[Edu-sig] How do virtual 3D Second Life classrooms compare to WebEx for distance learning?

[kirby urner]

Before 2nd Life there was Active Worlds, including some set aside for
education.  Friends and I built a virtual world and held conferences
there.  Bonnie de Varco built a virtual high school.  We sent in our
avatars at appointed times, looked around and talked.

You'll find a screen shot here, plus links that still work, even after a
decade:

http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/lsystems.html  (no avatars
shown -- a point of view shot, facing north.

Bonnie and I overlapped when she was chief archivist for the
Buckminster Fuller Institute.  A lot of our content was related to
polyhedra, which made a virtual world in some ways ideal, as
we could move amidst the very subject matter we were yakking
about.  Gerald de Jong was developing his Elastic Interval
Geometry and we'd meet about that as well (meeting in
person was more satisfying though -- for all its bells and
whistles, 2nd Life etc. are no more than a multi-user doll
houses).

Having attended a Howard Rheingold lecture recently (he's
made studying Cyberia (i.e. 2nd world i.e. cyberspace) a
lifetime focus, starting with The Well) I am sensitive to the
fact that many people just stumble around in Second Life
and find it far from intuitive.

I think one needs to provide a strong use case up front, to
recruit willing participants.

My example, of wanting to make Polyhedra a focus, or L-systems,
or other art, and of wanting to pioneer the shared doll house
experience with a virtual worlds anthropologist (Bonnie), might
serve as a basis for future meetups along these lines.

Kirby

Citations / annotations:
http://members.cruzio.com/~devarco/portfolio.htm (mentions Virtual High School)
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2010/04/smart-mobs.html  (see 3rd from
last paragraph)

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 9:58 PM,  <chris at seberino.org> wrote:
> I don't know if this educational topic is allowed on this but here goes...
>
> I do online math classes with video conferencing and a shared whiteboard.
>
> I'm trying to find out if doing virtual classes in Second Life with avatars
> offers any benefits.  I've read up on this topic and the reports vary.
>
> Anyone have any experience going to a "class" in Second Life?
>
> cs
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