Interesting posts. Were Beth and Mechelle, I'm not sure if you are in COMET 3, but during our last class, a pirate ship arrived on Aztlan. The crew totally took on the role of pirates and even yelled, "Man over board" when I fell into the water after exploring the ship.

This makes me wonder if drama students can use this to get into character for their productions. I don't know much about acting, but SL may have theatrical value.

Looks like the use of Second Life in education is catching some heat from politicians. What do you guys think? Does Second Life do a proper job in screening for minors? My curiosity took me to some very shady places during our course, and I wondered if this curiosity would be present in teenagers.... What would parents say if they walked into their kids' room and saw their kids drug dealing and taking part in illicit activities? Would they say, "This is part of my homework, I just need to get back to the right land". ... I am interested to read what you guys think about this short article.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9937956-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

I agree with you Cathy. You raise great questions. I think banning second life would not be a solution, but a detrimental quick fix, to a potentially effective form of teaching.

The issue of global, or web citizenship must be addressed with young students well before entering an environment like second life. I found the article I posted to be very thought provoking.

Have a nice day. :)

A friend sent me this link. Its a youtube video of a second life birth. Although the video stands alone without any context, I noticed that the avatars are wearing the same clothing. This leads me to believe that this group of avatars are in childbirth classes or perhaps even medical students.

I found this concept to be very interesting on various levels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4TR_6B7nlU

This is a very recent post regarding the integration of current events in education, by means of Second Life. The article specifically describes how high school teachers have created an oil spill in Second Life and are having students think of ways to control this environmental nightmare. Creating real life problem in Second Life enriches the manner in which students interact with news. This type of work leads me to believe that many aspects of a student's development can be worked at the same time! More bang for the buck! These teachers do however, have he economic and technical support from the city of New York.