The more the public views Second Life as a place to extend their real life – like a telephone – the closer we get to it being viewed as a place for real world education.
Friday, 2 November 2007
Second Life in the mainstream US media
Barry Joseph of Global Kids provides an interesting analysis of the recent appearances of Second Life in both The Office and CSI:NY, A Tale of Two Second Live Promotions: The Office Vs. CSI. Not that I've seen either myself... but definitely worth a quick read to see how SL is being portrayed. The point being that the way the general public's attitude towards SL is steered by the mainstream media is critical to any significant integration of SL in education.
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It actually doesn't bother me overly if students don't use SL, e.g. because they're deeply embedded in Facebook. Under those circumstances the onus falls on the teacher to demonstrate that the use of SL is justified rather than gratuitous. While surveys you've cited previously suggest that students don't "get" SL in terms of personal use, those I've spoken to seem to be more persuaded if it's explained in terms of subject-specific activities, not least allied to project work. I suspect, of course, that most colleagues would have the same "take", i.e. this scepticism isn't a student-specific thing. I'm not entirely clear that the average viewer would be attracted to SL by the current spate on TV. Last time I looked, the CSI sims had greatly contracted in number and overall logins seem only marginally higher. Of course, the notion of bringing extra sims onstream may be relevant to teaching large classes so there are interesting things to be learned there for educators.
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