Teaching and Learning in Second Life: Exemplary Sites

Below are hot links to sites in Second Life. To access the sites, you need to have a Second Life account, and you need to have the Second Life client software installed on your computer. To get a free Second Life account, just visit http://SecondLife.com. If you are new to Second Life, make sure to start with the links in the first section to help you learn to move and function in Second Life. Many adults find parts of Second Life to be unsettling or disturbing; the sites below are intended to direct you to positive experiences. Have fun while you learn!

Tutorials on Getting Started in Second Life

• Video Tutorials of how to use the new Second Life 2.0 Client program.
  You may want to view the first tutorial, then save the rest for later. Keep in mind that all older tutorials and videos show a slightly different interface. Viewing the first intro video here should help to orient you to the changes with out too much confusion.
• Web-based explanation of Second Life 2.0 Client (a text version of the videos above.)
• SciLands Orientation Island is a short tutorial
  ... to help you learn necessary Second Life skills. Just follow the yellow path and read the directions on each signpost and billboard you see. At the end are links to a variety of mostly scientific & education sites in Second Life.
• St. Leo University's Introductory Tutorials This may be THE BEST site to learn about Second Life basics. A clever combination of text and video tutorials guide you through the basics. When you complete the tutorials, you visit the upstairs center for coffee and free stuff. When you leave, you're teleported to more free stuff and a giant sandbox where you can try out your new building knowledge. There are also changing rooms for trying on new clothes and adjusting your appearance.

Exemplary Education Sites

• EduIsland Archipelago is a series of regions filled with sites and interactive exhibits from educational institutions and non-profit organizations. The link will place you in front of an interactive directory of projects that will teleport you directly to a site of your interest.
• ISTE Island Archipelago is a series of islands composed of educational technology instutions. The link will place you in front of the teleport directory at ISTE Headquarters
• Pharmtopia West's Interactive Lab Tutorials Several universities in the US, UK, and Australia have collaborated to create a series of islands devoted to pharmacy education. The link takes you to the base of a sequence of lab tutorials. Read the info, view part of the movie on the white screen, and try the first lab tutorial (first lab module up the spiral ramp). It is dedicated to visitors only. Be prepared to see an outstanding model of a 3D immersive tutorial environment.

Social Studies, Literature, and the Arts Curriculum-related Sites

• Sistine Chapel on Vassar Island
• Arles, the setting of Van Gogh paintings
• Renaissance Island (pick up a free peasant outfit)
  Visit the Globe Theatre (your group may enact plays there) and see the jousting area (live jousting used to be on Tuesdays).
• Artsea Muzeum 12-Story Art Gallery One of the largest collections of famous painting and drawings anywhere! You can fly up to the next floor or climb the ladder. Each floor has a theme and houses several collections. Can you find the Escher collection? You can ride the monorail to view the collections. All art may be purchased to glorify your Second Life rooms or office.
• U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum
  Be sure to follow directions (click the yellow book) so you can get into the reconstruction of Kristallnacht in 1930's Germany. There's audio narration in every room, so make sure your speakers or headphones are on!

Science and Math Curriculum-related Sites

• NOAA's Earth Science Research Laboratory Island
  Ride a weather balloon, experience a tsunami, watch a glacier melt!
• Genome Island
  Two things not to miss: enter and FIND YOUR WAY out of the giant human cell. And check out the Tower labs for one of the best scaffolded learning activities in Second Life!
• Nanotechnology Island
• The Ocean Abyss Observatory
  Ride an elevator or submersible to underwater research stations from shallow to abyssal depths, check out the sea life and the scientific research equipment and vehicles. (5 min. DEEP underwater tour). Can you find the underwater self-service bar?

Examples and Tutorials on Building in Second Life

• The Making of Suzanne Vegas' Second Life Guitar This is a 2-minute classic machinima by talented Second Life artist Robbie Dingo demonstrating both the art and craft of building in Second Life.
• Watching the WorldWatch as Robbie Dingo builds an entire Second Life island inspired by Van Gogh's The Starry Night (3 min).
• The Ivory Tower Library of Primitives is a comprehensive system of tutorials on multiple levels of the Tower. Follow the green arrows to proceed through the skill levels. There are several sandboxes to try your new skills.
• Little Blue Sandbox is a double sim with large sandbox areas suitable for trying building techniques of large structures. It's an active place where you would be comfortable building. Remember to delete your unwanted trials and to take anything you want to keep in your inventory.
• Magical Mystery's Learning Center Classes on building, scripting, and terraforming. Some beginner classes are free. An advanced site!
• Scaling Photos and Movies on a Prim. This short web page with video tutorial shows one of the fine points of showing high-quality photos, posters, and videos in Second Life.

Examples & Tutorials for Machinima in Second Life
(hint: you'll need a way to capture the video)

• Episode# 1: My Second Life
  Here's a 5-minute video done wholly in Second Life! This example will give you an idea of what can be done with machinima.
• The Master Second Life Machinima Wiki
  Here's the source of the most (and most current) information on Second Life machinima. The resources below each represent one videographer's approach to making effective machinima.
• Torley Linden's Great Guide to SL Machinima
• A "Professional" Approach to Machinima
• A "Practical" Approach to Machinima
• OR be Keep-It-Simple by "shooting" with an image capture program like Jing, Camtasia, SnapzPro, or Screencast-O-Matic to capture the movie, save to disk in an "editable" format and edit using iMovie or MovieMaker. (The other approaches tend to provide higher quality and control but are more complex.)

Resources for Scripting in Second Life

• The College of Scripting has over 800 resources to help you learn. While there are beginning movement and building tutorials, the site excels at guiding you through level after level of scripting using the Lindenscript programming language. Lots of examples and even books you can buy with a few linden dollars. Probably the best scripting site in Second Life!

Exemplary Sites for Beauty, Fun, and other Special Features in Second Life

• Second Life Video Tutorial Center Here's Second Life's treasure trove of video tutorials for all aspects of Second Life. You need to have a Second Life account to view the tutorials. Note the categories, search, and browse methods of finding the tutorials you need.
• SecondAbility (now called "Club Accessible") A site dedicated to help for disabled Second Life members to enjoy their experience to the fullest. Help, techniques, and events.
• Mont St. Michel
• Molecular Visualization for Second Life(3:17) is an exemplary educational machinima from the Stony Brook University Medical Center. It demonstrates the 3D advanced visualization potential of Second Life and how various scripting and building features can be used to explore complex topics. The machima's also a great example of a brief, informative, and aesthetic presentation. (Don't be scared of the topic, it's worth seeing.)

Academic References for Second Life and Other Virtual Worlds

• Proceedings of the 2006 Second Life Conference (pdf)
  This is a great resource for basic research and key authors to search for. It contains papers that introduce important issues in Second Life and similar virtual environments.
• Proceedings of the 2007 Second Life Education Conference (doc)Producing these proceedings taxed the resources of the volunteer coordinators, so proceedings have not been published for succeeding conferences. For additional scholarly research, search in Google Scholar and the usual academic databses. There's a lot of newer material, but you won't find a better freely-accessible collection than these proceedings.
• University of Texas System in Second Life is the first rollout of a state university system initiative covering all campuses. This reference is about an academic topic but is not a traditional "academic article."
• References re: 3D learning games like Quest Atlantis from Quest Atlantis Wikipedia article references.
• The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research
  This digital journal has full-text articles that can be freely downloaded. Educators check out the April 2009 issue!

Teen Second Life

• The GlobalKids Blog shows how a creative organization can use Teen Second Life to engage teens in global social leadership activities and education.
• Join Rezed.org for access to teen 3D virtual learning.
  Rezed requires a free membership (which may take a week to approve). They also have free pdf versions of GlobalKids Teen Second Life curriculum!
• GlobalKids Second Life Curriculum is a nine-level curriculum of sequential lesson plans designed to develop skills in the 3D virtual world. Download the PDF of any level free from this link (free membership required). Printed, bound versions of the curriculum are available here from Lulu.com
• Peggy Sheehy's March 2011 presentation on alternatives to Teen Second Life (1 hr) is a comprehensive discussion of K-12 alternatives since the closing of Teen Second Life (first half). Second half deals with K-12 educational gaming.

 

We're confronted by insurmountable opportunity!
-- Pogo (Walt Kelly)

About SecondArcade

Description: Second Life is the best known and most developed example of an immersive 3D learning environment. It is the closest any 3D environment has come to the Metaverse as described by T in his novel Snow Crash. Hundreds of educational institutions already offer classes in Second Life, and many businesses are also experimenting with how to best use 3D virtual worlds. A Teen Second Life supports middle and high school efforts to explore 3D virtual learning

This page contains direct links (Second Life URLs or SLURLs) to sites in Second Life that exemplify teaching and learning in a virtual space. Many of the "teaching" sites are actually learning environments in which the "teaching act" is really the process of the design of the site. Much of the learning is self directed and asynchronous. Some of the sites have tightly-sequenced learning activities, and others are quite the opposite. The only way to understand them is to experience them firsthand. That is the purpose of this page.

"Wayne Warrigal," my Second Life avatar ~photo by sgarrigan

 

Mont St. Michel in Second Life
~photo by sgarrigan

Balloon Tour on VUE Island
~photo by sgarrigan

Philip Rosedale, Second Life Founder
~photo from TED.com