Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Second Life in Education

I have always been a proponent of video games in education. Heck, I learned how to program thanks to Logo back in 4th grade. (Yes I learned to program in Elementary School, I had no choice but to be a geek - and I'm very proud of it now). There are some very cool initiatives in the College right now that utilize the "power" of video games and how they can graphically represent concepts to us.

But Second Life? I'm not sure. Second Life to me is a social community that just happens to be in a 3D Virtual environment. But, I'm curious and want to investigate further.

DELTA at NC State has purchased an island to investigate this idea. What can we do in this kind of environment? Can we teach? Can we simulate scenarios? Can we discuss? Who do we want to join us? Who do we want to keep out?

I'm looking forward to what we find. Oh and my SL name is Trillian Kowalski

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am eager to explore Second Life and just downloaded it the other day...

My initial impression is that I can't believe something has been created that is so anti-social yet social all at the same time. We'll see how this turns out...

Just wondering, when somebody "purchases" land in Second Life, who the hell does the money go to?

Bethany Smith said...

There is a Linden Dollar vs. the US Dollar exchange rate!

Even though the game is free - you "pay" for items inside the game. The money can go to either a person that creates the item, or in the case of land or "terraforming" the money goes to Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life