Sunday, January 10, 2010

Second Life-Virtual learning environment

Hey all,
Rashmi Melody is my Second Life human avatar name,sounds good isnt it?
I had absolutely no idea about SL until i found out about it in Facilitating online communities course.There was this email which talked about virtual birthing suite session (unfortunately i missed the session),which was totally new to me, later when i went on to read about it, i wondered ,is it really possible to learn virtually study in a environment created by you like a beach?
After creating my account and installing second life application in my computer, i realised you can do so much virtually, even buy you own house and have a virtual social life.What makes second life different is you can build a car(object) and program it to respond to other people or objects or the virtual world itself and then drive it or race it with others(virtually). This ability to create your own simulated world and interact with it offers some exciting possibilities in educational field such as role playing and interactive simulations.Learning has already extened to our home computers and it is possible to achieve learning self paced though distance.Personally i believe simulation can help learners succeed by adding the interaction element in learning.
Many universities have already developed their private space in second life for education, a real world approach to virtual learning spaces,wow!
Hopefully you find some interest in exploring and discovering more about second life as i did.Although it is free to create account and setup avatar, not all services are free,so you have to take membership to access many of the application, but why not try the basic free features, you will be amazed.
On a final note on Virtuality,watched Avatar in 3D last week, what was real and what was virtual?Worth watch in 3d glasses :-)

Cheers
Meena

2 comments:

  1. I haven't watched Avatar yet - would you suggest I go and see it?

    How would you use SL to develop online community? What would be importnat to remeber when facilitating a SL event?

    ReplyDelete
  2. definitely Sarah,it was stunning and the 3d visual effects were mesmerizing(wont reveal much now)
    One thing you can develop in sl than rl is flexible structure(building or learning) and cheaper than in real.The other advantage is its open 24/7 ,so you are free @ night you could attend a class running day time in china.
    Mind you hardware ot technical issue cant be overlooked because they exist, especially with my processor,i can see that my computer has slowed down since installing SL.
    Secondly ,I have understood little and havent spent much time with the interface,nor have i joined any community, to give concrete opinion on developing community .
    One thing i am a bit apprehensive about is we wont know who is who and the flexibility of changings ones avatar time to time,may make it difficult to remember the person and will take more time to understand learners learning style and behaviour.
    Cheers
    Rashmi Melody
    loving my sl name :-)

    ReplyDelete