Learning Freely Network

I have been asked by a commenter on my post on virtual worlds and education to explain something about Second Life and its uses for education.  Second Life is a virtual world that I have spent a lot of time in over the past four years.  Although some people talk about "playing" the "game", most residents in Second Life do not regard it as a game, but a platform.  Second Life is a series of areas of virtual land which reside on the servers of Linden Labs, the company which owns Second Life.  When I first entered Second Life in 2004 there were 105 sims as these areas of land are known.  A "sim" is a square of the map on the mainland or a stand alone island away from the mainland, which measures 256 metres by 256 metres. There are now over 14,000 sims.

The land itself is like real life, grass, rocks, sea, sand.  Someone who owns a sim can change the textures on the land to make an all-sand desert sim, an all-grass rural sim, or a mixture of textures to try to make a realistic island with beaches and rock on higher ground.  Land of all sizes and types is bought and sold all the time in Second Life.  To buy a whole sim costs $1695 US new from Linden Labs, plus a $295 monthly tier charge. 

More or less everything in Second Life is made from primitives, which are basic building blocks.  Each piece of land has a prim allowance to go with it, which is the number of prims which can be used on that parcel of land.  A small 512 square meter plot of land can use 117 prims in total.  A whole sim allows you to use 15,000 prims.  Basically, the monthly tier fee is buying you storage on the servers, and the administration of the grid.

You are represented by an avatar in world.  Avatar is a word which is becoming familiar as many of the message boards and messenger services now allow you to choose an avatar.  In SL terms it is a figure which can be human, or can be made to look like an animal or a robot or virtually anything else.  Currently the basic avatar design is based on a human form, which means that being four legged can be a bit complicated, but it can be done.

An initial basic account for Second Life is free, and one can dowload the program from Secondlife.com and then register for the free account.  It does require a pretty high end machine, with a good graphics card, and broadband internet connection.  There are some commercial companies, like Ben and Jerry’s, which offer free accounts through a portal on their website, although you may have to hunt around a little for the links.  Joining through a commercial portal usually means that you will be directed through to that company’s land in Second Life, where there is usually orientation material to help you get started.  If you join through the Linden portal, there is an orientation island and a help island where you can get to grips with the possibilities in world. There are also a lot of volunteer mentors who can offer help and advice with the first steps.

Every avatar has the capability to build things in Second Life.  It is necessary to go to a place where you are allowed to build, either public sandboaxes or land which you own or have the rights to build on.  There are lessons in world in various places to help you learn to build, and classes are often run to help people to make their first steps in building.  There are now many guides and how to articles on the web.

Every avatar has the capability to script in Second Life.  Scripts are currently written in Linden Scripting Language (LSL) and add functions to the object that you make.  For example, a door isn’t much use as a door without a door script in it, which will make the door open either on the approach of an avatar, or when clicked.  There are classes in LSL in world, and a lot of guides and a scripting wiki too. 

Initially, just learning how to move in world, how to teleport, use the in world search function, deal with the jargon and the user interface, and exploring will take up a lot of time.  People often spend a lot more time in world than they ought to do in the first few weeks, more than is healthy or compatible with a job or family responsibilities.  I have frequently met people in my work as a mentor who have spent 24 hours or more online in their first few days in Second Life, because there is so much to do and to see.

Where people take Second Life from there very much depends on their interests.  I found myself intrigued by building, and have spent a large part of my time in Second Life doing that.  Other people get hooked on scripting, or on making textures, or making sounds to use in world. Some people spend a lot of money on buying clothes, furniture or buildings for their avatars.  Some people who have a talent they can exploit, make a reasonable income in Second Life, making virtual furniture, clothing, animations or sounds.

There is so much more than this though.  There is the chance to meet people you’d never have met in real life.  Sometimes this is serendipitous:  you happen to introduce yourself to someone at an event and strike up a conversation.  Sometimes you will find a lecture or presentation on a subject of interest to you and find that the world’s expert in that subject is attending or is presenting at the event.  More and more events in the real world are presented in the virtual world too - sometimes there is even interaction between them, and you are able to show what’s happening in the Second Life event in the real world, and what is happening in the real life event in Second Life.  You can stream quicktime media into Sl, and so it is possible for avatars to watch films together, or use powerpoint presentations, or machinima, films made in Second Life.

Currently, you can only have around 50 people on a single sim for an event, or up to 200 for an event which takes place on a four-sim convergence.  Although commercial companies complain about this, i think it is one of the best aspects of SL:  it is possible to meet and get to know all the people at an event or meeting, rather than it reflecting real life, where you would be lucky to meet more than one or two people. The limit is due to the fact that unlike many games and other online places, everything in the world has to be streamed to your computer, including the appearance and movements of the other avatars in a location.  This will change as the technology develops, but I hope it doesn’t develop too fast, really.

What are the uses of Second Life for education?  First of all, for home educators, it is a brilliant way to keep in touch with other people, to collaborate on projects and to exchange experience.  One of the positive aspects of SL is the feeling it gives you, when you meet with people, of being in the same place at the same time as the others.  Where webcam and video conferencing can sometimes emphasise the fact that you are in different places, and come between people, Second Life seems to have the opposite effect, making people feel that they are sharing an experience in the same place in space and time.  That can be important for all sorts of reasons.

One could run virtual conferences, virtual meetings, virtual seminars.  One can invite guests to come and talk, as in real life, but the audience could all be in different countries, or different continents, though in the same place virtually.

Secondly, it is possible to build more or less anything you can imagine in Second Life.  I have a friend in SL who is an archaelogist.  He’s  built a Roman sim, complete with a huge amount of information and goods in Second Life.  It would be possible to make a sim for any period in history, with authentic buildings, artefacts, clothing, town or village organisation, appropriate goods and chattels etc.  More than that, one could use scripting to construct a game in the sim which would require information to be obtained in order to progress the game.  I have built a game (for entertainment purposes only) in Numbakulla sim, but it would be possible to provide a world which is interesting and absorbing to explore, and include a game which would be entertaining and instructive.  I can think of several TV programmes in the last twenty years provided for children, which have included gathering information in order to fulfil a quest, and that sort of thing would be very easy to translate to Second Life.

There is a huge potential for collaboration in Second Life.  For example, there must be home educators with particular knowledge or interests around particular periods in history, where parents and interested children could collaborate on making a sim project for others to visit.  Conversely there may be parents with a high level of knowledge in a certain subject - physics, say - who might be able to provide learning materials on a physics sim for children who are interested but don’t have access to an adult interested in that subject.

Though we may resist it, it seems to me that there is enormous value and potential in collaborations with Universities, Colleges and schools around the world.  Imagine being able to find someone with specialist knowledge in virtually any subject, or being able to make contact with people in Japan… or Australia… or anywhere with a broadband connection.

The major problem for home educators is that currently the teen grid for young people aged 13-17, is separate from the adult grid for people 18 plus.  If you buy one or more sims, it is possible to fence those off from both grids, to have your own standalone grid, and that’s what I would love to be doing.  I’d prefer not to have sims fenced off from anyone, but the amount of adult material in Second Life, and the ban on adults in the teen grid means that a fenced off area is the only way of ensuring that home educated children and parents could be in the same place at the same time.

Second Life is a very flexible platform, which can make amazing things happen.  CMP media is a company that runs real life conferences and has started to run conferences in Second Life, and reported that people who attended their first conference in Second Life last spring spent an average of 29-30 hours at the conference in the course of a week - a figure which is higher than that achieved with Webinars, Videos, or real life conferences.  Not only that, but people formed real friendships and collaborations as the result of meeting at the event, again something that doesn’t need to stop when the conference is over.

More than anything else, what I see as the advantage of Second Life and the other developing virtual worlds is the element of choice which it provides about what to learn and when.  It is an unschoolers or autonomous educators dream.  Currently adults can choose whether to spend their time learning about the platform, getting to grips with design, virtual architecture, scripting, or programming.  They can choose to explore and may be able to study languages, find out historical information, or simply meet people from a different culture.  They can choose to seek out formal classes and information, and join groups to obtain more details or information.  It is rapidly becoming something approaching the 3D web… a place to explore and discover more about any subject you choose, including yourself.