10 Examples of Useful Second Life Resources for Educators

(Final post in a series on current uses of Virtual Worlds in Education)

This week I will wrap up the series of posts I published throughout June, focused on Internet based Virtual World technologies as they are being used in Education today. As I researched current VW tech options for education, it became apparent to me that Second Life remains the most widely known and used VW app. SL is also readily accessible by users worldwide (unlike some other VW technologies which are more proprietary in nature). Today’s post concludes this series by providing examples of Second Life worlds that could potentially be useful to educators.

The following listing of Second Life islands is intended to provide some insight into resources within SL that have potential usefulness as an engaging part of an instructor’s lecture, a student project, or a more extended classroom effort. The arts and sciences include many disciplines that can go hand in hand with SL’s ability to display images and provide ‘virtual tour’ functionality, and these types of sites dominate the list. SL’s ability to echo many real world interactions opens the door to emulate many kinds of constructs and processes, such as conducting business, or doing architectural design, but these types of activities require a much larger investment of time and effort than simply taking virtual tours. Below I have focused on experiences that require little more than a “walk around and check things out” level of activity engagement in order to be somewhat engaging.

[Please click here to continue reading the complete post at www.EmergingEdTech.com, where I blog regularly about the use of Internet technologies in education. Thanks!]