Week Four: Blog Posting #7 - Second Life

My venture into a MUVE, specifically Second Life is solely a result of my entering Full Sail. Prior to that event in June, I had never even heard of Second Life. My first look into it was very overwhelming. I didn't understand the attraction of a virtual world as I have no experience with virtual worlds in general, much less considering it as an educational tool.
With the support and urging of my first group members, I began the task of trying to first create my avatar which I found the choices to be very interesting and the personas that some took on, even more interesting. I guess that in and of itself is part of a virtual world. You can decide everything from hair and eye color, to body part configurations, to outfits. So the initial experience begins with the creation of who you want to be in this virtual world. Once your physical appearance is decided, moving about takes center stage. You can walk or fly! Ok, fly? Really? Again, I had to keep reminding myself that this is a virtual world and that while elements are prefaced perhaps on "real world" attributes and applications, there is extended choice that addressed the "virtual world."
After using Second Life in a couple of classes, I have begun to see some applications for educational use, however it was not until I went to Education in Second Life for this course, that I got a true appreciation for how I could use Second Life in my own professional career working with pre-service teachers and conducting professional development around the state. Albert Bandura's (1977) definition of social learning theory further helped me understand the potential implications for education and further distinguished my preconception of Second Life being nothing more than a SIMS game and a complete waste of time. I do see the connection between creating a social context in which to interact to be a way to test out theory and ideas that require the "human" variable in order to replicate reality.
For this assignment I visited three sites relating to Learning Theory:




I decided to join the ISTE Second Life Project. I investigated many of the attributes of this project by visiting ISTE's Second Life Headquarter and subscribing to their Eduverse Talks and Discussion Lists.