Second Life Experiments and Reflections

I have known Avatar for many years and never been really into its originate concept. Second Life is a three-dimensional modeling tool based on simple geometric shapes that allows users to explore the virtual world, socialize with other residents, trade virtual objects or properties, participate in individual or group activities(Wikipedia). According to Claudia L’Amoreaux at Linden Lab, the San Francisco company that created it, at least 300 universities around the world teach courses or conduct research in SL (Michels, 2008). The first time I profoundly explored Second Life was requested by another CECS class for a SL virtual meeting. 

The first difficulty I encounter was enormous time for download. I was interested in live music performances held to help raise money for the Japanese Red Cross in April 1-3. There were about 15 residents in the concert while I joined the concert in the evening of April 1. The video buffering took longer than a song lasted few minutes and still couldn’t get it through, 12 of 15 audiences were still in gray silhouette. I finally gave up and just left the concert. One site I visited, the archive video shown for the theme was not even audio/video synchronized. Afterwards, I visited a couple of other places and found out their setting design concept is quite limited, it would be either one or two story building for indoor activities and a circular open exhibition space with several bulletin boards stand around. The idea of Second Life is encouraging users to optimize their creativities and imagination in virtual world; I truly don’t see the approach applied in their destination design.

The fun of Avatar is that it enables users to create their own appearance with a variety of hair, face features, clothing and accessories…and so on. Second Life offers females far more attire choices than males. Very unfortunately, the female images in Second Life are sexualized and stereo-typed. According to Being Female in Second Life, female Avatars exhibit large breasts, too large lips, too thin waists, exaggerated hips and buttock and were frequently seen scantily clad. The author addressed that Second Life was obviously a virtual world created by men, for men as the image of women within the platform was clearly based on the adolescent male fantasy (Bloggershai, 2011), which I couldn’t concur with her more.    

How to conduct articulate tests to recognize what degree of skills or knowledge through online courses and to monitor the identity of distant learners has been an issue for educators. Regarding student evaluation, online students are not always who they claim and it causes instructor tremendous difficulties in effectively evaluating students they never meet face-to-face. Implementing Avatar into virtual classroom collaboration will increase the difficulties of effectively and efficiently access students.

Second Life might be a good tool for visually motivate students for learning in limited aspects such as role playing. As other fellows in this class, I am not convinced to integrate Second Life into the full-course learning context.

References

Bloggershai. (2011, January 31). Being femal in Second Life.

Michels, P. (2008, February 25). Universities us Second Life to teach complex concepts.