Why Second Life?
Perhaps this ELI 2007 Spring Focus Session podcast with Sarah Robbins starts to answer the 'Why Second Life?' question we are kicking around here?
This is from Sarah Robbins on Teaching in Second Life | EDUCAUSE CONNECT
Perhaps this ELI 2007 Spring Focus Session podcast with Sarah Robbins starts to answer the 'Why Second Life?' question we are kicking around here?
This is from Sarah Robbins on Teaching in Second Life | EDUCAUSE CONNECT
To day this post from compos(t)ing brought to the forefront some of the issues that we have been wrestling with regarding the new ways of the web and the applicability of virtual worlds like second life.
Author makes an interesting connection between the disconnect with reality that second life offers and the disconnect with reality that poetry also produces. Yet both second life and poetry give you a sense of being connected to others.
At least that is how I interpreted it.
[read :compos(t)ing Emporer of the Internet (and Oranges)]
[watch: video]
While y'all are talking about Second Life, 8 million people are eagerly anticipating the expansion to World of Warcraft coming out tonight.
Thanks to Time's Gadget of the week, the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator. This 'mouse' might be the answer to the awkwardness of moving through virtual sites/games like Secondlife. Perhaps some of the hesitation about embracing Secondlife as a legitimate tool is because of how awkward it is for us to move through it?
I saw this article on CNN this morning. Here you can make a million without leaving your couch. I may become an online real estate mogul. Imagine having enough time to sit on 2L and buy and sell Islands.
I found this through Chris Warren's blog. I met him at a conference on learning management software(WebCT like software). He started blogging his professional life after that conference. His blog provides his perspective on many of the things we are talking about here at Allegheny.
Before I blow his credibility, I want to share a link to his post on Teaching and Learning in a Virtual World (Second Life).
His post documents some of the strengths and weakness of Second Life as a technology but then also as a teaching learning tool.
While I'm not entirely convinced that users know how technology works now, or care how it works for that matter, I have a different view of it. I tend to look at the back end system side and how it all ties together in the end to make us productive, maybe I just don't give users enough credit for understanding front ends because I don't work with them as much.
Enough rant onto something about technology. James was telling me about Second Life the other day, and me being as anti-social as I am I figured this may be something I want to check out. Forgive me if I'm not impressed. From the limited time I spent with it before realizing it wasn't my thing, it basically reminded me of a 3d graphical chat room. I can already see the Dateline special on Second Life predators. Maybe if I had gotten off of "Orientation Island" things would have been different, but after a few minutes of wandering around under water it was pretty easy to say "what's the point" and log off. I did see the new MS Zune and thought it looked pretty cool, The ability to share from Zune to Zune via wireless has my interest, I wonder if you can steal some unsuspecting Zune patrons playlist?