SecondLifeCons

=Why you shouldn't bother with Second Life=

Plato " I can learn more about a person in half an hour of play than a lifetime of conversation"



See the section on Vance Stevens' [|Language Learning & Second Life]

There are lots of people who have started questioning the value of Second Life. Here are a few of the most interesting comments, with links to the original posts:

[|Graham Atwell]: "I see some of the universities are developing on-line classrooms. But why? There is no more interest in having my icon sit down to an on-line lecture than there is in sitting down to a lecture myself", "Why oh why do we keep trying to copy traditional pedagogies in different on-line environments?", - Graham's post was responded to by Sean Fitz here : "There is a sense of shared presence and experience in attending a presentation in SL that is not possible anywhere on the web, including videoconferencing and web-conferencing"

a lot of the criticism seems to be about the disappointing attempt to replicate Real Life pedagogy to the Second Life environment:

"Much of the formal educational events and experience (as a colleague of mine pointed out at a recent conference) has tended to mould existing pedagogies to the environment. I have attended any number of "lectures" what with "lag" and presenters being unprepared they have been "less than stimulating experiences" and I've been in word for quite some time now." (Paul Hollins, in a post to the SLED mailing list)