Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Second Life
Some of us (Laurie, Laura, Denise and I) met to look at Second Life last week. I think everyone got logged into SL but we did not get very far. I gave everyone a copy of the first chapter of the Global Kids Curriculum(GKC) to help them work through changing their appearance and basic movements. How did the GKC work for you? Did you have a chance to work through some of the ideas? What applications to education can you see for SL?
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I am going to work on the GK more when I get this week's reading/papers done! But I already have done some in SL so it is a matter of practice. I think it would be awesome if we could start to meet in SL instead of in person for video viewing, etc.
Also - Nancy - in administrating this blog - is there some button you can set to allow people to "follow" it like I do the Sci Teacher Ed blog?
One thing that I see as a real problem is finding ways to be able to implement Second Life in the standard school classroom. The district policies tend to deny technological practices that involve social networking applications, as well as programs that are resource intensive. Before we will see more of these kinds of pedagogical tools, administrative support will have to improve in many districts across the U.S.
How do we begin to work with the policies surrounding technology? That is an important issue to consider. Perhaps we could look at technology implementation from an AQAL perspective. What would it mean?
I created a matrix of Technology Implementation questions from AQAL perspectives, but I can't figure out how to upload it. Give me some time. Any suggestions? It is in ppt.
When first exploring SL, I functioned through trial and error before referring to the GKC. Once I looked at the GKC, I thought, wow, now I know how to do that. Kinda gave me a purpose to work through the GKC.
As far as applications to education, I could see using SL as a good place for Q/A with a teacher. Like if students needed help with something, the teacher could say to the class to meet in a particular location on SL for a help session outside of school.
I can foresee some problems with using SL though. If you use SL during class time, how can you keep track of students? I'm sure the student version of SL is different than the version I am using. Also, I started to get motion sickness after 20 minutes of exploring in SL (which happens to me in games with similar graphic movements, like Grand Theft Auto or Tony Hawk Underground).
When I think of more applications, I'll post later.
We could explore some more this week if you all would like. We can also look at some science education sites so that you can see the usefulness. So lets meet Thursday at 3:30 in my office and we can talk before going up to the lab.
Let me know if you want Chapter 2 of GKC.
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