Menu for this page:

• Information & Resources
• Articles
• Connections (institutions, systems, etc. that interact with and within Second Life)

See also: My Digital Games For Learning resource page

Information & Resources

The Virtual Classroom Project: Konrad Glogowski's project on the Second Life island of jokaydia (with the support of jokay Wollongong, the island's owner). Glogowski describes it: "Over the next three months, I will invite individual educators to design and build their ideal learning space for use as either a virtual classroom in Second Life or as a prototype for a real-life classroom. These “Educators-in-Residence” will share their vision and expertise by creating their ideal classrooms on a parcel of land designated especially for this project....The purpose of this project is to start conversations about learning in online communities, virtual worlds, and everyday physical classrooms." 04/05/08

Educator Resources from Linden Labs, the makers of Second Life

SLED Blog: "...dedicated to the ins and outs of K-20 education using the Second Life® world. This blog is written by educators and for educators, for those who are seasoned Second Life veterans and for those just starting out, for those who are die-hards and those who are skeptics."

Links to listserves (mailing lists) and more: "This list is for educators interested in or currently using Second Life, and we will be using it to send out information we feel is of interest to educators and academics. This list is also an opportunity for all of you to communicate with each other, to find new colleagues and to share your experiences using Second Life for education."

SLED Calendar: A calendar of events for Educators in SL "The 'SLEDevents in SL' calendar anticipates events in Second Life of interest to educators. The time zone of the calendar is US Pacific/ Second Life time. Second Life events are shown in blue, and planned outages in red. Events in Real Life of interest to SL educators are shown in green in the column opposite. The calendar is kept by Bruce Sommerville for the SLED listserv community."

Second Life Education Wiki: Contains many useful page such as Guidelines for Educators and Programs for Educators, which include Community Support, Campus:Second_Life, Educators working with Teens, and more. 01/17/08

Second Life In Education (wiki): "This space is designed to provide an overview of the educational possibilities of virtual worlds, in particular Second Life." Within this space, Jo Kay (aka jokay Wollongong) and Sean FitzGerald (aka Sean McDunnough)...

• document a detailed list of Educational Uses of Second Life,
• provide a range of useful resources for educators, and
• link to a range of handy Second Life online resources." 04/05/08

Educational Uses of Second Life: Stephen Downes comment:"This is a remarkable list of educational applications in Second Life - easily the most comprehensive I've seen anywhere - with descriptiopns, links and screen shots. You could easily spend the entire day with Second Life and this web page going from place to place (I've gone to a bunch of them)." 10/21/07

Open Second Life: A project from a group of programmers not associated with Linden Labs. Hosted at OpenMetaverse.org, a site that hosts projects related to Open Source Metaverse development. About Open Second Life, John Goldsmith says, in a posting to BCEdOnline, they "...are attempting to "reverse engineer" the Second Life server code, making it possible for anyone to set up and operate their own Second Life Virtual World. Open Second Life will use existing Second Life clients (which are a free download from the original Linden Labs/Second Life web site). While this project is still in the formative stages, it does provide hope to DE schools, teachers and others who want to utilize the educational research being generated by Post Secondary educators who use Second Life, to create more engaging learning experiences for their K-12 students but, in a more controlled setting.>" 06/24/07

Reuters reports from Second Life: Reuters of London have assigned a bureau chief, Adam Pasick, to a full time job reporting from inside Second Life! (He says it's difficult to explain his full time job to his mother/grandmother :) This site, complete with RSS feed, is filled with news, blog, videos, audio & video interviews with a range of Second Life subjects, Second Life Business News and Economy reporting, including a dollar value & daily spending charts, a Dollar/Linden currency converter, and lots more, all directly from Second Life. Of course, there's also a Reuters office tower in Second Life. 05/27/07

See this video report from CBC [note: you may be asked to install DivX to view it, but that's all Good!] Complete with action videos taken inside Second Life, it's an excellent overview of what Second Life is growing to mean and do in our world. As a non-Second Lifer (I bet they have a word for us 'outside world' people?), I thought this video was one of the most informative I've seen so far. I've been told it costs money to "film" scenes from inside Second Life, so I guess this video is like an exclusive treat, courtey of CBC News and Reuters. 05/27/07

SLurl ~ Location-Based Linking in Second Life: Using Second Life with your students and/or in your online courses? This tool/information will be very helpful for you. "What is SLurl? SLurl provides direct teleport links to locations in Second Life. If you have Second Life installed, clicking on the map link will automatically teleport you to that location in-world. Why use SLurl? In addition to allowing customized control over mapping locations in Second Life, SLurl also provides a better experience for web users who don't have Second Life. Instead of getting an error when clicking on web links that begin with "secondlife://", visiting a SLurl link gives potential new users a chance to sign up." Also, check out this SLurl Builder, a handy online tool to help you build your direct links to SL locations. 05/27/07

Second Life Keyboard Shortcuts: I'm linking you to an EduForge blog post that links you to a file of shortcuts and also provides credit for the file. 05/05/07

"Second Life is a 3D Online Digital World imagined, created, and owned by its residents."
[introduction on the Second Life homepage]

Second Life Community ~ Education: "Second Life provides a unique and flexible environment for educators interested in distance learning, computer supported cooperative work, simulation, new media studies, and corporate training. ... Students and Educators can work together in Second Life from anywhere in the world as part of a globally networked virtual classroom environment. Using Second Life as a supplement to traditional classroom environments also provides new opportunities for enriching an existing curriculum. ... There are many options for Educators looking to explore and create learning spaces in Second Life." This site has lots of information, links to resources, a mailing list, idea sharing via wiki, discount opportunites on Private Islands in Second Life for you SL school, and an information download when you're "getting serious in SL". 11/07/06

My Virtual Life: A cover story in Business Week Online, where the author explains Second Life. Also includes a Podcast version and a slideshow from SL. 11/07/06

Articles

How to use Second Life for education: An article and VIDEO from Kapp Notes: Try Before You Buy: "The goal of designers of instruction is to design environments, experiences and instruction that is realistic, efficient and effective...3D worlds offer some of these advantages. Let's not have the learning and development folks be the last ones to miss out on this new direction in learning. See some examples of how to use Second Life for education in this video created by some of the students in my Learning in 3D Class. " 07/23/07

Top Ten Missing Features of Second Life as an Educational Simulation Platform: Clark Aldrich's says, "Second Life truly is a phenomenon. It is exactly what the name and vision imply: an example of a parallel 'multiverse'. People will learn much in it, as they might alternatively learn via participating on a real-world sports team, running a real-world lemonade stand, or walking around a great real-world city....Perhaps most importantly, participants learn 'to be' through expressing themselves, including building elaborate sets, and exploring alternative groups with which to interact. Meanwhile, corporations will set up shop in Second Life, as in FaceBook and MySpace, to be where the kids are in an attempt to speak their language and get some eyeballs. But when people talk about it as a platform for Educational Simulations, I am less excited. In fact, here are my list of top ten missing features from Second Life..." 05/25/07

Second Life VOICE to launch by June ('07): "Linden Lab said on Tuesday it will launch integrated voice capabilities within the next several months, including effects to prevent a cacophony of overlapping voices. ...Introducing voice could expose the broadening language gap in Second Life, where more than half of users now speak a first language other than English. Also, some in Second Life have argued that integrating voice could break the “magic circle” that makes the world so convincing, by pairing real voices with virtual avatars." 03/23/07

Also check out Second Talk, which is in beta right now.... something to use in the meantime until the above completely integrated voice talk is ready to use in June. Second Talk is a "free, easy-to-use voice chat to Second Life." Kind of funny -- your avatar goes to a kiosk and gets a headset to wear. 03/23/07

My Second Life - An Educator's Comments: In Educause Connect, a post by Jeff VanDrimmelen, which Stephen Downes describes as a "description of a teacher's experimental forays into Second Life." A short but interesting read if you're an educator who is either new to Second Life or haven't yet experienced it. 1/26/07

O'Reilly Radar on Second Life: A list of O'Reilly Media's articles about SL. 11/07/06

Google Earth, Sketchup, & Second Life: One of O'Reilly Media's blog entries in the list above. 11/07/06

Connections

University of Florida in Gainesville: Another higher education institution has moved into Second Life. "Paul Fishwick, a computer science and engineering professor, is teaching one of at least two classes offered at UF this semester largely in cyberspace— specifically, the trendy three-dimensional online world called Second Life. There, Fishwick’s 'avatar', the character that represents each player in Second Life, leads discussions among some 30 other avatars controlled by upper-level UF undergraduate and graduate students in CAP 4403/CAP 6402, Aesthetic Computing. ... With distance learning decades old, classes on computer are nothing new. But Second Life, which has more than 2 million users worldwide, opens a wealth of fresh possibilities, one educators nationwide are increasingly experimenting with." 02/08/07  

EduNation - Second Life in Education: "...the first private island simulator in Second Life dedicated to online training seminars and conferences, and the use of Second Life in Education. EduNation is a 65,000m2 island in the Second Life virtual world with seminar, powerpoint, audio and videocast facilities. Use of the seminar facilities is free. It also features small land and accommodation rentals for other educators to rent and use on a weekly basis." 1/26/07

Communities and Institutions & Organizations already in Second Life. This site lists (so far) Universities, Colleges, Schools, Organizations, Libraries. It a wiki site ~ "feel free to log in and add your own content. For a more extensive description of [Second Life] projects, see Second Life: Universities and Private Islands." 11/07/06

CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion: Harvard Law School is using Second Life for extension courses! 11/06/06

Second Life lands Britich Columbia (Canada) campus: 10/28/06

Sloodle: The 3D Learning Management System that combines Second Life and Moodle. When you get your Avatar in SL, link to the TeleHub in Hyperboreo, the virtual door to Sloodleville. When you get there, follow the red arrow to information about Sloodle.  10/28/06