Torley Linden has come up with eleven more tutorial videos – find them here
Murdoch University Island in Second Life
April 15, 2008 By
Veteran Australian Second Life resident and Murdoch University Library staff member Kathryn Greenhill, has created a very interesting video of Murdoch University’s presence in Second Life. It covers the management, ongoing activities and challenges that running an island in Second Life involves.
Another good reason to have a look is that the island is closed to the general public.
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
The virtual classroom project
April 2, 2008 By
Jokay Wollongong is an Australian Second Life resident with a very active education blog that’s well integrated with the Jokaydia islands in Second Life.
One interesting project underway is the Virtual Classroom Project. It’s a lengthy read but an excellent example of some of the Australian-driven innovation in education in a virtual world context.
Second Life Educators Blog created
March 8, 2008 By
Linden Lab today announced the creation of the SLED Blog, a welcome evolution from the busy SLED email list. Education is certainly one of Second Life’s strong points and a well maintained blog will help this along further.
Why use virtual worlds for collaboration?
February 26, 2008 By
Respected site Terra Nova has a simple summary of why virtual worlds are used by some for collaboration.
For longer term users of Second Life, the collaborative opportunities seem self-evident, paticularly for the education and business sectors. Although, like every form of collaboration it has its inherent challenges.
If you have a collaborative project underway, tell us about it!
Latest Second Life service metrics posted
February 12, 2008 By
It’s all here on the Linden blog. There’s now a full set of data for 2007 performance including until end of January 2008:
It’s fair to say things are still far from pretty on the stability side. Still more than one in five Second Life sessions end in either a viewer or region crash although there’s been a marginal improvement in frame-rates.
How’s your stability been in recent weeks?
Starfighters Wanted: Apply @ NASA
January 24, 2008 By
Back in 1984 there was science fiction adventure movie called The Last Starfighter. The storyline involved Alex, a teenage boy, hitting the top-score on a video game which turns out to be a recruitment device for the League (the goodies) who are doing battle with the Xur and Kodan (the baddies).
Even before 1984 various science fiction styled games have developed, along with the technology. Games such as World of Warcraft, Halo and Quake are today’s better known ones, much to the dismay of parents and some spouses, no doubt.
Where does NASA fit in on this?
Game developers have until February 15 to submit their ideas for a “Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) Learning Game” that promotes the delivery of “NASA relevant content through innovative applications of technologies to enhance education”.
The intent by NASA appears to be to build a stand-alone virtual world that could act as a meaningful “hands-on” tool supporting education in “…a range of complex subjects, including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) based instruction”.
A quick search of the internet shows that NASA has quite a few traditional website based education and information areas but in the realm of alternative realities there is only a passing mention. For example, their area in Second Life: NASA Colab Island.
NASA’s call for submissions to build an MMO will be interesting in both the gaming aspect of the project and its intended education focus as it joins a growing number of private and governmental organisations that are establishing either game or virtual world presence for the express purpose of education and training.
Coupled with the recent publicised findings that surgeons in training benefit from using Wii suggests the convergence between online lives and education would appear to be a given, if not a virtual reality.
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