The School of Second Life: Education Online

Creating new avenues of pedagogy in a virtual world.

by Wagner James Au

For those who grew up on computer and video games over the past thirty years, it's no surprise that games have become a full-fledged educational tool, merging play with learning in a way that speaks to the digital generation's technical literacy. Adding heft to this development, the Federation of American Scientists recently published the results of a year-long study suggesting that games have the power to teach analytical skills, team building, and problem solving on the fly.

Among the most powerful platforms for game-based teaching is Second Life, a virtual world superficially similar to online role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft or Sims Online, but embedded with numerous features that can make it an ideal pedagogical resource.

If you've ever seen video games like Tomb Raider or Grand Theft Auto, with their third-person, over-the-shoulder view of the action, you get the visual appearance of Second Life. Using mouse and keyboard, players (or Residents, in the SL lingo) maneuver their stylized avatars, or alter egos, through a lush three-dimensional landscape of forests, mountains, and plains, typing chat messages to other users, and interacting with them at parties, events, and so on. Unlike online games, however, Second Life is entirely user created. That is, Residents literally build the world together with the 3-D construction and programming tools provided for them, a process that resembles a group session of Lego building, except that it's done with people logging in from anywhere in the world.

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