Is Second Life an elaborate chatroom?
Posted on May 4, 2008
Filed under Conversations, Reflections
At its base it more or less is. I’ve gleaned this sentiment from different conversations in the metaverse, mostly blogs and threads, often from people who are long time inhabitants of the web as a social space, as well as some gamers who are derisive of its ungameness.
One comparison is that to MOOs, texted-based synchronous environments, where users built and experienced the space with text-based commands and descriptions, such as “Go through the door labeled hall,” “You are in an expansive hall lined with flickering sconces . . .” MOOs were more popular with techier types than the average person in the 90s.
Visually based chatrooms, an extension of IRCs, grew in popularity in the later 90s and early 2000s, and environments such as Active Worlds and There, count among them. Both are 3D and are often compared to Second Life.
From the standpoint of education and as an educational technology, SL is little more than an elaborate chatroom for most people. When you deconstruct SL in terms of its affordances as an educational technology that is also situated in an institutional context, it quickly loses value as compared with other educational technologies.
There are other things to do in Second Life besides chat, but let’s try to understand what they are, and how and why they fit into a learning endeavor. As Stephen Downes has pointed out, SL mirrors the real world and as a result affords the same kinds of educational approaches we use in the real world. I’ve observed this too quite early on and as a result have spent little SL time involved with the educational community.
I hope to elaborate on these issues in a way that helps faculty understand this domain and its relevance for teaching and learning.
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