Learning Curve

« Who says we're not... | Main

New Education Grid: A safe virtual world for learning? I hope so.

Wednesday Jun 18, 2008

About a year and a half ago, as part of my "research" for a presentation I was writing for someone else, I created an avatar in Second Life. That's about all I did, as I couldn't access Second Life from behind the company firewall, and I certainly don't have much "free time" to go mucking around in virtual worlds. I barely have enough time to muck around in the real one.

But last weekend, as part of another research project, I retrieved my long-forgotten Second Life login, password and avatar name (which I'm not going to share here) and logged in. I found myself on Orientation Island. I thought it was pretty cool, until I'd been there about 15 seconds and other avatars began hitting on me.

Being a polite person in real life, I couldn't quite bring myself to tell one particularly persistent guy to bug off. So I just didn't answer him, even as he kept IMing me repeatedly (in an IM full of misspellings) about "how Second Life allows you do do things you wouldn't normally do in real life." Yeah, like tell you to BUG OFF, I wanted to shout. Can't you see I'm trying to learn how to pick up a torch? Then Second Life crashed my aging PC, so I didn't have to worry about it.

I know Second Life has its uses, but my introduction to it was somewhat less than positive. So it's great that there are people trying to set up alternatives, especially for kids. For example, this Friday, the Immersive Education Initiative will launch the Education Grid with an array of Sun Project Wonderland virtual world servers. The Education Grid is designed to be a place where educators can conduct classes and meetings. They can also use the Education Grid to build custom virtual learning worlds, simulations, and learning games. You can get more information on Kevin Roebuck's blog, but here's the basic info:

WHAT: Education Grid launches with Project Wonderland
WHEN: Friday June 20th, 2008 at 4pm EST
WHERE: The event starts on the Sun Microsystems island in Second Life* and then moves into the Education Grid's Wonderland virtual worlds. Sun island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sun%20Microsystems%201/127/165/71

I'm going to check it out. Maybe I'll see you there. Just don't hit on me, because I think I've not only figured how to make my avatar pick up a torch, but also how to whack someone over the head with it.

* Update: In case you were wondering, Kevin Roebuck tells me that Friday's event starts in Second Life because most attendees will be familiar with it. "We'll give them instructions and a quick intro and then send them off to the Wonderland servers to log-in and visit," he says. "Now that we have Wonderland servers up and running, we won't use it again."

[0] Comments