Skip to main content

Home/ Education in Second Life/ Group items tagged SL training

Rss Feed Group items tagged

James OReilly

Second Life - The Long Goodbye « That'SLife - 18 views

shared by James OReilly on 05 Sep 10 - Cached
amazonecho liked it
  • There comes a time when you have to admit you were wrong, or perhaps misguided, or simply that you were a little bit ‘out of time’, or perhaps – better said – that somebody let you down and maybe it wasn’t your fault. And this is one of those times, because it’s goodbye to Second Life for me, at least in its current incarnation – in terms of teaching and training – and I’d like to try and explain why…
  • the reason I did all this is not because I was convinced that SL was the future of education, but rather that I thought it was the future of the web (not SL, you’ll understand, more the notion of 3D)
  • here was still one thing that didn’t change – it was cripplingly difficult to get started with SL for the casual visitor (unlike, say, Skype or Adobe Connect) and the ‘first hour experience’ was terrible.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • you get a system which doesn’t lend itself to much use over and above the committed
  • On a scale of 1-100 I’d put SL at the 100 end of the scale in terms of people being willing to invest the time and effort…
  • The period in which I found myself having less time to invest in SL also coincided with the new viewer which brought HTML on a prim to SL and made a lot of tools (mine included) largely redundant. And I’m very happy about that – media is now much easier to use in SL, as is any web content, and this has changed the lives of many educators who now don’t have to fudge solutions in-world.
  • Of all the improvements (the changes to the forums, the blogs, the bloody shopping site and all the rest) why is it that the overall experience isn´t really that much better than it was two years ago?
  • I can’t help thinking I get more out of blogs and Twitter (in terms of professional development), and more out of other social platforms (and I’d include Elluminate and Adobe Connect in there too) than I can see myself getting out of SL these days.
  • “Second Life: Overcoming the Entry Barriers in Hogher and Further Education”
  • Looking back at that chapter now I can’t see a great deal of change, and those entry barriers are, at best, a real detractor in terms of getting educators in, but – at worst – they are very good reasons not to even start.
  • SL is too  demanding and too unreliable for most educators. It pains me to say this, but I just don’t think it’s improved enough, or become easy enough for most people to bother. There are better ways of doing most things you can do in SL in terms of education, and – almost five years down the line – as far as I’m concerend SL hasn’t delivered enough to make it worthwhile.
  • I still think the future of web interactions is 3D, and I still think avatars are a grand idea, and I still love the concept of a vast space to be wandered and enjoyed… but I have to conclude that in pure terms of investment (time and money) SL doesn’t make much sense, at least for most educators.
  • I think mobile has come on in leaps and bounds in the past couple of years, and the possibilities are very exciting. Plus, you don’t need high-end equipment and shedloads of patience with mobile, most of the time.
Kim FLINTOFF

EDTECH Island Home - EDTECH Island - 2 views

James OReilly

MIT OpenCourseWare | Mechanical Engineering | 2.626 Fundamentals of Photovoltaics, Fall... - 0 views

shared by James OReilly on 25 Aug 09 - Cached
Russell D. Jones

How Education Enterprises Use Virtual Worlds | Second Life Grid - 1 views

Steven Hornik

The Journal of Virtual Worlds and Education - 1 views

James OReilly

Workplace Learning 2.0 - From the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT) - 1 views

Eloise Pasteur

Virtual Worlds News: Quick Stat: Second Life Boosts Canadian Border Guard Training Scor... - 0 views

  • "2007 - Without using Second Life, student interview skills average grade: 58%," Ken Hudson of Loyalist told New World Notes. "2008 - after using Second Life simulation, student interview skills average grade: 86%."
  •  
    How well does SL help learning?
Eloise Pasteur

Dusan Writer's Metaverse » Educational Institutions Spread Their Wings in Se... - 0 views

  • At George Washington University in Washington State, a graduate-level course in instructional design was created by David Cillay, an assistant dean for distance education, as reported on TMC.net. The course was taught completely in Second Life, with the students, using their avatars, communicating with Cillay and one another through the course’s island (learning space) in Second Life. Cillay was impressed with the level of text and voice interaction between the students, even if they were only avatars onscreen. The students discussed what ‘instructional design means’ and took field trips to other SL locales such as a nuclear power plant.
  • Across the pond, City College Norwich in the UK is forging ahead with its own island. The location will give users a virtual tour of the campus and access to training and job vacancies. The school also hopes, down the line, to develop an educational presence. “Second Life has fantastic potential for learning,” said Dick Palmer, the principal, “which we will be starting to use more fully next year. For example, our new diploma students will come from lots of different areas, but Second Life will allow students to get together in an informal learning zone. We are excited to be embarking upon such an innovative initiative.”
  • After the experiment with virtual education at GWU, Cillay offered three recommendations to those thinking of entering the virtual education realm: - Temper your expectations. “There’s a tremendous wow factor for people just discovering ‘Second Life,’ ” he said. Students need some time to adjust and learn how to move and operate in that world. - “Understand what your expectations are,” Cillay said. Rather than expect huge gains in a classroom environment, consider it a first step in educational experimentation. - Give yourself and the students time to explore. “Do some research ahead of time, so you know the environment and find out what other educators are doing there,” said Cillay.
  •  
    Summary of comments from the US and UK about education in Second Life
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20 items per page