Faculty of Education
Queen's UniversityOverview
Why Use Second Life?
- Immersive
- Engages people in collaboration and co-creation in authentic contexts
- Encourages social and peer learning
- Can create multi-media and digital stories
Second Life can provide opportunities for ...
- 3D modeling
- Role-playing
- History re-enactments
- Virtual experiments
- Simulations
- Scripting
- Experiential learning
- Virtual field trips
- Immersive tours
- Interior design, architecture
- Collaborative experiences
- Project planning/building
- Machinima
- Data visualization
- Museums
- Virtual offices
- Collaboration and meeting spaces
- Scripted tools
- Libraries
- Events, performances
You may be interested in reading Educational Uses of Second Life (PDF), by Beth Knittle, to give you some ideas about how this virtual world is currently being used in Second Life.
"Second Life's killer app is community."
(Connie Yewell, SLCC Education Track keynote address)
Student Participation
An Example from Mathematics Education
Quote from a student participant in mathematics education activities in Second Life:
"I now have a different meaning for 'Second Life'. In learning how to create objects and to build things ..., I am being given a second chance in life. I am now devouring mathematical formulae as if they were chocolate cake, and for the first time I'm experiencing the joys of geometry."Reference: "Mathematics Education in Second Life" (PDF)
Learning Applications in Second Life
- Hard Skills (e.g., create 3-D models that participants can fly around or walk inside)
- Soft Skills (e.g., role-play a job interview, or meet a subject matter expert)
- Simulation (e.g., Learn about schizophrenia by experiencing powerful hallucinations)
- Meetings (e.g., Talk via voice or instant message; gestures, show objects, or go for a walk)
(Adapted from: Gronstedt, Anders; Second Life; T+D; Aug2007, Vol. 61 Issue 8, p44-49)
Value of Virtual Worlds for Children
- A playful, engaging, interactive alternative to more passive media
- Becoming a creator and having control over elements of a world
- Creating mental maps, exploring, and understanding a new world and its systems (e.g. transport, money)
- Rehearsing having responsibilities, looking after things
- Learning social skills
- Playing with identity, e.g. dressing up
- A tool for self-expression
- Computer literacy
(Reference: http://www.childreninvirtualworlds.org.uk/papers.htm)