Thing #10 - Virtual Worlds

Since I'm a SL newbie, I had to read through all the links and background info about Second Life (that only took a couple of hours!). I can see that as more colleges and educators get on board, there will be more opportunities for "educational applicataions" in this virtual world (as opposed to just "playing"). Second Life provides opportunities for building 3-D models, learning about economics, touring famous locations, re-creating crime scenes, staging mock trials, attending virtual seminars, collaborating with others and much more. Really, anything that could happen to you in real life could take place in SL, so there are lots of opportunities for "life-lessons" at every turn. Certainly, players will learn about digital citizenship and working with others through their SL adventures. Personally, Virtual World playing is not something that interests me and I don't see any immediate applications for SL in my elementary school due to age restrictions for participants. With 15 million users though, it doesn't appear SL is going away any time soon, so I'm sure I'll come back to it later when there's more time to figure it all out.