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Second Life and Engagement
It seems Second Life is popping up everywhere. Hot on the heels of Jason Zagami’s Second Life presentation at Create World 2008, reported on in our earlier blog came Jenny Grenfell’s discussion of the Second Life initiative at Deakin University, and its capacity to enhance student participation and engagement. In the Deakin implementation, the idea is to provide virtual forums for peer-to-peer and teacher-to-student collaborative engagement and to promote the development of multiple learning channels. The Deakin island on Second Life is closed to the public, but you can see some screen shots of it in this YouTube video, put together by Gary Hayes:
(By the way, if you want to see this in a bit more detail a medium res version of the presentation (mp4, 105MB) is also available. Alternatively see it frame by frame, with comments, on Gary Hayes Flickr site.)
In this podcast episode Cat Hope talks to Jenny about potential problems with Second Life as a learning platform. Do students just want these sorts of systems for their own social networking purposes, and not for formal learning? What are some tips for those trying to set up these networked environments in their own university? Do virtual environments like Second Life draw students out of real life tutorial scenarios and into an asocial, virtual realm?
Participants Comments
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Managing Change to Second Life
Inspired by Jenny’s presentation, Catherine Duncan (University of Ballarat) and Malcom Riddoch (Edith Cowan University) had a wide-ranging chat with Allan Carrington, starting out with some reflections on Second Life.
Allan Carrington is a Learning Designer with the Centre of Learning and Professional Development at the University of Adelaide. 
Dr Ian Green teaches and researches in areas of researcher education, elearning and linguistics at the University of Adelaide. 
Dr Kate Foy is a freelance creative arts consultant and practitioner, and an e-learning researcher. She was until recently Associate Professor and Deputy Dean Faculty of Arts, University of Southern Queensland. 
Cat Hope runs the composition, music technology and postgraduate programs in music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) at Edith Cowan Univeristy in Perth, WA. She is a composer, performer, installation artist and active music researcher and writer. 
