Well it seems that I’m certainly behind the ball when it comes to Second Life (or maybe that it’s I’ve got enough with my First Life (TM)) to go off into a virtual world like SL or WOW to see what is available there – even though I know that one of the guys I grew up with is now basically on WOW 24h a day (I wonder if “gold farming” can really pay the bills). All that being said, I think I agree with Terra Nova that we are in for a boom in the notoriety of SL. Not because of the vises that dominate the list, but as point 12 says, “it’s all about branding”. TR this morning has a story about just that – how IBM, Cicso and other as creating this virtual presence so that they can maintain customers and employees.
Some people have suggested that there are great potential Educational uses for SL as well, and I agree. But what I have to say is that (and others have said it as well, especially when commenting on the virtual desks in the virtual classrooms) if we are going to push into this virtual world, does it not come to the minds of others that we should not be pushing the same curriculum at our students? We should be pointing them towards fields that are relevant to the world tomorrow (as always) but by using this virtual world, we are freed of many of the limitations that exist in the real world. Of course it’s going to take considerable investment of time and or money to create these worlds, but then it might be that the people that we “lose” to these virtual worlds can be brought back into some manner of productivity.
I know myself, I’m hiring a couple of students and one of the thing that I’m looking for is video game experience – for the problem solving, dedication and potential team work and leadership skills that could come along with that experience. If in these virtual worlds, we can find ways to transfer knowledge to a real world application, we might have something. The problem that I think we’ll have is that once you leave the stimulating and media enriched environment of the virtual world, the real world may just be too boring for some (to those I say, go and take a walk in the woods or on the plains and just think about how vast or dense your current surroundings are and that nobody made what you see.
As a closing thought, some of these ideas are also part of what my wife is working on for her Masters – high vs low stimulation classrooms as ideal learning spaces for behaviourally (or not) challenged kids.
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