Second Life is an online virtual world, developed by Linden Lab (a company based in San Francisco) and launched on June 23, 2003; and which in 2014 has about 1 million regular users, according to Linden Lab, who owns Second Life[1].
Second Life in Education
Second Life is used as a platform for education by many institutions, such as colleges, universities, libraries and government entities. Since 2008, the University of San Martin de Porres of Peru has been developing Second Life prototypes of Peruvian archeological buildings, and training teachers for this new paradigm of education[2].
Second Life offers immersive environments and create tools for teachers and teaching activities in various disciplines of low-cost environment, while a rich immersive experience to create more opportunities for teaching and learning. That can make students feel more interesting in a virtual word.
But a game that you want to students learn from it is not easy. Like the Fig 1, we should let students flow in the game. At that situation, student can flow in the game, can study the knowledge that you want to them learn.
Fig 1 flow model
Second Life Use Experience
In last year, I have a class, want us use the Second Life made a scene to teach student something. We choose to build a zoo, then teach student about animal, like Fig 2.
Fig 2
And we find many scene may use to education. For example, a school that have classroom and meeting room. In addition, we also find a big ship that is Japanese Meiji period, Fig 3, may use it to teach students about history or the old ship structure.
Fig 3
I can’t adapt the 3D environment, so I can’t feel funny from the Second Life. That is one of the disadvantage of Second Life. Except that, Second Life really push student to join the class and make more interesting.
The DGBL is useful to the young children, but not the teenage, I think. For the children, the can be excited in the game, then they can learn something more happily. The book is boring, but the game is not. And game can also bring a lot of advantages, like teacher you have say in the class.
But for the teenage, like high school students, play game because the just want to play game to relax. If you want them study during the game time, they may choose the pure game to play. In my opinion, that is not a good way to let student study in there only if the game is attractive enough. But how can we do that game, that is a difficult question waiting for us to answer.
Above view may be have some mistake, because that is my personal opinion. Thank you.
Reference
[1] "Infographic: 10 Years of Second Life". Linden Lab. 2013-06-20. Retrieved 2014-08-04.
[2] Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life#Education,2014.10.1
[3] Csikszentmihalyi, M., Finding Flow, 1997.
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