#22 Second Life
Having done some investigating about Second Life over the past week, I’m beginning to feel that I missed out on something somewhere along the line. This is the first I’ve really heard of Second Life, yet posts on blogs that I’m reading indicates that people have been talking about it since 2006, and possibly before. Clearly I’ve been so caught up in my First Life, that the fact that I might have a Second Life in Cyberspace simply passed me by!
My foray into Second Life hasn’t been an easy one though. I duly managed to set myself up an account but also duly managed to forget my password. The simple thing to do would be to ask for another password wouldn’t it? Well, I have! An email with a link comes back to my Inbox. A follow up on the link takes me to a page with my user name and a question: Something about how many American dollars Linden Lab has recently debited from my account? Since I have a FREE account the answer should be nothing, but apparently that’s not right! Finally, after many tries, they tell me that I must be having a “little” problem with my account password and security question and to ring them. Well Linden Lab, I live in Australia and am not ringing you! And the security question I selected and answered in the first place has yet to come into play.
So, I’ve decided that I need far more time in my First Life than what I currently have to further explore my Second Life realm.
But, all is not lost as I have learnt some things along the way.
I found this article from August 2006 helpful in that it gave a really good overview of the possibilities of Second Life in education. It also gave a few useful tips on how it all worked. Thank goodness he stated that Second Life “is not always as user friendly as beginners would like”.
Steve Hargadon has written several things on his ponderings of Second Life on his blog and includes interesting musings from an interview with Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl) here. One point I found interesting was that Sarah mentioned that those people currently taking her course through Second Life were people who were very techno-savvy. She wondered how successful it would be when the class was opened up to people who were not necessarily as advanced. This is one thing I wondered about too. We have many students who would embrace this way of learning and set about collaborating and creating quite happily, but what of those students who were a bit out of their depth. Would they just be left behind? Would they persevere? Sarah also says she spends only two hours a day on Second Life. I don’t know that I could find an extra two hours a day to be on Second Life, especially on the days when I work.
Another website discussed Google’s answer to Second Life, called Lively. It seems quite new but will be interesting to explore too.
Well I think that’s about it on Second Life for now. I can certainly see possibilities for it and will look forward to exploring further, when I finally make it in. According to Andy Carvin there are lots more educators setting up shop there, which will certainly make it worthwhile to explore. I look forward to the time when I can actually get in there and see what all the fuss is about first hand.