Academic Support for Distributed Education Blog

There now are over 700 universities around the world (including Harvard and Stanford) using Second Life, a free virtual environment, for professional development. This site is being used for distance learning, historical recreations, simulations, role-playing, and language learning experiences. Although Second Life was created as a social network, educational institutions have acquired their own sites to create the instructional environments that they need for their students. Many seminars, conferences, and symposia on learning are available daily from leading educators. 

Second Life addresses all types of learners: visual, auditory, and experiential. Avatars can talk, type, and see each other.  The environment demands participation since an Avatar will slump forward if not engaged, and other Avatars can see that.  Of course Second Life provides greater accessibility to learning for individuals who deal with physical handicaps. Second Life enables students to work together synchronously whenever they are choose. The site is always available.

The site provides opportunities for virtual fieldtrips  all over the world, as well as opportunities to collaborate with professionals from 700 universities.  Time zones melt away because of the synchronous and asynchronous learning environment.

Through the ASDE grant, special education faculty now have a Second Life Site for our graduate students. We actually rent virtual property for $50/month.  We now have 2 classrooms, along with 3 small group meeting areas, as well as displays for information on disabilities.  Only Avatars are in Second Life so all our students have created one, with their Avatar names always showing above their heads so all know who is on the site. We believe that learning in such a virtual educational environment will eventually become part of the K-12 school systems, as well as extend to more universities.  On a side note, I just attended an open forum in Second Life with about 50 professors and technology leaders from all over the world. We met on Montclair’s site at a large roundtable in their Second Life amphitheater!