Second Life
Refused to try it for weeks through fear of what kind of people might be in there. Then each and every delegate at the Stoke Conference on e-Learning was talking about it and its educational benefits. (Question: SL ? Second Life or Senior Lecturer?) And now I'm totally addicted! The obvious benefits are being chatted up on a regular basis, being able to change your image without resort to expensive cosmetic surgery, and the ability to return to nightclubs for the first time since the kids were born! Oh and apparently there are educational benefits too!
Further reading of
Tim Guest's Second Lives reveals a world of hairless wedding guests, SL mafia, people making real money dealing real estate, and a group of wonderful people behind Wilde Cunningham.
If it is good enough for big companies to use for commerce surely it has educational potential regardless of the criticism it receives. Companies are using SL to recruit IT staff, to concept-test new products, to sell or take orders for new products, and to stream their internet presence. Reuters have their own resident reporter and web presence where they report the daily exchange rate of Linden dollars for US dollars.
Second Life growth slows
Fri May 11, 2007 8:05am PDT
By Adam Reuters (Source:
Reuters/Second Life)
Electric Sheep’s Giff Constable (Forseti Svarog in Second Life) has a breakdown of the April statistics released on Thursday by numbers maven Meta Linden. The numbers show that growth in unique Second Life users has been steadily slowing since a peak of nearly 50 percent per month in October, 2006.
So maybe the sign up rate is slowing, and maybe there are hundreds of thousands of lapsed users but there are millions of people still "in the game" from all walks of life. The educational uses are endless from straight forward market research (surveys and focus groups - although etiquette requires you to ask Linden Labs first) all the way through to full simulation of real life scenarios. Guest says that the US Army use it to train soldiers how to react in case of terrorist attack. On a slightly less alarming basis it could be used to simulate crowd safety management at Events. Various stadia already exist in SL including the Ajax Stadium. Indeed, The Guardian in association with Intel, just sponsored
Second Fest - an SL Glastonbury without the mud and the "not quite up to the job" toilets!
Refused to try it for weeks through fear of what kind of people might be in there. Then each and every delegate at the Stoke Conference on e-Learning was talking about it and its educational benefits. (Question: SL ? Second Life or Senior Lecturer?) And now I'm totally addicted! The obvious benefits are being chatted up on a regular basis, being able to change your image without resort to expensive cosmetic surgery, and the ability to return to nightclubs for the first time since the kids were born! Oh and apparently there are educational benefits too!
Further reading of Tim Guest's Second Lives reveals a world of hairless wedding guests, SL mafia, people making real money dealing real estate, and a group of wonderful people behind Wilde Cunningham.
If it is good enough for big companies to use for commerce surely it has educational potential regardless of the criticism it receives. Companies are using SL to recruit IT staff, to concept-test new products, to sell or take orders for new products, and to stream their internet presence. Reuters have their own resident reporter and web presence where they report the daily exchange rate of Linden dollars for US dollars.
Second Life growth slows
Fri May 11, 2007 8:05am PDT
By Adam Reuters (Source: Reuters/Second Life)
Electric Sheep’s Giff Constable (Forseti Svarog in Second Life) has a breakdown of the April statistics released on Thursday by numbers maven Meta Linden. The numbers show that growth in unique Second Life users has been steadily slowing since a peak of nearly 50 percent per month in October, 2006.
So maybe the sign up rate is slowing, and maybe there are hundreds of thousands of lapsed users but there are millions of people still "in the game" from all walks of life. The educational uses are endless from straight forward market research (surveys and focus groups - although etiquette requires you to ask Linden Labs first) all the way through to full simulation of real life scenarios. Guest says that the US Army use it to train soldiers how to react in case of terrorist attack. On a slightly less alarming basis it could be used to simulate crowd safety management at Events. Various stadia already exist in SL including the Ajax Stadium. Indeed, The Guardian in association with Intel, just sponsored Second Fest - an SL Glastonbury without the mud and the "not quite up to the job" toilets!
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