It’s our generation that calls it a virtual world and builds some mystique about it.”

“It’s people of a certain age that talk about ‘going online’. Kids just say ‘I’m going to Habbo’.”
“The social footprint of kids is diminishing year on year,” he said, “they are allowed less distance from the front gate all the time.”

These are quotes from a recent BBC article about virtual worlds, children and values.

The second is telling. In my Second Life, which is becoming more life like, I’m very aware that we’re sitting in front of computers. We’re not out at a community center, a park, a cafe or a concert. Our social footprints are fading away as well and for a variety of reasons. I became interested in distance education primarily because I saw its potential for making education more accessible. It’s for people who are housebound or for whom a MWFR, Psych 101 course with 500 freshman is a barrier to starting or finishing a college degree.

Our lives are extended not diminished by available technologies.

The educational uses of SL

This Wiki is an expanding collection of what’s going on and what could go in SL educationally. Worth bookmarking and keeping up on.

Universal Design and Accessibility

Second Life like other online platforms is useful to differently-abled people in different ways. To evaluate it first through an “accessibility” lens, we might miss the work arounds creative problem solvers generate.

Read about Thought-Controlled Avatars brain-computer interfaces for people with serious physical disabilities.

NMC-Survey of Educators in SL

“Sent out to members of the NMC, our in-world educational community, and the Second Life Educators Listserv (SLED) in May 2007, the survey represents the interests, activities, and demographics of more than 200 educators.

Overall, the results reflect the highly social interaction of Second Life and how educators have formed and contribute to a vibrant community in this virtual world space.

We are making all of the results available as a summary document of all 42 questions and an Appendix with the listings of responses to the open ended questions.”

To download the PDFs go here.

Universal Avatars

“A virtual character, or avatar, for all the virtual worlds in which people play is the goal of a joint project between IBM and Linden Lab.” Read More Traversing through different virtual worlds with one avatar is the goal of this joint venture. It seems to be not too far into the future either.

Serious Games: Online games for learning

Serious Games: Online games for learning This white paper looks at serious games and their potential as learning tools. Some of the answers questions it answers:

Author: Anne Derryberry, SDSU Ed Tech Alumni.

Second Life start moving over?

For those of you seriously  considering 3D environments, this is worth noting.
Excerpt from the blog post:

“… a new Second Life “hack” (for lack of a better word), was pretty mindbending. OpenSim uses the Second Life interface (which Linden Labs released to developers last year) but allows you (wait for it) to serve up your own world on not just the server of your choice, but (wait for it) even just your local computer. Want a world just for your classroom that isn’t “out there” on the Second Life server? Done. (Read more about it in Dave’s post here. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2007/08/29/opensim-open-source-multi-user-blah-blah-sl-dave-is-in-love/)

The entire blog post: http://weblogg-ed.com/2007/reality-edutv-and-open-second-life/

And the conversation about OpenSim.

Someone commented and I have to agree:

“Except it won’t really be a virtual world, but a virtual classroom. It will miss out on all the great resources that are available in the rest of a true virtual world like Second Life, as it will miss out on the social networking opportunities, network effects and emergent behaviours you see on Second Life.”

These folks worked with pre-teens. Another related topic is Personal Learning Environments, which is mentioned here. PLE thinking is growing in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands. Read about the history of PLEs

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