The Lab
Second Life
And How It Can Help
What is Second Life?
Second Life is a tricky thing to define, but when you boil it down to the simplest idea: Second Life is an enormous online virtual world. This virtual world is 'always on' and users can access it 24/7. Second Life was not created specifically for educational purposes, but just like our real world, users have, and will continue to, create, collaborate, and construct what they see as valuable.
​
​
It's important to remember the handful of unique aspects Second Life offers in order to understand it's potential significance within the educational realm. Second Life is a 3-D virtual world where users can create a representational avatar of themselves. This avatar serves as a medium between the user, the environment, and other users within the world. Many people will perceive Second Life as a game, but it is not. Games have set objectives or manufactured conflicts for the user to resolve or conquer. Second Life fails to embody this definition. It is a completely open-ended platform where avatars do exactly what a real-life counterpart does: buy or sell materials, listen or create music, travel the world, gamble, or in our case- learn.
​
Consider the following video about the various educational uses of Second Life:
​