A good friend, Lindy McKeown, ACCE and ISTE ICT Leader of the Year 2006, is ‘doing’ her PhD on use of 3D learning environments. She has set up Terra Incognita in Second Life as an island for educators. A dozen of us have become her “lab rabbits” and have begun thinking about how such environments might be used in educational contexts.
So if you feel like commenting on my site with your favourite Second Life environment for me to check out please do.
Came across this news feed yesterday: http://www.sloz.info/feed/
“SLOz is a site devoted to bringing an Aussie slant to the Second Life experience. Launched in November 2006, SLOz believes that Second Life at the very least may bring a new approach to internet-based interaction, and we want to cover the fun ride to be had along the way. ”
The site is essentially a blog, and I’m still considering how ‘educational’ its slant actually is.
There are a few things to think about with Second Life itself too
- it is cruel to my computer memory - when I run it my computer can’t really do anything else - and when I close it, there is still some memory-hogging going on
- my computer at home is too ancient and memory poor to run it - this has implications for remote/distance/technology poor users
- you need good bandwidth - probably the best
- what would be the effect on institution server activity if a number of students/staff were all using SL simultaneously?
- what about in ‘user pays’ environments? - would students quickly exhaust their download allocation?
- so far everything to me is, if you ignore the pretty-ness of the environment, very text based. In fact I’ve done little more than get my bearings, read some text, fly about, and chat. But the environment itself is very immersive - you do feel like a new person in a different place. Will this appeal to learners?
So, is Second Life a good model for a Virtual Learning environment?
Your comments and experiences very welcome
3 Comments
Check out an open source Second Life alternative, ‘Croquet’: http://www.opencroquet.org/
This 3D virtual learning environment uses the principles of collaboration and education in its design. Powerful stuff.
Kerry, I think that we are just beginning the adventure of learning in 3D, and like all thinks technological, they are a bit clutzy in the beginning. Just look at the changes that have taken place in the last 10 years in the WWW, and in social networking in the last couple of years. I think we have to ‘be there’ to learn and help develop this tool. Pity I’m currenlty hamstrung in my dreams to learn more!
Thanks for your comments on my post - I have added some of it to the orginal post to include your input, for information for everyone.
Hi Kerry, You might be interested in a freeware program I found a few years ago.
“MemMAX is an easy to use freeware Memory Monitor / Optimizer for Windows9x, WindowsME, WindowsNT and Windows2000″.
I checked google and it is still available. It has helped when my computer suffers from too many demands and I try to open an Adobe doc and it freezes and it also recovers memory after my son has played memory hungry online games.
Karen
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[…] Also Lindy McKeown, ACCE and ISTE ICT Leader of the Year 2006, is ‘doing’ her PhD on use of 3D learning environments. She has set up Terra Incognita in Second Life as an island for educators. Read more about this from Kerrie in her post Thinking about Second Life, VLEs and other 3D environments. […]
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