Published: April 11, 2008 02:09 pm            

TECHNOLOGY: Internet gives students a 'Second Life'

With just a few key strokes, the professor created a computer image of his visitor.

The image looked like the heroine of a video game, with flowing, dark hair and an hourglass shape.

The visitor laughed aloud in delight as her beautiful, youthful computer image soared into the air. Her image — called an avatar — had just been born in a digitized computer world called Second Life.

The Internet world is a place where everyone is eternally youthful if they want to be — and people can fly and walk through walls. A visitor can attend an art gallery opening, dance at a disco, purchase waterfront property or even hold a business meeting.

Second Life is the newest technological frontier, and over the next year, students at Niagara County Community College will be able to take classes there, according to James Abbondanza, psychology professor and coordinator of the college’s Second Life Project.

“We’re making it our business to stay on the leading edge of technology,” he said of the college. “The faculty and administration know how important technology is in making our degrees relevant and our students marketable.”

NCCC is engaged in a consortium of state colleges that are beginning to use Second Life as a way of creating and distributing course content and changing the nature of online education.

More than 200 universities and colleges nationwide have a presence in Second Life, according to the professor, opening up a whole new dimension in classroom education in a location that is already alluring to learners.

As he demonstrated the system to a visitor, his avatar, dressed casually in jeans and a white T-shirt, jumped into the air and flew across a portion of Second Life to an island where NCCC technology students will build virtual classrooms.

“Oops, let me get down on the ground,” he said before landing in an area near what seems like an ocean, where the classrooms will be. Then, the avatar flew over to where Ohio State University has created a “fairly mature site,” with beautiful brick gateways leading to dramatic buildings and a courtyard where visitors can watch a video of live humans talking about their Ohio State experience.

Globally, nearly 13.2 million people have created second lives for themselves in this world for both fun and profit, buying land, starting businesses and creating products from clothing to buildings, according to a Second Life spokesperson.

To the casual observer, Second Life looks like an advanced video game, but it offers a pretty sophisticated commerce system, as well. Residents and visitors convert U.S. dollars into “Linden Dollars” and participate in an economy where, in March, 165 out of 60,000 members who earned Linden dollars on the site made $5,000 or more in U.S. funds.

Virtual economy aside, educators find the potential of virtual worlds alluring, as do many nonprofits and corporations who are creating worlds online and often use their sites to educate. Wells Fargo has a world where play is combined with teaching money skills, and the National Football League has a world that lets children participate in games while learning about good health and sports safety.

Even PBS television has joined in, with learning opportunities in a kiddy virtual world and a reporting system for parents on how well their child has done.

The plethora of opportunities might worry those who are already concerned about young people’s attachment to technology and the dangers on the Web. Abbondanza said that educators understand that the cutting edge of virtual worlds can be a dangerous place for young people, but that navigating potential danger is a skill that must be learned both online and in the real world.

“Technology is a tool. We shouldn’t over-react or get overexcited about that tool,” he said.

He pointed out that the virtual world offers educational opportunities exponentially, such as access to a high-powered telescope on Long Island or the ability to stand inside a virtual molecule. He added that NCCC has been a leader among the state’s schools in safe online technology.

“It really comes out of our objective here at the college to maintain a very high level of technology for our students and our instructors,” he said.

“We are creating this phenomenal educational network and the Internet is making all this happen. This is going to change our view of the world.”



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VIRTUAL WORLD NOT CHILD'S PLAY



By Michele DeLuca

delucam@gnnewspaper.com

The future of learning may feel a little bit like a children’s fantasy novel, according to an expert on virtual worlds.

“The next generation is going to go through their computers the way those children in the C.S. Lewis book went into the wardrobe,” said Edita Kaye, founder of the Association of Virtual Worlds. “When they come out on the other side, it will be to a world made of pixels.”

The new lands of virtual reality will come alive for the young learners much like Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” The difference is that adventures in virtual worlds have the ability to teach children beyond any other educational tools available today, she said.

Kaye recently unveiled the first virtual news network, called Ivinnie.com, which she describes as “kind of like the Drudge report for virtual world news.”

“Globally, there are more than 100 million people who belong to virtual worlds at any given time,” she said, “but the biggest market for virtual worlds are children.”

Youths as young as 3 have their own virtual worlds and that will completely change the way they learn, she said.

“PBS just launched a phenomenon virtual world for 3-year-olds,” she said.

Children will be able to really see the world in a way that older generations were not able to, she said, because children will actually experience, in a virtual way, what they are learning.

For instance, Second Life is launching a location that will duplicate Shakespeare’s original Globe Theater. Children will be able to stand in the original theater and see the plays the way Shakespeare may have intended them to be read and heard, she said.

While such creations make Second Life the most famous virtual world, there are many other virtual worlds in the global online community.

“Second Life gets a lot of media attention, and rightfully so. They are really breaking ground,” Kaye said, “but they are only one of almost 200 virtual worlds.”

China has a huge virtual world, and more companies are building virtual worlds. Coca Cola has one and Disney is committed to building 10 virtual worlds for children, she said.

The influence of virtual worlds on the real world — the benefits as well as the dangers — is not being ignored.

The first congressional hearing on virtual worlds took place April 1 in Washington, D.C. Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, the company that created Second Life, testified before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. As part of his testimony, Rosedale presented a seven-minute video that described the advantages of a global virtual community such as Second Life.

It explained how a virtual community evolves through the creations of its users and detailed the benefits that can occur when schools such as Harvard Law School create virtual classrooms.

He said Second Life “is giving individuals and organizations new ways to communicate, collaborate, innovate and to experience things in ways never before imagined.”

“Through virtual worlds like Second Life, the world will become a better, more connected community,” he said.

Contact reporter Michele DeLuca at

693-1000, ext. 157.

        

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