Bleep, blop, blork. I am a talking computer program from the future. Would you like to play a game? Mmm-bop.While this may seem like gibberish to you...okay me too, I remembered the famous line from War Games, "Would you like to play a game?" A hacker was able to interact and play a game with the American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) computer and almost blew up the world. Other movies around the same time like Tron showed us a virtual world where the users (us) had a virtual counterpart in a computer generated world. Jumped ahead some 20+ years, we have Second Life where we can not only play games online but we use avatars to represent our identities. You might be asking, what type of applications does Second Life has to offer other than allow one to fly from island to island or have wings or dress like an emo? Before answering this question, allow me to tell you of about business class project for a Star Trek convention.
Before 2000, Star Trek was still a huge draw for fans to attend conventions anywhere in the world. Someone had the idea to have a online Star Trek convention. This online version made it easy for someone to travel virtually and provide worry free travel time and lodging costs. In a class presentation, my group had to reverse engineer the process and come up with a proposal. One of the benefits of having such program was having a larger draw of fans, different rooms would be set up to have live feeds of presentations, and a dealer's room to buy any and all scifi gadgets and toys one could afford. This highlight of having a generated avatar to represent you was that if you were wheelchair bound or homebound, your avatar overcame those challenges and no one online would no this. Carry this notion forward, you can get a sense of what is Second Life and what it can do for you.
Granted there are some problems with Second Life such as the learning curve can be quite high as well as other technical problems to deal with but imagine the possibilities. Imagine the possibilites to interact with patrons from the comfort of home. Imagine how much time and travelling one could save by doing things virtually. Click here to read more about the State Library of Ohio and Second Life.
3 comments:
I've never really been able to get anything much out of Second Life, but you present it's values in a new way for me - I'd not considered many of the benefits that you list here. I especially felt the issue of access for the physically disabled to be a very important aspect of this sort of tool. It would be very difficult for many people to visit distant locations, but by providing access of this sort it could really open many new opportunities for them.
When I taught elementary language classes when I used to teach spanish, one of the up-and-coming teaching tools were things like this (though the play spaces then were much more primitive). But games like this were considered a good way to get students to use spanish in a simple way outside of class. And for culture classes, I remember there was a large virtual world for Latin students--can't remember its name, but it was a huge project that used game spaces to make learning more engaging for college students. These things definitely work to disseminate info.
My husband is writing a paper right now about Second Life and the educational opportunities found there. I started exploring when he told me what he was doing and have found it really interesting. While, it is interesting to walk around and interact with people, the real power, IMHO, is the power of education and what that can do for e-learning and library outreach. I visited one library, where the "librarian" approached me right away (when I teleported into the world) and asked if I needed any help.
Also, did you see the Google just launched there semi-equivalent to Second Life - Lively...
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