I’m not quite sure what to make of Patrick Hogan’s article over at Fusion; We took a tour of the abandoned college campuses of Second Life. Patrick does not seem to have done his homework, but I’ll come to that later. The article paints a picture of Second Life from its hype cycle back in 2007 :
Colleges were among those that bought the hype of the Linden Lab-developed virtual world. Many universities set up their own private islands to engage students; some even held classes within Second Life.
Most of these virtual universities are gone –– it costs almost $300 per month to host your own island –– but it turns out a handful remain as ghost towns. I decided to travel through several of the campuses, to see what’s happening in Second Life college-world in 2015.
There are some glaring problems with this paragraph. Linden Lab reintroduced the 50% discount for educational and non-profit organisations in July 2013, meaning the cost is not almost $300 a month. Now there’s no doubt that Linden Lab’s initial to remove the 50% discount and the ageing platform did reduce the number of universities in Second Life, but even a casual glance at the Education & Nonprofits section of the destination guide reveals that there are more than a handful of universities in Second Life.
I’m a bit bemused at the timing of Patrick’s article too, he visited American universities, so term times are probably different to the UK, but the middle of August does not seem the ideal time to go looking for university classes in action to me.
Patrick does make a good point regarding the design choices of universities in Second Life :
The college islands are bizarre. They mostly are laid out in a way to evoke stereotypes of how college campuses should look, but mixed in is a streak of absurd choices, like classrooms in tree houses and pirate ships. These decisions might have seemed whimsical at the time, but with the dated graphics, they just look weird.
And weird is the overall theme of this trip, which begins in Arkansas.
Bizarre is actually good, the idea of a virtual world space should not just be to recreate the physical world space, virtual worlds provide the opportunity to do things you can’t in the physical world, that’s a plus, not a minus.
Continue reading “Fusion Fail To Do Their Homework Regarding Education In Second Life”
