King’s Corner
It’s not just academic.

Here we are with a new academic year starting, and among other things this year holds, I’m getting back into Second Life again. Much has changed, and much remains the same. I’ll be sharing observations more frequently than in recent months.

One thing that caught my eye today: Paul Sweeney has noticed an implication of recent announcements by Linden Lab, i.e., that “Second Life [is] getting closer to real life.” Part of that announcement revolved around an upcoming viewer upgrade that will allow the viewer to handle HTML, Flash, and embedded browsers, and it may even be able to talk to real world applications like Excel. Such capabilities will make virtual meetings seem/feel more like real-world meetings, making them feel somewhat like face-to-face (where it’s so easy to just say, “Look at this!”) while retaining the advantages of using the Internet for distributed meetings rather than having everyone hop on a plane.

That has implications for distance education as well, of course.

NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday featured Michael Demers, a geography professor at New Mexico State University, talking about how he uses Second Life to help his students learn more effectively. You can listen to the segment online.

Of course, so far I haven’t been able to get it to play myself. [sigh] Your luck may be better.

Update: I managed to get it to play. Worth listening to!

You know, I can find more in the first five minutes I’m awake every day that needs doing than I have time to get done all day.

Without going into all the links involved in finding this (thanks, Greg, for getting me started!), I want to share with you a great resource especially for the community college faculty who read this blog. If you have Second Life installed on the machine you’re sitting at, you should be able to go to the CCSL presence by following this link:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%203/81/151/25

You need to also find the group and join it for free.

They have a lot of resources for teaching in SL, and as nearly as I can tell, they are somehow connected with the EduIsland folks who can provide space for teachers who want to use SL, but whose institutions do not yet have Island or other space for them. I am way behind on how this works, but I will post more information when I get it.

In the meantime, you probably also want to check out their Web site, a Wiki with tons of useful information.