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Numbakulla: The Pot Healer Adventure Second Life Innovative Learning Environment SLurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Numbkulla/215/18/22 This is the kind of place that I imagined I would visit when I first signed up for Second Life. While Second Life itself may not be a game, it has massive potential to be a place where educational games can be embedded and hosted. The Pot-Healer Adventure is not an educational game per se, but a highly interactive quest that gets the player to explore and solve puzzles. However, it is one of the few environments I've found so far that has key elements that couldn't easily be reproduced as an Adobe Flash video. The game starts with a shipwreck, which has left debris strewn over land and floating in the sea. It's an intriguing beginning, and a nice device to allow the player to interact with nearly everything visible. At the start you can pick up a notebook, which keeps track of things you pick up in the game, and gives you hints about what to do. A notecard at the beginning tells players that they are to find out about a mysterious old civilization that a previous explorer is no longer able to investigate. I'm not sure how this environment itself could be used for educational purposes, but the way it has been designed could and should be adapted for other purposes. I imagine the explore-and-interact puzzle format to lend itself to teaching history, and anthropology. It would be a particularly good way to teach how historians gather evidence, and what they can learn from old diaries, work reports, and other documents. I am glad that I found this interesting environment, and hope to return and explore it some more. I think that it could serve as inspiration to others looking to create more interactive quest-type lessons.

Second Life interactive game - good ideas for game-based interactions

Second Life Interactive graffiti art installation by AM Radio. Browser based paint program "appears" on side of box car.

It appears that Edusim may be a partial solution to giving elementary students access to a somewhat virtual world. This is an "immersive-touch" product that works with an interactive whiteboard allowing students to interact with and build in the environment. I created an account a year ago and had no motivation to learn about it until I took this ET 700 class. Now I am eager to figure out how to use it in my classroom. Using this technique, a class can have a hands-on virtual field trip, interactive story telling, or show a process in a 3D immersive way. For more explanation:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVFsxev-2sk Edusim alpha 11:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f53LzbK3alw I am going to download this and try it out. Let me know if you have any experience with this product.

This is a fun, interactive site which teaches students about the play Oedipus Rex and about conventions of ancient Greek theater, culture and politics. It uses a game show format and contemporary tone to get students engaged. The drawback is that it is text dense. Students simply click on what they think is the right answer. The right answer takes them to the next part of the narrative. The wrong answer takes them to a long paragraph of explanation. There are hot links within the text, though, which open other cool sites with pictures, maps, etc. This is a very specific site intended to enhance a person's study of Oedipus Rex.

This site is an example of a way to combine storytelling and/or reading comprehension with a more interactive environment. You go to the magical town of Brigadoon and learn the story of some of its inhabitants. Along the way you get quizzed on what you've read. Kits are available for those interested in designing their own quests. I wish they had made the environment more interactive, so that one could explore the places referenced in the story.

The Virtual Worlds Story Project (TVWSP) utilizes "Questing" to develop interactive, immersive, and educational journeys designed to explore specific ideas/themes, teach vital 21st century learning skills, and generate Narrative Synergy™ through story.    The goal of every Quest is to help each individual experience and express his or her Narrative Thread™ - that special spark of spirit that makes each of us unique.  Once identified and articulated, these threads or "strands of story" form the warp and weave of larger communities of practice*.

How you appear in the virtual world could affect your behavior in real life, according to researchers at Stanford University. Andrea Seabrook speaks with Stanford's Jeremy Bailenson about his research into how people interact psychologically with their virtual-reality representations.

we're here because we can tell stories, we can be inside art, we can give context to conversation and learning and collaborating in ways that are, simply, impossible in nearly every other medium, including reality. Dusan Writer blogs of interactive, collaborative narrative (storytelling) as the compelling reason for virtual worlds such as second life.

Realistic physics interactions are currently a bit of a limitation in Second LIfe. However, this demo shows what's in development for the near future. How could this emerging capability be leveraged to help students learn?

This location takes a famous concept from geology of using a spiral timeline to illustrate the history of the Earth. As you walk through the interactive exhibit you get a sense of the passage of time as well as the slow and gradual evolution of life on Earth. I really like the idea of walking through a timeline and interacting with exhibits and can see how this would work with a class. There are many opportunities for discussion and demonstrations along the way. I also think this type of collaborative site would make a really great class project. Constructed by students at the University of Arizona.

This place was a dream for those who love the Renaissance Era. It is complete with Ren Art, merchant shops, jousting competitions, and friendly people throughout. I found the content to be right in line with the seventh grade HSS standards, however, from and interactive standpoint, there wasn't much. It is a fun place to be to interact with others who love this sort of thing.

Here is an article that I found interesting re: Second Life and Cinematography students at USC. They feel that the thing that Second Life does best is facilitate social interaction. So their goal is to design a setting where people from all over the world can come together and talk. Unfortunately, the site is still under construction.

Systems Thinking and Game Design through the eyes of a 4 year old. Interesting observations about the value of games in understanding problem solving and social interactions. Not directly related to virtual worlds - although good for understanding WHY virtual worlds and online games might be valuable student learning experiences.

This is a Star Trek museum that looks like the real Enterprise. You can go to the bridge, teleporter, engineering bay, the Captain's ready room, and everywhere else on the ship. Most of the rooms have either Star Trek trivia or they have interactive science activities. There is a planetarium, information about different parts of the universe, and short tests (more like games) to assess learning. One of the tests requires the test-taker to correctly identify different categories of craters on Mars.

What originally piqued my interest in this site was the "Training for Traffic" that I read on the SL Work Success Stories site (http://work.secondlife.com/en-US/successstories/case/tuvnord/). No small wonder that that topic caught my eye, what with my 15 year old constantly begging me to let her drive. TUV NORD created several traffic situations that they turned into interactive driving tasks. I vaguely remember being in driver's ed and watching a movie in a "simulator" when I was 15. Once I found out that I could spin the steering wheel in any direction and it made no difference, I went on to what was, at the time, my next priority: sleeping. Parenthood brings new perspectives; I shudder at the thought that my child might do the same during her own driver's training class. This sim sounds realistic enough to not only keep a kid awake at the wheel, but give them experience before they get behind the wheel of a deadly weapon. Unfortunately, the sim was not up and running when I visited. This island also has some other interesting items of educational value. You can learn how to use ground penetrating radar (GPR) to find tree roots and underground electrical lines that you might not want to cut through. There is also a huge interactive fuel cell that you can fly through to investigate the inner workings of the thing, which would be useful in a discussion of chemistry, even at the grade levels that I teach (4th & 5th). The only drawback is that most of the notecards you get are in German. Most of the signs do have a translation tool, though (click on the British flag for English). SLURL: http://work.secondlife.com/en-US/successstories/case/tuvnord/