I have just recently been introduced to the world of Second Life, which is a social networking environment where residents can 'live', own land, conduct business, or just hang out with friends in a 3-D virtual environment. More information can be found on their website at http://secondlife.com.
After having a look around this virtual 3D world, I decided that I'm not that interested in maintaining a second life as I can barely fit everything in I need to do in my first life. What interested me was the potential for running turorial sessions in world.
Each resident gets to create an Avatar through which they can then interact with other residents and the environment. There already exist many training centres and libraries in world that can be either accessed by everyone or are restricted to invitees only. The interaction between the residents can either be conducted through normal chat text, or if headphones with microphones are used real time conversations can occur.
The main downside to using Second Life is that it isn't freely available in the TAFE network. Like a number of other applications and services, if a strong enough case was put forward it may be possible to gain access. Even so, if an online course was being conducted this limitation may not be an issue for the student as long as the teacher coudl gain access internally.
A number of TAFE projects have been set up to investigate the use of Second Life for educational purposes. I think it has great potential. What better way to make the online student feel a little less isolated than being able to have almost real face-to-face conversations with their teacher and classmates?
No comments:
Post a Comment