Finding a purpose in Second Life

Joined it, walked around it. Left it. Battled with the interface and sub-culture jargon again, gave up and left.

That was a couple of years ago.

Now I’ve revisited it over the last month or so. I assume my previous SL Avatar is still out there somewhere?

Apparently it may appeal to me as in fact I have ‘no real life’, which was a comment I got when mentioning it to the wife. Thishas been said before … but it got me thinking.

The ‘nerdyness’ is part of the problem, you have to be thick skinned if you ‘come out’ as having a SL Avatar. If (and its a big IF), the person you are speaking to has the slightest idea – then they need it classifying as a ‘game’ in order to relate to it. I gave up attempting to explain that it is not a game (but there are game SIMS in it).

So rather than walk around SL as before, seeking ‘prim’ enlightenment, I opted to read presentations on Slideshare and of course YouTube. I read the community SL blog, read the forums … and discovered what the fuss is about. And its quite simple really.

Remember when the internet was new and people thought you were strange to battle with that old 14.4k modem and grey Netscape pages … why would you bother? Just use newsgroups! Because it is GOING to be something, not sure what or when, but it is way too interesting to ignore.

I was right then (and made a few bucks out of it in the 90s), and I get the same feeling here.

SL suffers the same image problems that the early graphical web page did in the late 80s. Its not clear what it is (yet).

(probably not aided in AU by the 60 minutes beat-up on it) …

why report when you can entertain! … jeez that show needs to take a look at itself. Of course SL (18+) edition has a side to it which has absolutely no part to play in teaching/schools and should be kept well away from those in our care … 60 minutes got very excited about that … but statistically speaking … what ’section’ of the internet has always been massive and always made money? … SL merely mirrors that, but perhaps because its visual, the media can report on it in a more ’shocking’ way. SL is a pretty thing for the TV screen and made an easy journo piece IMO. It did not explore anything of substance and stuck firmly to cheese-cake reporting.

SL is a preview of what is going to come next. Just like people who ventured from newsgroups to Netscape Navigator … heretics that we were. Webpages used to be hard to make … but now easy … the same will be true of SL prims, textures, scripts etc., and this time it is happening faster!

Right now SL is making over US$1million a day – real money! – and a good AU$4.80 of that was mine. But at my personal level, it’s cheap living.

Future versions of SL will not be as it is now, but definitely something immersive, social, connected, entertaining and accessible. This post is not about what SL is (I figure its something different to everyone in it), it is about getting educators to open up their minds (see the last rant on that), to what is possible and just consider it.

SL will appeal to kids … it lends itself to a hybrid of discovery, entertainment and social interaction. It has the anonymous flavour of MySpace, the instant community of Messenger and allows them to choose, create and evolve.

I’ve not seen ‘teen’ SL, but assume its the same deal, just with the English language being replaced by MySpace/TXT-ish.

With recent slow down of CeNet in speed of late – I’ve been looking at Moodle once more. I never went off it really, we just decommissioned it in 2007. Then I find Sloodle – a mashup of Second Life and Moodle. All the benefits of what I consider to be a fantastic educational CMS mashed with the immersive stickyness of SL.

It has to be well worth a look, as Moodle appeals to a range of students, but not all. I think that participating in SL, keeping a social element going in class might appeal to the non-Moodle types.

I am not thinking about building a virtual school or even a classroom, but a space in which kids can build it (if they want) or not. Drop in the Learning Objects and let them discuss.

Lets face it, most of our students go home at night and sit on messenger while doing homework. With Sloodle they can do the same, but in a 3D world, exhanging files, ideas and completing tasks. Not just written tasks, but visual tasks. Sure it means a shed load of work to set it up. Sure I know next to nothing about it right now … but by next week I will.

I can see a purpose to it. Kids live in a semi-digital world.in Bebo, MySpace, Messenger and in Playstation, SIMS etc., they are not playing, they are evolving – digitally. In my own classes, I can’t see the point of a running a virtual classroom, when Ive got a real one – but certainly creating spaces (safe spaces) for students to share ideas, sandbox concepts, meet, chat, explore has to be good for some. Its cheap real estate. Bolt on an educational CMS (that I control) and suddenly SL becomes a great option (and cheaper than RL buildings, RL excursions).

But right now, it’s just too strange for many … too different … but thats nothing new. At least SL does not have a Big Brother House.

… catch you in the Star Wars SIM … remember your RCS or DCS2.5 HUD … else get blasted.

Freebies …