To Barry from another Barry,

I think second life has merit to it, I think it is a lot like the game
World of Warcraft, AKA WOW. A major difference I have noticed in my
minimal time on the system is that there is no set purpose for an avatar
to continue, as an example, in WOW after you decide who you will be,
what you will wear, etc you are given a mission.  As opposed to Second
Life where I built my avatar and then essentially walked around, lost.

If you were able to give your students directions to you virtually that
may work.

Do I have this wrong?  Is a player given a sense of purpose and an idea
of what they need to do to continue playing?

Barry Burkett,
Frankfort, KY 

-----Original Message-----
From: technology-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:technology-bounces at nifl.gov]
On Behalf Of Bakin, Barry
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 6:59 PM
To: The Technology and Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [Technology 1211] Re: Prosessional Development Design
&Developmentfor the 21st Century

I don't know if it's been mentioned in this forum or not but there's an
interesting discussion taking place at Sylvia Martinez' blog on her
experiences with using SL as an educator.  It's worth looking at for
some of the issues that she raises. You can read through her original
posting as the responses at
http://blog.genyes.com/index.php/2007/07/21/second-thoughts-on-second-li
fe/  Again, as David notes, my position is not one of saying one should
use or not use Second Life but rather what would it take to get to the
point that educators would want to invest their time to make this
technology tool practical for the students they work with.  Speaking as
one who is extremely pleased to get something as basic as an email
message from a student, it would take some doing to expect my students
to be creating avatars and visiting educational sites on SL on their
own.  I'm not convinced yet that my time is well-spent on encouraging
that endeavor.  

Barry Bakin
Pacoima Skills Center
Division of Adult and Career Education,
Los Angeles Unified School District

-----Original Message-----
From: technology-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:technology-bounces at nifl.gov]
On Behalf Of David J. Rosen
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 11:31 AM
To: The Technology and Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [Technology 1210] Re: Prosessional Development Design &
Developmentfor the 21st Century


Hello Mark, and others,

Thanks for your thoughts on the use of Second Life (SL) for adult
literacy education. I hope you will share some of your group's research
on "under what conditions and for what purposes 3DVR might be more
appropriate or effective than other tools/environments for learning" and
what you see as some of the opportunities and limitations of using
Second Life. I would like to learn more about what  "we need to advocate
*for* educators *to* vendors like Linden Labs, so they build in more
education-appropriate features." What features on SL do you think are
worthwhile? What other features should we be advocating for?
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