September
2008
Living a ‘Second Life’3
Last week we participated in a presentation about Second Life. It is virtual world where you can create avatars of yourself. In this world you can look and be whoever you want! you can change your appearance and clothing…you can basically be PERFECT!
What i liked about Second Life (SL) is that you can change your appearance and visit an endless number places around the world. This is very useful in the classroom because students can visit places which they may never actually get the chance to in real life. This intergrates society and environment into SL. There is also a webquest for students to access and complete tasks on their own using SL. These make SL a useful tool in the classroom.
Students can also chat to one another and develop skills in making friends =)
However, SL can be dangerous because it IS NOT monitored. Children may well be talking to dangerous stranger without knowing it. People using SL can say whatever they like which means that children can hear and read about things which they should not hear e.g. swearing etc. Children can make friends on SL but I don’t think that this should be a substitue for making ‘real’ friends. You hear about children trapped in playing video games and other virtual world games and not actually living in real life. I myself do not play many video games therefore I would not spend my time playing on SL, however some children will.
As a teacher i would only use SL as a whole class activity because i can not monitor the class if every student was to have their own account.
Overall, SL is an amazing creation and has the potential to be a great teaching tool.
Hey Christina, I think you have made some valid points. I do believe Second Life can be used in many educational contexts, however for me, I wouldn’t use it as I am studying Early Childhood Education. I hope our presentation was heplful and our Wiki page even more beneficial to your learning. Thanks again!
[...] 4. Blogs – Lina, Louise, Rachel, Matt, Jess. C, Christina [...]
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (72.34.62.40) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP () and so is spam.
Christina – It was a great presentation and really helped me to understand more about Virtual Worlds. I know this sounds silly but the ‘realness’ of Second Life was quite scary. I need to explore this further…