Second Life in Public K-12 Education...Seriously...

OK, I have to admit, my knowledge of Second Life is nominal. I have attend "intro" sessions and know the basic concepts. What I am still having a difficult time with is how it can actually be used in a public education setting, with students.

Most everything I read about 2nd Life in education is about Staff Development, college level, or private and charter schools. All well and good when your parameters aren't bound as tight as a packet of pre-wrapped state exams.

I'd like to hear from the public education people out there who are using SL. How does it fit into your curriculum? How did you make it fit? Teacher buy in? Admin buy in? Etc?

Thanks!

Stu

Tags: SL, Second, life, virtual, worlds

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Permalink Reply by Rich White on June 6, 2009 at 10:38am

We leverage Opensim (run our own grid separate fro the SL grid) for our students .. a few more details here - htp://grid.greenbush.us

And have an project that involves the interactive whiteboard and the Edusim environment (peer to peer virtual world platform) - details to that is here http://edusim3d.com

Once educators are given practicle examples (CSI World http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kJPzEuEspg ) - most seem to see its relevance

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Permalink Reply by Amy Capelle on June 7, 2009 at 12:19pm

We just started using it for PD reasons. The goal is to eventually pilot the Teen Grid with some of our tech magnet schools to see what's what. Our virtual school will be using it for staff meetings. I think there's really a lot of potential use for SL in education. PD is a "safe" place to start building a culture and training the teachers and other stakeholders on what it is all about. I think it's better to start it out with the adults, teach them how and why to use SL and then move onto creating projects and learning environments with kids.

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Permalink Reply by Deb O'Brien on June 7, 2009 at 3:15pm

I don't know, but our asst. supt. has seen apps like Second Life in action and wants teachers using them. I'd like to hear something, too.

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Permalink Reply by Kim on August 13, 2009 at 3:02pm

In Virginia Beach three of us took fourth grade students to VSTE Island's Jamestown re-creation by way of recorded video. "Pocahontas" took students on a tour of the fort, English ships, and Powhatan Village, and posed questions which they answered in a school based blog. We'd like to do so much more, but currently even teachers are unable to get to Second Life from inside the school network. We will begin to use Quest Atlantis in a few schools this year.
I did not create this lesson but used it with my fourth grade classes.