When I worked at the Oregon Daily Emerald, one of our reporters covered a story on Second Life's application in U of O classrooms, specifically focusing on English professor Michael Aronson's course on new media, which was taught within Second Life. I dug a little deeper and found that the Center for Advanced Technology in Education (CATE) at the University's College of Education has dabbled in Second Life as well with what they call the "SL Ducks Initiative."
(anthropomorphic image from www.slducks.com)
As part of the College of Education's CATE program, the SL Ducks Initiative is "a community of University of Oregon faculty interested in exploring virtual worlds, like Second Life, as an additional medium of instruction" (source). They also note that they're all "newbies" in Second Life and need to stick together to get the most out of it. Cool; I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt overwhelmed trying to figure out just how Second Life works!
I figured I might as well take a look at a list of their suggested links to follow. There weren't many, but one in particular caught my eye . . .
Whoosh! goes Second Life over my laptop's tinny speakers. Whymog has landed in what appears to be a rough approximation of historic Red Square, ripped right out of a chunk of virtual Moscow.
One of the nice things about Second Life is that websites can write specialized links that start up the Second Life program and drop your avatar in a specific spot. This means that links to physical places in the Second Life metaverse can be shared and written about on the web, outside of the actual program! Pretty cool.
I don't know Russian, but the attention to detail and the size of the monument are pretty impressive. Although I'm not very familiar with Russia, I do know what people can find at the real life version of Red Square.
And sure enough . . .
Yep. Someone rendered a 3D model of Lenin's Tomb, complete with Vladimir Lenin's body.
It's a little creepy, but more than anything I think it's a wonderful example of Second Life's potential for educating people globally. The prospect of a living, interactive virtual museum that people can access worldwide is nothing short of thrilling. I'm the sort of geeky kid who enjoyed going to OMSI in my early years, after all.
(anthropomorphic image from www.slducks.com)
I figured I might as well take a look at a list of their suggested links to follow. There weren't many, but one in particular caught my eye . . .
Whoosh! goes Second Life over my laptop's tinny speakers. Whymog has landed in what appears to be a rough approximation of historic Red Square, ripped right out of a chunk of virtual Moscow.
One of the nice things about Second Life is that websites can write specialized links that start up the Second Life program and drop your avatar in a specific spot. This means that links to physical places in the Second Life metaverse can be shared and written about on the web, outside of the actual program! Pretty cool.
I don't know Russian, but the attention to detail and the size of the monument are pretty impressive. Although I'm not very familiar with Russia, I do know what people can find at the real life version of Red Square.
And sure enough . . .
Yep. Someone rendered a 3D model of Lenin's Tomb, complete with Vladimir Lenin's body.
It's a little creepy, but more than anything I think it's a wonderful example of Second Life's potential for educating people globally. The prospect of a living, interactive virtual museum that people can access worldwide is nothing short of thrilling. I'm the sort of geeky kid who enjoyed going to OMSI in my early years, after all.
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