Notes from Millie D

Last night I had the privilege to get a tour within Second Life from Kevin Jarrett (aka KJ Dax). He showed us a couple of places within Second Life. Even though we fell out of the sky while riding Kevin’s magic carpet I had a good time. Second Life is something that I’ve been curious about and dabbled in but there isn’t enough time in the day to balance another life. I’m going to try to carve a little more time this year as more and more educational events are going on that would help me grow as a professional.

The whole concept of virtual learning environments is starting to take off. Kevin got to spend quite a bit of time last school exploring Second Life and their educational impact. More and more entities have started to realize that this is the future and want to get in on the ground floor. Students can use Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) to take advantage of offerings that might not occur at their school for whatever reason. VLEs offer a different style of education than one can get using Blackboard, Moodle, or any other Content Management System (CMS). CMS seem to offer a single direction in communication. I’m currently taking a course using Blackboard and I’m not sure if I miss the face-to-face communication or interactivity that Web 2.0 tools take on. VLEs seem to offer the bridge between those two styles of e-learning.

I don’t believe that Second Life is in a final form to be the cat’s meow. I don’t like the fact that Linden Labs seems to be profiting from all of the commercialization within Second Life. Ideally the VLE should be based on an open source project so that it can be customized to meet specific needs that groups may have. I would hope that a voice integration is built in, like a merging with a VoIP product. For all I know these components may be in the works and that is why I’m not abandoning this use of technology.

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