Moving to a Second Life…
May 20, 2008
I don’t know why I have taken so long to explore Second Life. It has been over a year since I first heard about it. I have read people’s blogs, joined groups on Classroom 2.o but not actually gone in to investigate further.
Well, in the last 24 hours I have mustered up the courage to delve into a whole new virtual world that is exciting and fresh and offers huge potential for interaction and learning.
To begin with I needed to download the application (about 72mb) and then had to register with a user name and a password. I used my own first name but needed to choose another second name – I became Helen Moonite. Pretty cool sounding name I think!My next step was to choose an avatar that I could later modify.
Upon entering Second Life I was run through a series of tutorials that help you to communicate, travel, and modify appearance. In this area I was supported by other newbies who were just one step ahead of me.
Today I went into Jokaydia, a region created by Jo Kay from Wollongong. Here a number of OZ/NZ educators met the night before. Unfortunately I was late in last night so decided to go and explore tonight. I found a few twitter friends there, including barbs1, Laurenogrady, heymilly, efreeman and jokay. Jokay was amazingly helpful to the newbies and made you feel very comfortable even after the many mishaps that can happen when you are still learning to walk, fly and even get dressed.
This is a screen shot of me as Helen Moonite standing in front of the Edublogs sign.
As I said the possibilities for learning and interacting are many and in the next few weeks I will explore these further. Please feel to add how you use Second Life in your educational setting.
Entry Filed under: 21st Century Skills, ICT, Web2.0, learning, spaces. Tags: jokaydia, learning, online, second_life, twitter, virtual_worlds.
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1.
roobz | May 20th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Your twittering actually inspired me to head on in for a looky, Helen. Being at uni, I couldn’t install the client but I got a name of Roobz Parx for when I do.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Skoolaborate blogs ( http://skoolaborate.com ), and there’s a great video on there of a collaboration between a teenager and a professional architect collaborating on a virtual building site. Their dialogue is great.
With the Olympics in China next term, I would love to set up a virtual environment for collaboration between students from my internship school and a school in China. Sadly, it doesn’t look like I can make it happen in such a short time, but the technology is crying out to be used in upper-primary classrooms in my opinion.
2.
helenotway | May 20th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Hi Rob,
So pleased you had a look at SL. It does look like it is begging to be used more for eductional purposes. I will look for you next time I am in there and will send you a tweet before I go in.
Thanks for the link to skoolaborate. It looks great.
Helen
3.
janelowe | May 20th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Hi Helen
I am a newbie in SL too. I have only visited twice but I have found it interesting to communicate with people in this new setting. Not sure tha I have time to visit very often but I 9Jainjer Joles) may meet you in their sometime.
I don’t see myself using SL in my teaching as I teach Year 4 but I can certainly see a place for using it with teens.
Jane
4.
tracy | May 20th, 2008 at 3:22 am
I love SL too, though I have tech issue with the video card on my laptop. Lag and crashing are an issue for me. There is so much to explore! I joined a Star Trek RP group (UF Starfleet) and I hope to learn how to build.
5.
helenotway | May 21st, 2008 at 10:33 am
@Jane Lowe – I will look for you next time I am in SL. I’m still not too sure how younger students will use virtual worlds in education, but I can see some interesting possibilities.
@tracy Wow! I hae no idea how to build yet. I am still learning the basics of adding objects and friends. Lots of fun though. I will visit UF Starfleet one day although I don’t know much about Star Trek. Might see you there.
6.
Westley Field (iSupport) | June 10th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Hi all
Thanks for the link to our Skoolaborate initiative. Skoolaborate is about schools who want to develop a working relationship over time with other like minded schools, both local and international. We currently have 5 islands and can register people easily. If you want to join us please visit the blog and read the how to join section. We will collaboratively develop projects and share our learnings. There is the added bonus on sharing online units of work of which the virtual component forms a small part. Hope to see you all soon.
7.
helenotway | June 13th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Westley,
Your initiative sounds fantastic. I would love to join but have no classes of my own in my current role. Would this be okay?
8.
Westley | June 17th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Sure helen, have a look at our blog http://www.skoolaborate.com under how to join and contact me on Skype: westleyf
9.
Westley | June 17th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Sure helen, have a look at our blog http://www.skoolaborate.com under how to join and contact me on Skype: westleyf