An interview with Drexel University’s Jean-Claude Bradley discusses educational uses of Second Life. Jean-Claude Bradley also indicates when Second Life might not be appropriate to use. Among the benefits mentioned are that students get to meet other students and teachers from around the world who are attracted by the content. Among the constraints is that students aren’t always familiar, interested or motivated to use Second Life. For Jean-Claude Bradley that translates to a strategy of providing Second Life as another channel for learning, not a required component of his class. He also wouldn’t use it for a course with a large number of students.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/57198/

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The medical students have some medical exercises with physicians from around the world at Ann Myers Medical Center in Second Life. See some snapshots as examples at http://scienceroll.com/2007/08/09/live-blogging-today-first-medical-simulation-in-second-life/

Before practicing medicine on real patients, nursing students at Tacoma Community College, in Washington, get to practice on virtual ones in the world of Second Life. Visit the article “To Save a Second life” from The Wired Campus.

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Kaneva, a new virtual 3D world, is featured in the Wired Campus blog. The article points to a review and includes a video that demonstrates Kaneva features.

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A blogger at New Scientist magazine highlights two interesting uses of Second Life related to astronomy.

Students in the course “Life in the Universe” at the University of Arizona have created a “Timeline of Earth Exhibit” that features a spiral display of earth’s geological time.  Anthony Crider, a faculty member from nearby Elon University, has developed a planetarium in Second Life as part of an astronomy class.  Students in the class use it to give presentations to fellow Second Life users.

Crider also developed an observatory in Second Life that students can use for practice before using real telescopes at the school.  Students don’t have anything in particular to observe, however - Second Life doesn’t have a realistic night sky.

blog post at New Scientist

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Two recent papers in Science and Nature review the use of virtual worlds, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, to carry out experiments; researchers are beginning to use virtual worlds to examine human behavior and test artificial intelligence since there is a large population of possible subjects and ways to create almost identical situations for experiments.

The New Scientist Techology blog gives a good summary of the papers.

In teaching, virtual worlds might be a compelling way to bring students into the research process in some subject areas.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog reports two examples of using the virtual world Second Life.

On July 23, 2007, journalism students at the University of California at Berkeley will use Second Life to show off their reporting, filming, and writing on religion.

In fall 2007, the University of New Orleans will begin offering two classes in Second Life. The virtual campus was built mainly for distance education, research, and as a place for administrators to meet, but the university realized it would be a good venue for classes should another devastating hurricane strike the Gulf Coast.

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AjaxLife is an web application that lets you use Second Life in your web browser. Well…sort of. It lets you chat with friends, and reposition yourself (’teleport’) throughout the SL universe, and that’s about it. Nonetheless, people are excited about it. Could it be that more than a few SL users are disgruntled with the slow speed of Linden’s servers?

More info here, and an interview with the (15 year old!) creator, Katharine Berry, here.

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Several new events and resources for and/or about SecondLife have been appearing on the web. Here’s a summary of the more interesting or useful links:

• Oakland University’s “E-Learning and Instructional Support” site has a basic “Introduction to Second Life” up, with links to videos and the basics of SL, not to mention the growing flurry of listservs and groups that endlessly discuss SL with the fervor of a telenovela.
  
  Oakland’s Introduction to Second Life page

• A new wiki went up for the “SL International Education Research Society”.
  
  http://iprc.pbwiki.com/

• The New Media Consortium’s (NMC) Summer Conference is starting today, and will no doubt heavily focus on SL. They’ll be investigating the new ‘voice’ beta testing options in SL, among other things.
  
  http://sl.nmc.org/wiki/NMC_2007_Summer_Conference

• A PR firm called “Text100″ has been making the rounds in the SL-Education community for their decision to create offices and services in SL. They have a YouTube video explaining their decision that is getting some discussion:Text100 on YouTube

• Finally, for those who missed the link, here’s a short opinion piece (coming close to completely slamming library uses of SL) written by Mark Herring (Dean of Library Services - Winthrop U in SC), plus reader comments from Library Journal.com.Library Journal: Get a (Real) Life!

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Showing the influence of virtual worlds technologies, Sony is introducing the idea of a “Second-Life”-like virtual world to the Playstation 3. The software, being demonstrated now, should be available to PS3 users later this year.

news story from AP

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