The Wired Campus has a short post about a story on KQED in California about the use of Second Life in distance learning. The interview is with a faculty member at the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science about how they are suing Second Life for distance courses. The video itself is well worth the jump…
I tried out Second Life (SL) a while back to see what the buzz was about, but the lack of voice chat at the time turned me off. As a language teacher, the lack of synchronous voice was a deal breaker for me. That, and the fear of trying to get through the Second Life learning curve in a second language within a 20 hour course… The video does show live audio being used in SL, which does peak my interest a bit, but I am still left wondering if it is all worth it. With great synchronous tools such as Skype (for free:”Skype(Voice chat is free from PC to PC. PC to landline is available through pre-paid accounts. No, I don’t have an interest in the company, I just find their service invaluable…)”:http://www.skype.com voice chat) or Instant Messaging tools for text chat, is the full virtual environment of SL really necessary?
For myself, I am happy to work withing the limitations of asynchronous discussion augmented with the occasional voice chats to keep things real in my MA studies. The call of the virtual environment is appealing, but until it becomes more commonplace it may just be an added distraction…
Via: The Distant Librarian by way of Educational Technology and Life