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I’ve spent a good number of hours lately wandering around in Second Life (SL). For those of you who may not know, SL is a 3D virtual space where people can come, represent themselves with Avatars (kinda like a pupet), interact, build, do business, and have fun — in just about any way that you can imagine, and probably ways that I couldn’t imagine. Some spaces, or islands have been purchased and dedicated to educational applications, and educators have started populating these islands — like crazy.
I visited again this morning, and am sure that there are buildings there that weren’t there yesterday — big ones. I must admit a real sense of space there, and I’ve already made some friends, most of whom I have no idea who they are in RL (that’s real life). I did meet one guy (I guess) who admitted to being a principal in Vermont. He wouldn’t share his name, however, for fear of my thinking that all principals in Vermont have nothing better to do than wonder around, zombie like, in Second Life.
This is certainly not true, and no-one’s a zombie here. We all knocking around, kicking the tires, pushing the envelope on possibilities of using this as a learning space. I’ve learned to walk — fairly smoothly. I can even navigate spiral stairs, a feat that would have been impossible only a few days ago. I get a special pleasure from flying. The sound of the air rushing by your ears (out of the computer’s speakers) is invigorating, and I can now find my way from the ISTE center to my home at about 200 feet above the ground. I just turn left, take a right at the volcano, and then only a few more blocks.
The real pleasure (and instructional potential in my opinion) is the building. There are a lot of buildings here, and everyone seems interested in keeping to a contemporary style of straight lines and lots of glass (makes me feel like a voyeur sometimes). But what if we could have a place to really open things up, with caves where students could add cave drawings, neolithic villages, bronze-age cities, etc. — a continent, maybe where different sections are devoted to stuff from specific millennia — most of it built by learners.
Science is wide open as well. I found, at one point, a giant paramecium, floating above a lagoon. I tried to find it again this morning, but without success. So students making 3D single-celled organisms to demonstrate their knowledge of those plasm things would likely be a thrill. But let’s take this up to Second Life 2.0 (sorry). What if the teacher could define certain behaviors of an environment, setting laws of nature, so to speak. And then ask students to invent organisms that interact and flourish in that environment, working within an ecosystem?
None of this is new, as many of you know. Kids have been building worlds for more than a decade in MUDs and MOOs, and computer scientists have been creating ecosystems where organisms of programming code were designed to hunt, eat, and thrive. What I find interesting is the potential to create such rich constructivist learning environments and make them this accessible to young (and old) learners.
More later! It’s time to get to work — in RL!
David,
I have been searching the web for information about Second Life and how its being used for upper elementary classes. I haven’t found much and I also read that kids under 13(?) cannot enter into SL unless they are in Teen life. I am interested in getting my kids into SL here at the Carol Morgan School in the Dominican Republic. I think the Web 2.0 possibilities are endless and I see my classes being transformed from old school class to something new where kids come in and go to “work” so to speak, where they can create businesses, open galleries, create museums, design ecosystems, model ecological problems and solutions,etc. Furthermore, for us in the international community the chances for collaboration are pretty wide open and exciting. Any advice or names you can throw my way to get help would be appreciated. I have looked at the SL wikis and forums but it pretty much all higher ed people.
Cheers.
“But what if we could have a place to really open things up, with caves where students could add cave drawings, neolithic villages, bronze-age cities, etc. — a continent, maybe where different sections are devoted to stuff from specific millennia — most of it built by learners. ”
What a great idea! It reminds me of the 70s Rudolph movie where he searches the Archipelago of Last Years to find Baby New Year. Each island is a different point of time in history – one prehistoric, one medieval, one colonial. To me, there would be 3 stages of the assignment – 1: the student build the island, creating the flora, fauna, tools, artwork, objects, etc that would have existed at that time, 2: the students would create authentic avatars of themselves as they would have looked at that time period 3: the students would “live” on the island, interacting with the environment and each other authentic to that time period – they would look, act, and speak as people of that era. Similar to the actors at colonial Williamsburg, where they cannot speak of modern events or objects. They must stay “in character”. To me the 3rd part is the “doing something new”. Students have been making dioramas forever. They’ve been creating the environments. What they haven’t been able to do is immerse themselves in that environment and really see what it was like to live during that time and under those circumstances.
I tried second life. After it crashed my laptop (which is not short on resources at all) three times in an hour, the third time giving me the blue screen (thank GOD for last known good configuraiton!) I couldn’t get to uninstall quick enough. I can’t imagine how less robust school machines could handle it!
Hi David
I am wandering about Second Life too — becoming a bit less way each time.
I would invite you to read FOUR-EYED TECHNOLOGIST’S BLOG about Second Life. His thoughts and comments are giving me some good ideas to investigate.
http://www.ryanbretag.com/technologist/
JenWagner
Hi David,
I’ve been a lurker of your blog for so long, but somehow I decided to finally “cross the line”…
I haven’t been around in SL that much, so maybe I’m missing something. In one of the SCoPE seminars I had the chance to be in a SL campfire, talking with other people about the kind of things that can be done in SL.
I asked the campfire host about the cost of building an island, and it doesn’t seem to be that cheap. So I’m wondering about the cost involved in the construction of sites/buildings/islands by our students. Who will pay for that? Who will put up free land to build in (sort of the soapbox hosted by Harvard)?
I said in that campfire that the one thing I didn’t like about SL was that it was replicating our RL extremely consumist world. I would love to see a SL without L$. I understand the reasons for this, of course, but it doesn’t justify the whole buy/sell/advertise frenzy that you can see inside SL.
Again, maybe I’m missing something, so I would love to hear about this if anyone else have more info.
Best!
David:
Second Life is already at the 2.0 stage you refer to but it has been this way in its first generation. It needs expanding, yes, but it is already there.
There are some great examples like the SL ecosystem, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terminus/131/115/34/, or the emergency response simulations from play2train, http://irhbt.typepad.com/play2train/
In fact, I attended a great presentation by members of Oxford Unversity in which they discussed some of their early endeavors:
1. Public Health and Medical Scenarios: massive outbreaks, disabilities, and treatment regimes
2. Social Interaction case studies
3. Simulations: spread of diseases, first response setup, physiological processes, identification of diseases by physical symptoms, etc
4. A Body Simulation: possibility of an island that functions as a human body. Can you imagine? Wow!
I think the real issue is that there are so many exciting things being discussed and even brought to fruition but people just aren’t aware of them. Also, from my perspective in secondary education, these things are impossible to bring to my students and my teachers because it is on the adult grid.
The true fight is how to maintain the security of the Teen Grid and the benefits of the Adult Grid. In my eyes, this means a new grid —> an education grid! Maybe I’m the only one wanting this… maybe it simply is selfish but I believe this is when Second Life will take off in the k-12 world!
Ryan, I’m not sure that I understand what is so selfish about wanting an education grid. For that matter, I think it might be fairly easy to get corporations to sponsor some of the geographical locations within an education grid. Perhaps the question is whether or not educators would use something sponsored by a corporation? Are most educators still opposed to corporate sponsorships?
David: can’t find the Paramecium? Check out Sloog.org, which is, as described by the site:
Sloog is a bookmarking service for Second Life residents. It allows users to save favourite places and avatars and search for them later, both in-world with a simple plug-in (HUD) or via web browser at http://www.sloog.org
del.icio.us for Second Life?
There you go.
Dave
David, the SCoPE seminar Diego refers to and the campfire was on my island .. well it’s not mine anymore as my 6 month experiment with learning spaces in SL is up .. but it does belong to an edu non-profit and stays as is (click the link in my post name to find out about it)
Diego there is a lot going on that does not replicate RL spaces. Linden Lab have already made the client open source and are supposed to be doing the same for the server. You will then instances which do not have economies. The trick will be linking these different servers together (for edus, museums, libraries, art galleries, non-profits). There are not $ virutal worlds though … just not Second Life – which has got a lot (too much?) press in the last year.
I attended a session at the Ohio eTech (Educational Technology) Conference in February concerning a Second Life Teen grid project. The presenters included a middle school science teacher WITH the resources of Ohio University – both the Education Dept. and the Computer Science Dept. Graduate students were creating fantastic virtual labs for the middle school students to use. Ohio University has the funding to build labs in Second Life. Their goal is to make the resources available to other K-12 teachers and students. However, in the meantime, I’m not certain how most K-12 educators can access this tool. Even if I appreciate this venue as educationally appropriate for our students, I doubt I could convince our school board to purchase property in Second Life. An “Education Grid” is certainly an intriguing concept. Any sponsors?
Hi Dave,
Emily said, “Even if I appreciate this venue as educationally appropriate for our students, I doubt I could convince our school board to purchase property in Second Life.”
The reality is many school boards may not, due to potential legality issues. We’ve started a discussion on virutal worlds and accessiblities here:
http://lpcesc07.ning.com/
Please feel free to join in the conversation.
Mechelle
P.S. The sad thing is Second Life supports many individuals like no other media can. Therefore, should be considered by schools despite the challenges. Please see the video about Simon on my blog. He is so inspirational.
As a high school science teacher, I enjoyed your visions for the use of Second Life in building and establishing inteactive ecosystems with environmental study applications. Might this possibly be a tool for observing the evolution of a organism based on student parameter input? I had a seen a news clip about Second Life on the CBS Sunday morning program but had forgotten about it until I read your blog. I like the idea that Michelle presented of a ‘virtual diorama. Having not visited this site, is there a way for groups of students to work collolaboratively on building a environment? Funding is this present budgetary atmosphere is doubtful. Thanks to all who left comments. You really answered some of the questions this novice was formulating.
The Education Grid has launched and is available now for educators to use. Visit http://TheEducationGrid.org/ or visit the Immersive Education Initiative at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/ for details. The Immersive Education Initiative is an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. The Education Grid was launched by the Immersive Education Initiative on June 20th, 2008.