At the beginning of the quarter I had no clue about Second Life and all its wonders. I thought it was some type of virtual video game. It took me several weeks to figure out the concept. I thought the creation of my avatar was really neat, and one day I spent several hours actually creating Rhonnda and I had a lot of fun with it. After working on Second Life and learning about it in class I began to realize the potential a virtual world such as Second Life could actually have. I especially appreciated it once we received our community partner assignment. I realized that Second Life can be a fun social environment as well as a place to learn and stay connected. My impression of Second Life most definitely improved over the quarter in a positive way.
After learning about what I know now of Second Life, I think that the potential to learn new things through it is the most appealing. The idea that you can teleport to anywhere in the world is fascinating. I think that in the future Second Life could be an important part of education and teaching students about different cultures. If a class is studying the country of Italy, a teacher could go into Second Life, teleport there and walk around the streets of Rome. As my group and I worked on our project I teleported to several different places looking for certain things to buy, and my experience doing that was great. The only thing I found not appealing was the idea that people could change their identities on Second Life and be somebody else.
I found the ability to ‘chat’ and communicate in Second Life most useful. A lot of times I worked from home on the final project. The chat tool became useful when I needed to talk to my group. I liked that I could still communicate and see the people in my group, although I was not physically there in real life. I also found flying very useful because it made it easier to get around and see what our project looked like from a distance especially.
I downloaded Second Life on my computer at home so I do think I’ll drop in on Second Life from time to time to look around. I also think I’ll use it for research and education. I would love to see what spring quarter’s Communication & Technology students will do for their projects, so I’ll probably take a look at that. Overall, I enjoyed this class. We had some bumps along the way but I learned a lot and was excited to complete a project about something I had never done before. Thanks for a great quarter!
