From jokaydia: Exploring Virtual Worlds and Games in Education

About Second Life®

Developed by San Francisco based company Linden Lab, Second Life is an online 3D virtual world used by users or 'residents' (as they are commonly referred to) from around the world.

Second Life allows users or 'residents' to come together to interact, play, learn, do business and communicate in an online environment which is 100% user owned and created. The platform provides tools which allow residents to build their own environments, create highly personalised avatars, clothes, vehicles and all sorts of amazing virtual objects.

Second Life residents can engage in rich, sensory experiences, authentic contexts, activities, and opportunities for reflection that form an exciting new domain for a range of educational applications including distance education, vocational and tertiary education and workplace training.

Much like massively multiplayer games, Second Life provides an immersive environment for users to play and interact in. However, Second Life goes beyond a game, allowing residents to build and create their own environments; and interact with others from around the globe.

Key Features of Second Life:

The key characteristics of Second Life include:

• Completely user-generated content - it’s an open world that gives users creative control.
• Relatively easy-to-use built-in building and scripting tools allow users to create almost any object or any experience they can imagine.
• Customisable avatars - users can create highly individualised ‘virtual selves’.
• Users own the intellectual property for their creations.
• A real in-world economy with real money transfer makes it easy to buy and sell creations (and profit from them). More than $5 million USD is transacted between users every month.
• Audio and video can be streamed from the web and played in-world.
• Linden Labs has tended to take ahands-off approach to governance, allowing the residents to self-govern (although residents are expected to abide by the Terms of Service and Community Standards).

In short, Second Life is an environment where users are designing, conducting business, building relationships, entertaining, learning, and living their virtual lives.

For further information and resources on Second Life, check out the Second Life Resources page.

Second Life Presentation - 2006

The following slideset provides a basic overview of Second Life.

Using Second Life in Education

Second Life offers a range of new and exciting possibilities for educators and their students.

Over the past few years, literally thousands of educators and hundreds of prominent educational institutions and organisations have begun exploring the use of virtual worlds for the delivery of a wide range of courses and educational events including Distance and Flexible Education, Presentations and Discussions, Historical Recreations, Multimedia and Games Design and Language Learning practice.

For further information view our comprehensive list of the Educational Uses of Second Life.

Useful Links

Click on the links below to access Linden Labs resources:

• Second Life Website
• Second Life Signup Page
• Second Life Client Downloads
• Seocnd Life Policies and Guidelines
• Second Life Blogs
• Second Life Grid Status Page
• Second Life Support Page
• Second Life Wiki
• Second Life Grid - Enterprise Solutions
• Second Life Work
• Linden Labs Website
• XStreetSL - Web-based SL Shopping Site
  
• Images from the Second Life Photo Pool on Flickr