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has been heavily colonised by higher education institutions since its genesis a little over five years ago. But how useful to educators is it?

The Media Zoo's Second Life island provides a space in which students, researchers and teachers can experiment with learning in a virtual world.

Salmon believes that Second Life constitutes a good example of "edutainment" - the idea that students are more likely to learn if they are first amused. An example of how this works in practice is the programme developed for archaeology students at Leicester. While learning about the ancient culture of the Sami, the indigenous people that live in the area we call Lapland, the students used Second Life to meet in a virtual representation of one of the tents that the ancient nomads would have used for worship.

this post is her detailed look at keeping new male residents engaged in SL

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, the learning curve. I’m supposed to be telling you about “The lack of encouragement for new male residents to stay in Second Life”, but since I’m, err, female — does a quick check, right, okay, definitely female — I decided to conduct an Extremely Unscientific Survey among male residents to see what they had to say. 16 male residents responded, and the general consensus is that… [drum roll] … friends are generally the greatest form of encouragement for new male residents to stay in SL. “I came and went my first year. I hung around when I finally started making some friends and started going places and doing things with them,” says Dyami Jameson.

“I think men in Second Life are more motivated by ‘goals’ and scoring systems, which makes SL less attractive to them than women, who are more attracted to the social aspect of the metaverse,” comments Prad Prathivi. “Guys are naturally competitive and aim to lead the pack, which is harder and less obvious to achieve in SL.”

IBM decided, deliberately, to have a conference for their Academy of Technology in Second Life. It was a roaring success for all the "soft" reasons we talk about so much - social networking, chat out of sessions, sessions overrunning through interest, impromptu discussions and the like - but IBM also estimate a clear cut ROI of US$320,000

One of the attendees at this conference was so impressed with her first experiences in Second Life for a conference, that she cancelled the upcoming AGM in Florida, and moved it to Second Life. At two weeks notice! They reused the conference spaces - lots of instant savings there - and their estimates are that running their AGM in Second Life cost them about 20% of the costs of a RL meeting, as well as giving all the good soft outcomes once again.

However, I predict it will be a game that can do shoes better than Second Life, because if they can do shoes well, then everything else will have to be fabulous, too.

On finding support groups in Second Life: The SLHealthy wiki (slhealthy.wetpaint.com) is probably your best and most comprehensive resource for Second Life health support groups, organizations and locations.

On "official" Second Life health support groups like those operated by the American Cancer Society versus groups begun by individuals who have suffered from a particular ailment: We have not reviewed the information provided by groups, though in several instances, we've decided not to list information about a group because it's clearly unethical. One example is a pro-ana (or pro-anorexia) group, and another was a for-profit "organization."

If you're thinking about joining a group, I suggest you use the same radar you might in the real world: Do you feel comfortable? You should feel perfectly OK about asking questions you have.

By that time I was primarily offering English/German at a price of 2 L$ / word, but soon requests for other languages came. I recruited French and Italian translators, soon Danish and Swedish followed. I charged 3 L$ for those languages, but kept English/German for a long time at the lower level as I was making these translations myself. In August 2007 I acquired my first reference customer. Blaze Columbia of Blaze Fashions not only insisted on paying the double rate, she also gave me some valuable business tips, like implementing a minimum fee for jobs. Back then I was in awe of what I considered "large" amounts of money, so I did not follow her advice of establishing 500 L$ as minimum fee, but instead chose 250 L$. I was reluctant to mention this limit to the first clients, but none of them objected. So up to date 250 L$ stayed the minimum amount for translation jobs.

In January I took my associate Tina Lynch aboard. Not only did she work on French translations, but she also replaced my notecard-based bookkeeping with a sophisticated spreadsheet based on Google docs. Under her lead we refined the spreadsheet over the next month, and now it is an invaluable tool of keeping track of jobs, degree of completion, distribution of jobs among translators and calculating revenues and fees.

In May, Babel Translation took over the competing agency "2nd Tongue Translation". For a couple of months we have silently cooperated already, granting 2nd Tongue a bulk buying rate for the languages they did not offer themselves. As 2nd Tongue's manager had to reduce her SL involvement, Babel Translations stepped in and integrated 2nd Tongue's business into our own.

Second Life continues to expand each and every day. New Residents are joining, artists are creating amazing content, new businesses are springing up, big companies are entering for the first time, educational institutions are building virtual universities… and the list goes on. Everyday I learn of something new, something bold, something you’ve created.

Second Life offers something no ones else does - an astoundingly rich array of user-created content and a large, diverse and ever-expanding virtual economy.

The content and economy reflect the diversity of the Resident population. Your creativity covers 1.5 billion meters of space that’s taken more than 500 million hours over the past five years to assemble. It’s a mammoth undertaking.

Google on Tuesday launched a three-dimensional virtual experience website, similar to the popular virtual world Second Life.

“If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website, you can immediately get a sense of the room creator’s interests, just by looking at the furniture and environment they chose,” Niniane Wang, engineering manager, who oversaw Lively’s creation, said on Google’s official blog. Lively also allows for playing YouTube videos in virtual TVs and showing photos in virtual picture frames inside the rooms, Wang said.

What is it with the Australian media? Why are they focused on slandering Second Life as a failure? I have recently discussed my research findings of commercial activity within Second Life with several journalists, where only minimal quotes have been used out of their original context; in order it seems, to support an obvious negative bias.

This is extremely disappointing as it is not an accurate reflection of the important invaluable opportunity that Second Life has provided pioneering commercial exploration of VR capabilities.

Vital 3D avatar immersion lessons have been learnt, modeling and building skills developed, use of digital agents, telepresence, interactive, navigational and communication applications explored, and platform and cultural limitations realised. This is all invaluable experience for commercial frontrunners preparing to invest in a virtual future.

[SL] Best Practices For Education in Second Life The following best practices were developed by Global Kids, Inc. through the summer 2006 Camp GK in the teen grid of Second Life. Over four weeks, 15 teens spent three hours a day, five days a week, participating in interactive, experiential workshops about pressing global issues. Over the course of the program the teens picked a topic of concern -- child sex trafficking -- and built a maze to educate their online community and inspire them to take action. In its first eight weeks, the content-rich maze was visited by 2,500 teens, amongst whom over 450 donated money to an international organization committed to eradicating this global crime against children. Below is a review of general concepts. For more details download the pdf. Best practices for working in TSL 1. What happens in the teen grid stays in the teen grid. 2. Create multiple places of meaning. 3. If you build it, they will come. 4. Go beyond TSL. Best practices for bringing a youth development model into TSL 1. Build, build, build! 2. Don’t just build; design and manipulate avatars. 3. Think globally, act locally. 4. Know when teens know best. Best practices in workshop design and facilitation in TSL 1. Use real world content when addressing real world issues. 2. Don’t wait until someone has the floor to start typing. 3. Don’t fear multiple communication channels. 4. Incorporate processing into the activity, not just as a final step. Best practices in program design for TSL 1. Employ effective, rigorous, targeted recruitment. 2. Replace the dominant TSL culture with the GK Island culture. 3. Carefully design and build the tools required. 4. Ensure the program is designed for the recruited participants

Are you or someone you know looking for a low-cost way to get started in virtual worlds — or Second Life in particular? As of today, the New Media Consortium (NMC) is offering land parcels in Second Life that are part of three unique custom-designed educational communities. These parcels are available now for lease exclusively to bona fide faculty, educational departments, or learning-focused institutions. The new sim NMC Campus, “Teaching”

The land is full-permissions, and can be used for almost any purpose consistent with research or teaching in Second Life. The parcels come in sizes from 1024 sq m to 8192 sq m. Costs are roughly 10 US cents per sq meter per year. This works out to $100 US per year for the smallest plot (32 x 32; 1024 sq m; 235 prims) and $800 per year for the largest (64 x 128; 8192 sq m; 1875 prims). There are no hidden or additional costs. Common area on the new sim NMC Campus, “Teaching 2″

Each educational community has a beautiful central area which has a number of spaces that all the residents on the island can share — these include a multi-media amphitheater, a conference room, a large classroom or other meeting space, a gallery suitable for exhibiting student work, and a resource center that has been stocked by the folks who run the highly regarded ICT Library in Second Life. Scene on NMC new sim available for lease, “Teaching 3″

Today Angel Learning, in conjunction with the Second Life Educators Community (SLED), will unveil a brand new island in Second Life dedicated toward educational experimentation. Campus Technology had a chance to teleport to the new island ahead of its May 15 public debut to bring you this exclusive preview.The idea behind Angel Learning Island is to provide a space for educators to experiment with learning scenarios, meetings, and other kinds of interaction with students (and each other) in a virtual world. The island is free for all (not just Angel LMS customers), so educators can learn about Second Life--the basics, as well as advanced techniques--before investing any campus resources and before committing to any one particular approach to learning in a virtual environment.Ray Henderson, chief products officer at Angel Learning, told us he thought that educators did not need "experimentation in isolation, but more open places where there's a ladder up, so to speak, a way to [educate instructors in the ways of Second Life] so they can do experimentation on their own."

The Nielsen people record actual minutes using various "sites" across 180,000+ US-homes. Second Life comes out at 760 minutes per week (that's over 12 hours), or over 1h 45 minutes per day... (wimps - I'd be an outlier around the 2500 minutes per week mark!). Amongst its users (comparing to other user-minutes per week) this makes it more popular than even the 800lb gorilla of World of Warcraft (653 minutes per week).

What does it all mean? Well, it might mean Second Life is a niche market, but it's a fiercely loyal niche market that really, really gets it - and this gives Linden Lab a reasonably solid (hard numbers are impossible to come by) income stream and around that a reasonable likelihood of continuing to provide its service.

Comparing it to social media sites the difference is even more extreme - Facebook does the best at 84 minutes per week: that's 11% of the time that Second Life users spend. Twitter weighs in at about an hour a week on average. Stephen Fry is much bigger in his usage I'm sure, but the averages are up there for easy comparison.