I’ve yet to be bitten by the legendary Second Life bug, however discussions have been going on ’round the ol’ water cooler on campus as to whether there is a pedagogical potential in this application and two of us finally opted to take the plunge into the virtual world and have a look for ourselves.
The verdict so far: We’ve discovered a tremendous learning curve wrought with a tonne of potential for distractions and newbie stuff-ups, and even some other users with violent tendencies. Our our second day in a strange man with an AK-47 assault rifle appeared out of nowhere and gunned us both down for no apparent reason.
Fortunately for us this is a virtual world and not a real one, and we apparently have as many extra men as we need because it only proved a minor set back.
Despite being on a high speed network and were using reasonably recent computer hardware we also ran into substantial performance issues in which both of our computers froze at one stage or another. The amount of RAM required to run this applications seems pretty substantial.
There are ways to reduce the load by decreasing the audio and video quality, dropping the frame rates, etcetera; however the fact remains that the default settings were pretty high in spec.
We discovered a virtual learning space for the University of Griffith complete with tye-dye dance floor and mirror ball, a spa/jacuzzi and what looked to be some actual seats for classroom exercises, but without the slightest sign of any students – barring the man with the gun. Not that I’m surprised about the lack of students given it is still student holidays.
It’s been interesting so far but I’ve yet to run across anything conclusive that would suggest there is educational potential here. That said I’ve heard lots of rumors to the contrary, so I’ll keep looking before I chalk this up as an educational experience and start using Second Life for purely entertainment purposes only. In that sense the potentials are limitless.
If you use Second Life and have suggestions I’m all ears.
UPDATE: Thanks to djfoobarmatt for providing the link to Virtual librariesinteract.info, “Blog central for Australian Libraries in Other Worlds“
Hi Mike,
Second Life does require a pretty speccy computer, and if you don’t have one of the recommended graphics cards, forget it!
The poor performance you mention may have been the result of ‘lag’, as it’s called which, unfortunately, is one of Second Life’s limitations at the moment.
Jo Kay and I have been working on compiling a list of Educational Uses of Second Life that you may find interesting.
Pop over to the Island of jokaydia and say hi sometime!
Hi Sean, Wow that was really eerie. I was just in the midst of reading your blog post about The winner of the Edublog Awards 2007 virtual worlds category and the awards ceremony when your comment came through.
I’ll be sure to pop by and check it out. Thanks for the invite and the info