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[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

How did the media go wrong in coverage -- and participation -- in SSL, and what went right? It was a typical hype-and-backlash scenario, as I detailed in a previous post on MediaShift. Some journalists simply tired of SL, as so many people tried it and then bailed because of its steep learning curve and high technological requirements. But the journalists that have been more enmeshed within the world have been rewarded with plenty of cultural and sociological (and yes, business) stories.

John Lester leads customer market development for education and health care for Linden Lab, which runs Second Life. I met him in-world and had an instant-messaging chat with his alter-ego, Pathfinder Linden, about how the media has covered SL over the years. My SL name was Lynx Wickentower: Lynx: Did media miss the bigger story of Second Life? Pathfinder Linden at the educational meeting in SL Pathfinder: That seems to be a typical pattern for the human species, yes? We did it with all the previous mediums. We'll do it again in the future. We always misunderstand new mediums, initially treating them like pre-existing ones (e.g., treating the web like print media; treating television like radio). But then we learn new ways of seeing the tools and new ways to leverage them.

As for Reuters' coverage of SL, they did better than most journalists who did drive-by stories with a day or two of research in-world. The bureau lived for more than two years. Still, James Wagner Au, who writes the excellent New World Notes blog about SL said they could have done better. "Their writers, Adam Pasick and Eric Krangel, are fine journalists, and did some great external business-oriented reports, but at the same time, I don't think they were ever passionately engaged in the medium or Second Life's community on an experiential level," Au told me. "Consequently, their reporting very much had a distanced, 'outside looking in' flavor that caused them to often miss the big picture, in my opinion."

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.

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.

For many people outside of the "virtual worlds industry" the terms "virtual world" and "Second Life" are still more or less synonyms. This is especially funny, as many people in the industry seem to have written off Second Life because of many disappointing developments in 2007 and the big negative hype in the press.

It is not a secret, though, that Linden Lab's management and investors still believe that the Second Life technology will be the (or a least "a") corner stone of the future Web3D. Is this totally unrealistic? And would would Linden Lab have to do, to make this come true if it isn't? Making the platform more stable is a simple answer - and certainly a pre-requesite. But what about other decisions? More control? Or less? More openness? Or a tightly controlled product? And a product for which target groups? Based on what business model?

Both will tell you, that Linden Lab indeed has a rather profitable business model, is expecting significant growth and is targeting markets way outside the current user base (actually alienating large groups in the current user base).