Blog 17

Purpose: To determine whether the educational projects of teen second life have an audience, and if so, explain why it's beneficial to implement it in the classroom.

Research Question: Is there an audience in the Education Projects of Teen Second Life?

Related Questions: How many projects are ongoing right now? In terms of numbers, what is the participation? Are classes optional or mandatory? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks? How easy is it to implement it? Where can teen second life be promoted? Is it worth promoting?

Teen Second Life is a separate world from the original "Main Grid", used by teens between the ages of 13 and 17. Once they turn 18, teens are transported to the Main Grid along with their identities, inventories and land and join the adults occupying the main grid.

Up until February 2006, Teen Second Life was entirely a teen population. Adults were not allowed on the Teen Grid. But this changed as educators realized the benefits offered by the second life grid. Since that time, the number of educational islands on the Teen Grid has grown at a tremendous rate. The educational projects in Teen Second Life fall into two categories: those accessible to all residents of Teen Second Life (public projects), and those accessible to teens associated with projects in 'real life' (private projects). About 70% of these educational sims are private and therefore not available to the general teen population. However, there are also many educational simsengaged in public projects accessible to all teen residents. A few examples are Global Kids, Eye4you Alliance, Tech Savvy, Kids Connect, and Metaversa.

Discipline-specific Uses of Second Life
Conklin (2005) lists discipline-specific activities for which Second Life or any virtual world could be used. The Information and Communication Library in Second Life itself also lists many of the same activities.
Economics Any activity with associated commerce and values. These include cooperation, competition, and variable value sets.
Business
Comparison of in-world business affordances with real-world parallels.
Advertising and marketing in a virtual world.
In-world and real-world business crossovers (where things in-world are sold in the real world, and vise versa).
Complete business simulations.
Virtual real estate.
Virtual intellectual property issues.
Social Sciences
Class and status issues.
Subcultures.
Relationships, politics, and religion.
Diversity.
Criminal justice for in-world offenders.
Legal rights of avatars.
Communication.
Humanities
Cultural studies and recreations.
Virtual art and theater.
Virtual existences.
Sciences
Programming.
Physics of game design.
Analysis of real-world scientific phenomenon, such as biological evolution or physics principles in action.

http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

http://gaming.psu.edu/node/193

http://trumpy.cs.elon.edu/metaverse/gst364Win2005/handout.pdf