Second Life's Strengths and Limitations

When it comes to Second Life, I love/hate relationship with it.  I love the ability to upload presentations and the fact that the real-time virtual environment makes synchronous learning activities easy to facilitate.  However, I agree with Petrakou (2010) that a virtual environment such as Second Life does not have the capacity to be its own learning environment.  Also, virtual worlds have design barriers that need to be addressed before K-12 and postsecondary educators can employ their full capacity in the classroom (Warburton, 2009).  In my experience with Second Life, it is great for having graduate students and faculty to meet online in a dedicated virtual space restricted just to those individuals or to guest lecturers.  Using Second Life can replace the need for a physical location for a meeting or conference.  My last love for Second Life is its access restrictions for people under the age of 18.  For a while, they were some concerns about people under the age of 18 accessing boards labeled as 'Moderate' or 'Adult Only'.  More information is available from the Second Life web site.

Now for what I hate (dislike is probably a better term for it) about Second Life.  First is the cost(both financially and time) to build these dedicated worlds.  For example, is one of creating a replica of campus buildings, it can take up significant amount of time.  Also, I do not like the exchange rate for Linden Dollars.  Linden Dollars are used for creating buildings & landscapes as well as for buying clothes and skins for your virtual avatar.  The last thing I do not care for is how slow the virtual environment can be when there are several avatars in the same area or a lot of people are logged in in to Second Life at the same time.  This lag-time can be really frustrating.

References

 

Petrakou, A. (2010). Interacting through avatars: Virtual worlds as a context for online education.
                  Computers and Education: An International Journal, 54, 1020-1027. Retrieved from
                  http://www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu

 

Warburton, S. (2009).  Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers
                    to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching. British Journal of Educational
                    Technology,  40,  414-426. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.00952.x