Second Life Backlash

It’s been bubbling under for a while, but it seems that the Second Life (SL) backlash may have begun.

The most recent symptom is How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life in Wired Magazine, which slams marketing dollars being wasted on a virtual world where you can never find what every advertiser wants - a crowd. There just aren’t enough people actually there at anyone time, it argues, to be a useful medium.

But how’s the reaction elsewhere? And what’s the view of SL for learning?

George Siemens puts his point plainly: 

virtual worlds will gain my interest when they allow me to do something I can’t do anywhere else

Terry Anderson in contrast is pretty much in favour of technology and virtual worlds, but is weary of technology and support issues getting in the way of learning. Terry also notes that the disconnect between our real selves and the virtual world is not necessarily a good thing. Here’s an interesting citation:

Chester and Breterton (2007) conclude “cyberspace is not a virtual world without connection to the rest of people’s lives. What we do and who we are online are shaped consciously and unconsciously by who we are offline. The Internet is , after all a part of our real life”

Cammy Bean’s post on the Real World and Second Life found some evidence of a gender imbalance in Second Life, and also that SL was not generally as widely known as we in the Learning and Development community tend to assume. The comment string under her post is well worth reading.

Graham Stanley on BlogEFL questions the value of giving PowerPoint presentations in Second Life, and then goes on to say it makes sense for certain reasons, such as:

Organisation - it’s easier for the organisers to set up. We are giving the organisers our images in advance, and they’ll be loaded into the Slideshow presentation (not only makes it easy, but also means the organisers don’t have to worry about giving certain people building permissions, etc) 

This surely has to be a very bad reason for using delivering a slide presentation in SL - because it’s convenient for the presenters. However, Graham concedes that eventually SL conferences will evolve into something completely unlike those in Real Life. 

Graham also links to a fascinating case study of learning-by-doing in Second Life - that of the Singaporean Innova Junior College.

The project to teach critical thinking and writing skills via building Utopian worlds in Second Life is well worth a read. The case study describes what they did in non-marketing speak, with a real focus on how learning happens. Frankly if I’d done stuff this interesting at school, I don’t think I would have wanted to leave.

After all the hype Second Life has had, there is bound to be some push back. In some cases I am sympathetic, in other cases it’s just professional complainers at work. But underneath all the froth, there are some real concerns and some real victories. 

With that in mind, I leave you with two links.

One is from Sylvia Martinez: Second Thoughts on Second Life. I really wish more blog entries were like this. It’s about 2,200 words long, thoughtful, based on experience and packed with references. It deals with sex in Second Life (something others seem to ignore), and the confusion between learning about SL, and learning in SL. If you want a good, balanced perspective on Second Life, read this.

Finally - a real Second Life success story. Brigadoon is  ‘an innovative online community for people dealing with Asperger’s Syndrome and Autism’. Suppose you are uncomfortable with new people, and accept that it would be useful to get more comfortable with them - how do you learn the rules of social integration? In a place where you can make mistakes Via something like Second Life. My only worry is that there hasn’t been much news from Brigadoon recently - I only hope that it continues to operate. It demonstrates how Second Life can sometimes be the right answer to a learning question.