone to advance the pedagogy into the future and Linden Labs could definitely do so if they invested the time, money and efforts into the task at hand.

Ralph Herrera

My experience with Second Life inspired me to conduct further visits into our classmates’ locations.  Second life allows the user to simulate actually being in locations and conducting experiments with a computer.  Using Second Life as an instructional platform conveniently allows the users to participate in collaborative efforts.  For example, a tour of the Exploratorium replica just like the one in San Francisco, California, allowed the users to see a lunar eclipse, solar eclipse, and view the moon’s rotation around the earth.  This may never be possible for students with limited means to experience.  Second life opens viewers to possibilities.  In addition, when conducting experiments, users may push the limits of their capabilities without fear of causing any real harm.  The learning potential is enormous considering the limited risk factor. 

Kate Binns

Second Life is not for everyone, and I'm afraid I am part of the group of people that simply found the whole experience frustrating. Initially, I was excited by the idea of  exploring the real world through a virtual world. Whenever I have the opportunity and funding, I travel. My research about Second Life led me to believe that I could simulate a somewhat real world experience at different locations. However, I did not find that to be true. Initially, I used the search function in Second Life to identify areas of potential interest. When this proved futile, I started to Google search potential destinations. Sadly, this led me to several now defunct islands. As my team discussed our experiences, we found that this is a fairly common experience.

I also found the platform frustrating. As my team can attest, if I could get stuck, I did. All early visits to the Exploratorium began with me in the duck pond for several minutes. I also managed to get my head stuck in the ceiling of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum. During tours with other teams, I was often lagging behind because of this problem. While some of my issues could be chalked up to an overly curious nature, I believe that it was result of several minute glitches in the programming.

Second Life was cutting-edge at its inception, but in my opinion, it cannot compete with other options currently available. For example, Google Earth has allowed me to view parts of the Louvre Museum in three dimensions, but when I visited the Louvre Museum in Second Life I became trapped in one room. In addition, the graphics in Second Life cannot compare with the graphics of other web applications. It seems that many organizations have come to the same conclusion when they are allocating funding.

While I do have reservations regarding Second Life, I recognize that in the correct educational context it could be effective.  For example, Dr. K's chemistry course allowed her students access to a virtual chemistry lab. While I don't think that this would be appropriate for chemistry majors, it is an excellent way for student's in an introductory class to experience chemistry without a physical lab. When teaching history, Second Life can provide a no-cost setting for realistic recreation of historical events. It could also be applied in a civics class to recreate and act out the branches of the government. Since Second Life is not restricted to educational purposes and seems to have a large "adult" section, I would hesitate to suggest its use in middle or high school. While educators can set limits for their students, I feel that the risk of introducing Second Life to students under the age of 18 is not worth the educational experience.