ALL THOSE THINGS YOU'VE HEARD ABOUT Second Life-that corporations spend small fortunes building "islands" that no one ever visits, that the virtual world is overrun by "griefers" whose only purpose seems to be harassing other users, that it's a digital den of depravity-well, they're all true. But it's also true that Second Life has a vibrant education and research community that carries on its business pretty much undisturbed by sword-wielding ninjas, and colleges and universities are leading the way in this virtual realm of possibilities.
SETTING PARAMETERS
There is much confusion over just what Second Life is. Although users can play games within the virtual world, Second Life itself is not a game. It has no objective, and there is no prize for finishing first. Indeed, there's nothing to finish-no levels to conquer, no princess to rescue, no timers to beat. That's what turns away people who go online to do something.
Much like real life, Second Life is precisely what you make of it. If you want to socialize with people from around the world, there's always a party going on somewhere. If you want to explore the works of filmmakers, painters, and sculptors, Second Life has no shortage of such food for thought. If you want to discuss politics or religion, or play a game of chess, you'll find plenty of like-minded people. On the other hand, if you want to speed around a beach in a missile-firing hovercraft, no one will stop you from doing that (but such behavior will result in your banishment from certain locations).
Although creator Linden Lab claims there are more than 2 million "residents," a live statistic report at sign-in shows only a small fraction of that number "in world" at any given time. And when one considers that the Second Life world currently consists of nearly 900 million square meters of leased virtual space, it's no surprise that many islands are indeed deserted. But longtime Second Life users know that once the novelty wears off, many people lose interest, leaving the rest to embrace the technology and learn how to use and improve it.
According to Linden Lab, at least 70 U.S. colleges and universities have taken up that challenge, along with a like number of schools from around the world.
VIRTUAL COLLABORATION
One of Second Life's strengths is in collaboration, which was a nice surprise for Lisa Dawley. As chair of the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University (Idaho), Dawley created EDTech Island in 2006 as a place where she could teach a graduate course in educational games and simulations.
'Second Life provides the capability for people to communicate very effectively, in a very rich form.' - Chang Liu, Ohio University Without Boundaries
"As the course grew we began to address the students' needs," she says. "For example, they would need a place to test their ideas, so we made a quarter of the island into a 'sandbox,' where they could build what they wanted. Then we set up informational centers throughout the island."
Partway through the class, Dawley became intrigued with social interaction in the virtual world. Although EDTech Island was built to support the course, it soon became clear that it had the potential to become a resource for other teachers as well. Dawley wondered whether people would interact more if they had a place to live in Second Life. A high-rise condominium was built on one part of the island to find out. The condos were originally intended for students but at semester's end were deserted, so Dawley opened them up to the public.
"What was really cool about that was we started getting a mish-mash of people from different universities and different community colleges actually living in the condos," she says. "And different collaborations started coming out of that. That was totally unanticipated. Teachers met up with other teachers and started working on projects. I wound up working with some people from the University of Helsinki-it was just a really unplanned collaboration because we opened it up to the public."
Anthony Fontana, co-administrator of Bowling Green State University's Virtual Campus in Second Life, says teachers and students at the Ohio institution have adopted the platform as an extension of real-world activities.
