Sunday, October 28, 2007

Educational uses of Second Life

I'm one of those who thinks that excitement about Second Life as a great educational forum is a bit of a distraction from what we should be focussing on to get teh best out of technology in education. But Stephen Downes points me to this extensive list of educational uses of Second Life which possibly suggest I should review my perspective.

"This is an overview of some of ways Second Life can be used, and in some cases, has been used for educational purposes. See Further Resources at the bottom of this page for links to more examples and other resources.

We have interpreted the term 'education' very liberally, since, like in real life, learning can occur when 'education' isn't deliberately happening. We see all of Second Life itself as a learning environment. Also, many of the projects listed are not educational projects per se... but point to ways that Second Life can be used in education...

The investment in acquiring Second Life user skills remains a significant barrier to the use of the environment widely in education, though it certainly continues to have potential.

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