Week 4 - Blog Posting #7 -Second Life

I consider myself very open to new technologies and learning environments, as long as they aren't too invasive.  That being said, I have not been able to open myself up to Second Life.  A year or so ago, I heard about Second Life through a blog posting and decided to try it out.  When I got in and looked around, I didn't really see anything I liked.  Most of the people that I met were not friendly, and most of the places I visited seemed to be very seedy.  My first impression of Second Life was not positive, so I uninstalled the program from my computer and stopped using it.

In May, my MLR professor had my classmates and I join Second Life and report our findings on educational uses of Second Life.  My group's findings still didn't convince me that Second Life is useful.  After looking at some of the locations provided for this posting, I am starting to come around to Second Life as a place to explore individually.  As a matter of fact, I had a lot of fun exploring the Multiple Intelligences site.

Swinging in the Naturalistic Intelligence Exhibit.

I did join two groups.  One group was an extension of real-life group Freecycle, which operates to help members get rid of unwanted stuff without throwing anything into the garbage and without the exchange of money.  The other group I joined was for cat lovers.  Neither group had a landmark to visit.  The International Society for Technology in Education and universities such as Princeton and Ohio University have set up virtual campuses in Second Life.  It was easy for me to join the ISTE group, but I could not join the groups for Princeton or Ohio University because they were for faculty members only. 

This video comments on the educational uses of Second Life:

Even after going into Second Life and playing around for hours this afternoon, I don't see SL as a platform for educational use.  It isn't a program that I will ever use in my classroom.  When I go into SL, I spend hours customizing my avatar than I do exploring.  When I did a web search for criticisms of Second Life, I did not find much.  People mostly commented on the financial difficulties of SL or that people could find legal prostitution.  The lack of criticism should help me trust SL more than I currently do, but I can't ignore my guy instinct.  Overall, I find Second Life to be creepy, for those who don't have a handle on real life, so they join SL to escape the reality.

References

gatorbyte99.  (2008, March 14).  Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruMi3MAGkvc

MaryAnnCLT.  (2007, August 10).  Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA