Second Life Education Buildings

After exploring Secondlife for a while, I did eventually figure out where to find some educational buildings. I searched topics such as "classroom," "campus" and "education" and finally got to explore a little.

First I went to "Edunation" . There I discovered "The Consultants-E". I even managed to get a picture ...
The main purpose of this building is to help companies and higher education institutions use instructional technology, design online courses andhelp to train educators in online teaching and learning. They also screen other online recources and help teachers learn how to use them. aThe Consultants-E have woked since the mid-1990s and in 2003 they became a limited company. What's good about "Edunation is that it is PG so students' don't have to worry about nudity, obscenities etc. It is strictly a learning environment.

Another location that I visited was a location for Seminars. Here is a picture of it...Now to be quite honest i wasn't sure exactly what to do here at first. However if you search around, you will find a small laptop which has a choice of slide shows on it. My guess is that an educator could put together a slide show and either a class, or anyone who is interested could watch it on the big screen. This feature i will have to look into more. I think the reason second life may not be the best learning environment is it can be confusing. It almost offers too much. You would need someone very knowledgable to intruct people on how to get where they need to go.

I teleported to several different areas including a few art museums. I went to one, The Linden Gallery of Resident Art, which i liked most. I'm not sure if you could consider them a learning environment, but I would. It's a way for people to see and learn about art without having to take a trip to big museums in NYC. It may not be Monet, but all art can be appreciated. As for learning. Students may have to write up critiques. There may even be a way for those who are interested in digital design to post thier own works and begin to create a portfolio. Or it could simply be a fun and relaxing learning expirience.

Finally I traveled to Campus Second Life. If you search "campus" you will come across anything from virtual NYU to Wizard schools. There were 33 classes at the campus including "Exploring Creative Writing," "Contemporary Performance" and dozens of others. This location we offers teachers some land on a temporary basis to use as a 'headquarters' for their class to meet. Details about Campus: Second Life can be found here: http://www.secondlife.com/csl. On Campus there is a public meeting area, a sandbox for building, a pictureboard for sharing photos, and a sculpture garden.

I still say that second life is grat oppertunity for learning. It is easy to access, and once you get the hang of navigating, ver efficient. There are thousands of people willing to teach there skills and even more who are already using this program to learn. To me it seems safe, especially with the many pg areas. Many places also have rules to which you abide like a regular citizen. I am definately pro secondlife education, and i hope that maybe i will get to "take a class" with it too. If you want to read up on it at all, check out this link http://secondlife.com/education.