Why SecondLife?
Why Second Life? What would a K-12 educator get from Second Life? These are the questions being discussed in SL by educators across the country and around the world. I have been reflecting on a great deal on this as well. SL is taking a lot of my time now, is it worth it?
Personally and professionally I have gained much. I have written about this before, it is the collaboration and conversations that are so worthwhile. I shall assume that many others will find similar benefits.
I think one of the underlying tenets that effects how I relate to technology in education is the knowledge that there are many different ways to learn and therefore there is a need for many different tools and approaches to learning. Just as we need to differentiate instruction for our students we also need to differentiate for the teachers we support. SecondLife is just one more tool to help achieve this goal.
I attended a meeting of preK-12 educators in SL the other night discussing how to bring teachers into SL and how to support them once there. We narrowed it down to the 3Cs: content, comfort and collaboration. This is a group loaded with ideas and a strong commitment to SecondLife. They are pioneers in this virtual frontier and are eager to share it with others. One of the topics discussed was how to use SecondLife to provide professional development (PD).
In the past teachers could only participate in face-2-face professional development. This limited opportunities for them due to time and location. Many are now taking online asynchronous professional development experiences, or participating in synchronous Webinars. This allows teachers to participate at a time and place convenient to them. It also broadens contact with other educators beyond the district. SL offers a different type of experience that can be synchronous and/or asynchronous. It takes the previous delivery methods and sort of mashes them up in a creative and unique setting. But we need to realize that it is not for everyone. Just as I love the presentations in SL, I know others who love a good webinar. We each have different learning styles and time/place constraints that make some professional development opportunities more appealing.
I believe it is my role as K12 technology integration specialist and professional development provider to reach as many teachers as possible through as many different means as possible. I also hope to help them develop confidence to try the different methods. To this end, I will continue to offer a variety of PD: face-to-face, online via Moodle, Blackboard, and Secondlife, as well as providing a series of video tutorials teachers can access as needed.
A participant in the course I am currently teaching (Differentiating Instruction with Technology) referred to all the options laid out before them as a buffet, he was both overwhelmed and stuffed. Continuing the metaphor I hope everyone tries a little of everything from the buffet, you never know you might like it.
If you are interested in exploring what is happening in SecondLife check out the links below.
SimTeach: SecondLife Educational Wiki
The Annotated Bibliography of SecondLife Educational Online Resources
2 thoughts on “Why SecondLife?”
I never would have thought about using Second Life as an educational tool. I personally don’t use it, but I have some friends who do, and they tried to convince me to play along. But now from your perspective, I could see even students using Second Life in order to communicate with students from around the world. They could learn about each others cultures and compare differences and similarities. Probably more importantly similarities because often I think we forget that “other” people actually have similar interests as we do and they even have feelings too. The ability to have kids interact with students from around the world could (ideally) help nations see the similarities and get along more peacefully. And like you said it could be very beneficial for educators to communicate with other educators and throw ideas back and forth. The problem I could see with Second Life for schools would be that students would be much more interested in the “game” rather than the actual learning that takes place. It would be important to be able to regulate that somehow.
Thanks for your post!