Group items tagged

Although physical education in second life would be more of a skills analysis or cognitive application as opposed to actual physical activity, there are breakthroughs in virtual reality applications for physical education.

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?

One of the greatest challenges we face as high school physical education teachers is getting our students to be motivated. Although it is costly to have this sort of virtual reality equipment at our school, it is something that we can possibly plan for the future and have as an activity for days in which our teaching areas are affected by rainy day, construction, testing, or for students who cannot have long exposure to the sun. Sounds fun ☺

Yeah, I think in PE (or in any content area), finding a way to connect with our students and motivate them is crucial. I envision being able to integrate a Wii game system with a 3D Muve so that our students will actually have to be physically active in order to move their avatar in the virtual world,

Carolina, Does the P.E. curriculum call for daily physical activity? Perhaps one or two days a week students can meet in a computer lab and work in SL. They could build a gym, and post fitness goals on its walls. Also, there are many web sites out there that they could use to calculate calories in and calories out. Just a thought... Great article. ;)

Here is an interesting article on how virtual reality is used for physical rehabilitation. People in the rehabilitation community and neuroscientist question whether virtual reality truly affects the nervous system or if it just serves as motivation for the patient in a controlled environment.

OpenSim demonstration of lab demo. The author admits that this is somewhat futuristic example. However, it DOES indicate where virtual worlds are heading in the very near future. (perhaps 2 years?) Good to show science educators in particular.

Thothica Community is a place where people come together to discuss philosophy, poetry, psychology, culture, mathematics, computer science, physics, cosmology, artificial life, education, and second life. When I first arrived there was a nice schedule of times with topics that would be discussed. Some of the topics included evolutionary psychology and quantum economics, all presented by community sponsors and members. Also listed were poetry readings and philosophy games. This might be a good way for students to join in a discussion or share their own writing.

Here is an interesting letter from an associate professor of physics at Elon University about his experience with using Second Life in his courses. He seems to really enjoy using new creative tools in his courses and is constantly looking for new ways to do things. He has tried many different representations of virtual reality. In general, he had assumed that all of his students would be fairly technically competent, especially in building in Second Life, but found that most of them fumbled around at first. Once they got on to it, they did quite well. He also took part in the Second Life Planetarium that has already been mentioned by one of the other students.