You make some great points, as do many others in this thread.

Every fall, I incorporate a Second Life module in my courses on new media and cyberculture. This is a short (2-3 week) module near the end of the term, after we’ve slogged through the more dense theoretical writings on the social impact of technology.

I’ve also designed two classes around Second Life. The first course, on game design, was offered three years ago when the world was in its infancy. (See: http://www.trinity.edu/adelwich/games/index.html) In that course, the environment was a great way of gaining hands-on experience with user-friendly development tools. Of course other tools (e.g. the Neverwinter Nights building kit) would also have sufficed, but those tools would have lacked the massively multiuser component that is so exciting in virtual worlds.

This semester, I’m teaching a course on promotions and publicity in virtual worlds (http://www.trinity.edu/adelwich/metaverse/readings.html) to a group of new media students. During our first meeting last week, many expressed skepticism about the more grandiose claims made for Second Life. When I mentioned that I personally paid more than $1,000 USD for an island as part of a business venture, some of the students were completely flabbergasted. I tried to explain that I *also* got some magic beans along with the island, but this did not seem to convince them. It will take a while to convince the students that I’m not completely nuts, and some may never agree with me. (But that’s the great part of a liberal arts education — we’re allowed to see things differently.)

Prokofy makes the point that most classes using Second Life are about social networking and virtual world technologies, and he has a point. This is certainly true of my new media and cyberculture courses.

However, the courses on game design and virtual world promotion are an attempt to explore larger concepts (e.g. game design/criticism and interactive marketing respectively) through the lens of Second Life. These classes aren’t about Second Life, though it is a vehicle for playing with the other theoretical concepts.

Architecture professors are doing some fantastic work with Second Life as a tool for rapidly building out design concepts. It sure beats gluing toothpicks together in the middle of the night.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are many other examples. I am certain that we will see many other innovative uses of Second Life (and other virtual worlds) in the classroom.

I’m personally bullish on Second Life, both as an educator and as an entrepreneur who is part of a virtual world development agency. However, I’m not convinced that it will be the dominant way of accessing the Metaverse five — or even three — years from now. Heck, it seems that Linden Lab themselves have acknowledged the likelihood of other platforms taking the lead.

For now, Second Life is a terrific tool for *some* but not all educational applications.

Aaron Delwiche
Trinity University

p.s. This is blatantly self-promoting, but some of the readers of this blog might be interested in my article on the use of multiplayer worlds in the college classroom. The data itself is a few years old, but the idea of situated learning is very powerful for anyone who is teaching with such tools. The work of Constance Steinkuehler and Lisa Galarneau might also be useful to SL educators.

p.p.s. P, I have not forgotten my promise to post something about the ethical challenges that stem from working in an industry while also teaching classes related to the mechanics of that industry. Now that my tenure materials are filed, I’ll be able to work on that.

Uh, why would I have a “problem” if I merely challenge what looks like a lot of hype to me, and frankly looked like a lot of hokum to the original poster, too, eh?

It has nothing whatsoever to do with my being “a land baron” or playing “immersive” Second Life or something. I’m happy to have SL be used for really serious applications. I would applaud this. But I’m skeptical. I see a lot of mystification and Kool-Aid drinking here. I don’t see real stuff. I see extremist ideologies that are fashionable here or there, the child-centric ideologues among them, that are willing to privilege “the learner’s empowerment” and “the learners’ voice” blah blah — but never answer a single hard question about whether the learner ever learns anything except how to work the levers on complex video game mechanisms and how to socialize more and faster. Where’s the knowledge?

>Lets just say… some educators have already finished teaching classes in SL which were not simply about SL or about the technology

Links? Press articles?

I don’t see why I’d have to read an educational journal to ask a very pointed question about how socializing on the Internet is helping learning. I don’t see that this helps my children do their homework or learn; it has its limits, and must be restrained. There are some things that are learned by socializing — how to use games and worlds and social software are among the useful things one learns by fooling around on the Internet. But…then what? What is the content? What *else* is there besides the technology itself? I don’t see why this would be discredited as a legitimate line of questioning.

What is your problem? You arent working as a real-life educator. I can’t take your comment as anything other than an example of your well known opposition to any element of real-life invading your second life game of land baron-ism. Yes, you love being the top vocal critic in SL of… well just about anything. But this need not concern you.

Lets just say… some educators have already finished teaching classes in SL which were not simply about SL or about the technology. Some have reported that their classes went well, that they got good results and that their students liked the class. Anecdotal perhaps, but at this stage even these anecdotes blow your objections away. As for the more rigorous research to back it up… that is underway and takes time. But it is underway, believe me.

If you were a professional educator raising serious points, I would try and answer them – but you arent. We’ve heard it all before from you. Sadly, I’m sure we will again.

If you want to know why, as Sean puts it, “Many argue that making learning more social improves pedagogical outcomes”, then get off your too-high horse and go read some educational journals. If you’re too lazy to try that, I suggest you stay out it.