Second Life (SL) is a three dimensional (3D) virtual world that is designed to mirror and mimic the real world. There are numerous advantages to SL. Power (2007) describes some of these advantages: free and cheap access, excellent building potential, communication tools, large employee base for hire, creativity of the platform, integration of outside web tools, excellent and vast education potential. A building can be laid-out, designed, and virtually built so that executives and employees can walk through the building and make suggests and comments before any resources were spent on the building (Power). Educational locations, such as museums and art galleries, are available to visit and a teacher can take a class on a guided tour of these locations. As Werner (2008) points out, SL can be used for training purposes as well: emergency response and health care professionals can use SL to respond to virtual situations in real time. Also, SL can be used to model and train in various other ways, even microscopic germs (Werner). In SL, avatars can experience human mental and physical disabilities in order to better understand them (Werner). There are vast number of possibilities, advantages, and ways in which to use second life as an educator, businessperson, or for personal use.
However, there are also a lot of disadvantages. There is a learning curve to learn to move in SL and an even larger learning curve to learn to create (Werner 2008). There are technical limitations such as slow uploading and downloading speeds, since the program is on Linden Lab’s server grid, says Werner. Other disadvantages that Power (2007) points out are: time and costs to be trained on SL, numerous distractions via interesting games and graphics or other people, uninvited people, pranksters, spam, adult and violent behavior that would be unacceptable in a work or school environment, some communication tools are slow or limited by being totally public or private, resistance to use, and SL addiction.
From my own personal experiences with SL, I feel that SL has some intriguing possibilities, but also has significant flaws for educational use. When I first signed on to SL, I was not even out of the Orientation Island that I was first dropped into before another user started to flirt with me, uninvited, so, security is definitely an issue. After the initial novelty of being in a 3D world wore off, I was quite bored. The scenes created are fairly accurate, but they are not real and therefore, lack value to me. Also, the locations are not as awe inspiring as nature can be, are not exact replicas of the real place, and neither do the locations feel like visiting the real place that the SL page is designed to represent. I do not feel SL enhanced any meetings or group collaborations, and often, meetings were far less efficient when using SL due to cumbersome communication tools and distractions to the meeting. Furthermore, I did not feel more connected to my colleagues in SL then I did when chatting online, audio conferencing, or video conferencing.
The ability to create things is neat, but developing the skills needed to create something of value is quite an undertaking, and once something is created, it is useful only in SL and may not even bear a resemblance to creating that same object in real life. Creating a building of great architecture or artwork in SL is one thing, but creating that same object in the real world is a different matter. SL can help, but it is not the end target.
My largest problem with second life is that, as of now, underage students are not allowed access to the same virtual world as adults. I like this restriction for safety reasons because there is adult and violent behavior in SL, but this restriction makes using SL in a high school classroom nearly impossible or at least significantly less engaging; students would have to watch me navigate a SL location. SL is intriguing and can be used in the corporate world, but when dealing with minors in a school setting, SL has long way to go. Anyone want to create an education-only SL? That would be great.
References
Power, D. (2007, August 19). What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Second Life for decision support? Retrieved August 19, 2009, from http://dssresources.com/faq/index.php?action=artikel&id=138
Twerner1952. (2008, September 3). Advantages of Second Life for workplace learning [Video File]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vhUWt2vh0
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