Program models for education in Second Life?
I've been putting together this blog post for Holymeatballs.org in my head about what the various setups you can have for education in Second Life as a way to just wrap my head around the issue. Over here at Global Kids alone we've used Second Life in so many different ways. As a youth media creation tool in a face to face setting, as a leadership development and peer education tool in a distance learning environment, as a peer exchange and collaboration tool between groups of students that are in two separate physical locations, and many more. So, I'm curious to see how we can break all of these various setups down.
Here's what I've got so far, and I'd love to hear about more from the community, and ideally examples of a given educational setup that you can refer to.
(note that my examples are skewed to the k12 space, as well as to Global Kids projects. Pardon my biased knowledge base. :P)
Face to Face Settings
Here's what I've got so far, and I'd love to hear about more from the community, and ideally examples of a given educational setup that you can refer to.
(note that my examples are skewed to the k12 space, as well as to Global Kids projects. Pardon my biased knowledge base. :P)
Face to Face Settings
- Education happens in Second Life - Ramapo Middle School, where I believe a given class will be logged on, from the same physical location, and the class interaction/discussion/facilitation will happen within Second Life
- Education happens outside of Second Life - In Global Kids' Virtual Video Project meets face to face and has workshops that will involve Second Life, but don't happen within Second Life, per se. The aim of such a project is more to use SL as a platform to create media.
- There are so many more here! Classes doing research of the Second Life community? Classes that collaboratively create events, builds, or media together?
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Distance Learning Settings
- Peer Education/Leadership Development within the SL community- In GK's Power of Citizenry in Second Life program facilitators do outreach into the teen grid community to do leadership development through having teens learn skills to develop, facilitate and document their own issue oriented educational events. The facilitators never meet with the teens face to face.
- Virtual Classroom - college level courses offered through Second Life where the students meet with teachers only in Second Life. Example?
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Combinations of Face-to-Face and Distance Learning Models
- I Dig Tanzania - Teens in Chicago and Teens in New York met in Teen Second Life to learn about Tanzanian culture, politics, and paleontology through virtual digs and interfacing with Paleontologists on the ground in the country. The teens in each location we gathered together face to face as they logged on, and there were facilitators present in both locations.
- Pacific Rim Exchange - A peer exchange program between students in California and Japan where the students met first in Teen Second Life to collaborate on projects together, get to know each other, and practice language skills before they met face to face on their exchange.
- Schoolaborate - Learning community bringing together classes from a variety of different classes from across the globe. From what I can gather, the teens and teachers in a given class meet in one physical location, but log in-world to develop collaborative projects with other schools and attend events that other school classes develop.
Asynchronous Learning
- Games - Consent!, a game developed by GK's Playing 4 Keeps afterschool program to educate others about exploitative practices in medical testing against African American males in the American prison system.
- Simulations - The now famous Testes Simulation in Second Life
- Virtual Exhibits - GK and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Witnessing History: The Night of Broken Glass exhibit that educated visitors about the role of bystanders during the night of Krystallnacht.
Whew! I know that this isn't everything, and I would love to hear more from the community about other program models for education in Second Life. I know I totally left out what's happening on the university level, so you profs better get in here and let me know what I missed!
Tags: educational, life, models, second, teen
7 Comments
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Comment by Sharon Collingwood / Ellie Brewster on July 3, 2008 at 1:31pm - For the distance learning section -- I'm sure I'm not the only one teaching distance, but you can add my class: Women's Studies 110d at Ohio State, taught completely online (with the exception of the final exam, taken at OSU or at another university using a proctor). This is a GEC (General Education Credit) course worth 5 credits.
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Comment by Rafi Santo on July 3, 2008 at 2:52pm
- I'm curious, what was the setup like? There are so many ways to conduct a distance learning class in SL, and I'd love to get at some of the nuanced directions that people have taken.
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Comment by Paul Penfold on July 3, 2008 at 11:00pm - Role play - we have been doing this to help students enter into roles, problem solve, and think on their feet.
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- Paul, in what context have you used role play? Was it with students that you were working with face to face or in a distance learning model? As part of a course?
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Comment by Mayte on July 11, 2008 at 10:50am -
Hi;
Could someone tell me what kind of training a teacher and kids need to start using second life please?
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- Hi Mayte. Global Kids will be releasing a classroom based curriculum for teaching how to use Second Life that works for both young people and adults. We'll be releasing it via RezEd this summer, so keep your ears open for it.
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Comment by ShapingYouth on August 2, 2008 at 3:20pm - Rafi, I love the leadership/citizenship side of this blog post...would you like to 'guest feature' on Shaping Youth about your work? It's high time we get some GOOD news out there to balance some of the VW fear-factors & marketing mining in play...ping me anytime.
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