Second That!
T+D spoke with Joe Miller, vice president of platform and technology development at Linden Lab, which operates Second
Life, about how this 3-D world gives learning a new delivery mechanism.
“Second Life removes distance from the distance learning equation,” he says. “It’s a collaborative environment where you really feel like you’re physically with other people.”
Because you’re interacting in the form of an avatar—a digital representation of yourself—with other people’s avatars in a three-dimensional world, “the feeling of shrinking the physical distance to zero is fairly dramatic in learning environments,” he says.
To date, several hundred organizations have created places for learning in Second Life that can be entered from any computer anywhere.
Many of those institutions, and some corporations, are re-creating traditional learning environments with seats, podiums, and screens in their virtual worlds. Miller believes that is not the best approach. “That doesn’t create a new way of thinking in adult learners’ minds about how they are experiencing the material,” he says. “The most
interesting models come from those who have realized that the experience of collaboratively learning and exchanging
ideas with others is very powerful.”
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