Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Thoughts on Second Life

I just wanted to put up a quick post regarding our meeting in Second Life last night. To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect since I was not familiar at all with Second Life. However, I was pleasantly surprised and can't explain how much I truly enjoyed the experience. Not only did it open up my mind to an entire new universe, but it was also extremely helpful in terms of speaking to each other and Dr. Knobel regarding the course. Although I am still thinking on how to incorporate Second Life into my classroom, I did discuss my experience with my students and encouraged them to speak to their parents about exploring Second Life as well. See you on next week!

Erika 9/30/09

2 comments:

  1. Yes, I have been thinking how to incorporate Second Life into my classroom or library too. I am wondering if any teacher ever uses it as a teaching tool in k - 12 schools. SL is good for course online, but for K - 12, they don't offer online courses in regular. It is a good idea to practice that in computer class though. However, meeting in SL is a challenging if the class size is too big. There was more going on than we can take at the same time, because students are allowed to say something anytime. they don’t have to raise hands for saying something. Teachers need to learn how to control the "class", which is some other type of "classroom management". Dr. Knobel played a very good role to manage this. She control the topics we discuss. When we were about to off topic, she brought us back to the right track, and we got the chance to talk about all the topic we need to cover. (Which is time management)

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  2. I thought SL could provide great enhancement to a scene in a book that the whole class might be reading. Typically, this could be done at the high school level. On a whole class read, students could "explore" the scene of a book through the use of SL. The idea here is that each student would create their SL character and would "meet" at the scene of the book. Based on the scene described by the author, the teacher could develop an island or landscape that genuinely reflects the description of the scene in the boook. Students could explore the scene of the book through their own characters created. This is one way that SL could provide enhancement to the understanding of a book (re-creation of the scene of a book to mimic the book's original scene.) Students can also pick characters from the book that they would like to be, and mimic themselves to the book. Maybe some teaching ideas that can be enhanced by SL, but should be used as a means in itself.

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