I do not particularly see social networks such as Facebook to be comparable to Second Life. However, I will look at each of these individually.
When MySpace came about, I found the site to be a little on the creepy side, I have to admit. I did not see the appeal of it and I had refused to get a MySpace account myself. Then, as I was teaching an interactive media class in the Fall and heard my students consistently talking about their MySpace sites or their Facebook accounts, they continually asked me when I was going to get my own.
After a little investigation and more curiosity, I decided to embark upon the world of Facebook and pretty quickly saw its appeal. I found Facebook to be a nice way for me to get acquainted with some of my colleagues on a more personal level and to talk, a way to find friends who I haven’t been in close contact with for a while, and to stay in contact with friends who lived further away in a fun environment. I would not say that I am hooked on Facebook, but I do enjoy having an account there. My main concern was addressed early on as I was allowed to limit my information and my site only to those I wished to have access.
Recently, I had a request to join LinkedIn by a colleague of mine. I had never heard of this service before and the more I read about it, the more I found this also interesting and potentially useful. After I joined LinkedIn, I immediately through a quick search found a few of my colleagues who do not work on my campus and asked them to join my network. Within two days, people who I had not spoken to in quite a while had asked me to be in their network. I was able to be 'relinked' (so to speak) with a previous student of mine from Athens, Greece, and someone who I went to school with who I hadn’t spoken to in years! Though I have not had a chance to fully explore the benefits of LinkedIn, I do think it can be very useful for networking within your discipline. As with Facebook, you can also limit your information to only be viewed by the people within your network.
Then, there is Second Life. I have been a member of Second Life now for a couple of weeks and have been “hanging out” in the virtual world a few different times. One thing right away that I have noticed is that this can easily be a serious time waster and time literally flies by when you’re trying to accomplish something in the virtual world!I am sure mastering the interactivity in SL takes some time, patience and practice, but I found myself getting very flustered right away with the interface. At first, the fun of creating my avatar (Annalyse Latte) was entertaining, but then I started trying to make my way through the virtual environment. Not as intuitive as I would have imagined! The program also has a tendency to crash fairly often and I could see this as being a potential problem if a class was taking place. Apparently, this is a frequent problem, as I found this same information in online documentation (Johnson, 2006).
That said I could see why this can be intriguing to today’s generation. This is yet another forum for today’s technology- enriched generation to intermingle, interact and amalgamate. However, in my escapes as Annalyse Latte, I ran into a number of areas (completely unintentionally) that I would not want a student of high school age entering. For that matter, I didn’t want to be there and I am certainly over high school age!!
So, do I think there are positives and negatives to social networking? Absolutely. Are there, as well, to virtual worlds such as Second Life? Sure. These, as with gaming and any Internet communication has to be effectively monitored by an adult. As long as that can happen and is enforced, there are safe ways for all of these to be used by children under 18. As for adults? Again, this is all as effective as the person utilizing it. I can completely see the benefit in networking with professional colleagues with LinkedIn and I can see a social value to Facebook. As with anything, all in moderation and with caution.
I was not able to meet my class in Second Life this week, so I am answering questions relating to this missed opportunity...
1. What were the challenges that prevented me from meeting in SL?
2. How could I remedy this situation in the event that future classes require this of me?
3. What did I probably miss that might have been of value to me?
4. What are the potentials and dangers for integrating a technology such as SL in education?"
1. Personal challenges are what prevented me from attending the meeting in SL. If an event with my daughter didn’t present itself, I would have been online.
2. How can I remedy what happened? I probably should not have been open to a Friday evening time slot! :)
3. I think the most valuable thing I missed out on was the communication between colleagues and people I know. To date, I have only been approached by people who I do not know, and in some cases, who I do not wish to know. I was propositioned by a guy with hair for a face and feathers on his arms…being able to communicate with people who I know would be interesting to me!
4. Potentials of Second Life in education are a bit foreign to me right now, but I can already think of a number of fears. As far as potential goes, I think its quite interesting that people can 'visit' areas in a virtual world that they may not be able to in person. I, for instance, ran across an American History gallery where I could look at artwork (and could purchase as well, had I wished to do so). I think it is interesting that there are virtual areas of the world established and even virtual museums that avatars can visit if they cannot go to the actual places. I think the advantage for people confined to their home for medical reasons is also very interesting.
According to the article "101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom", virtual communication and role-playing is used fairly extensively by individuals who cannot interact in the ‘real’ world, at least, not without physical or mental obstacles and with some difficulty (Conklin, 2007). In Second Life, for instance, consider the feeling a young paraplegic would have who could have his avatar fly around to see the world around him, or the 20-something year old confined to a wheel chair who can walk into a dance club and dance the ‘night’ away. As highlighted in the YouTube video “In My Language,” people dealing with autism are also very involved in virtual exploration. There is even an island in Second Life dedicated strictly for autistic people. These situations are intriguing to me and I can see a very good reason why they should be used in these scenarios.
However, as an everyday communication and/or education forum, SL is still a little odd to me. The software is not for the every day computer user, either. SL requires some pretty serious hardware to even use the software and has a pretty steep learning curve, as well. As I stated before, I had been on SL a few different times and feel like a complete computer novice. In addition, in order to advance your skill set in SL, you need to actual get involved in “scripting (which allows the user to create programs to control object and avatar behavior) and prims (“primitives” are basic objects that can be linked together to build larger objects that can have physics associated with them)”. (Johnson, 2006).
I guess I can foresee some powerful uses for Second Life, I am just not sure that I would personally use them in my own classroom…at least, not at this point.
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