I mean honestly why would you want to have your school present on second life?
Oh I know so you can teach classes right?? Not! it has been tried before, and the problem, with it is that you have to teach the whole class (except one person) how to use the thing. And then after you can try to have a class. And the benefits are that you can be at home or across the world, yet present on the Internet. Well I Don't BUY IT! This is just another BS excuse for wasting the university's money, and every ones time. It is like teaching someone how to play golf, when all they really want to do is play tennis. It requires you to learn another Internet language that is only useful within the confines of the network. It is no wonder I couldn't get a straight answer as to why its beneficial for student life, and just because other universities have it does not make it necessary for ours.
In my opinion Second Life has sailed and i don't think it is practical anymore. Their are far better networks to be communicating with, networks that don't make you pay to play a silly game to get your serious point across. I don't know how this got approved for financing, but i do know we nee more important updates like putting our school newspaper online to extend reach and readership. Now that is something educational, and who knows it might help us receive future funding.
Face to face interaction is important. That is the kind of education we should be hearing about. I have heard about second life for the third and final time at St. Edward's. I'm starting to think that it serves more as a course filler than an educator.
I agree with your assessment of the usefulness of Second Life. It worries me that even though the cost of the space (or was it island?) is only ~$400 per year, the university is paying someone to 1. create and manage the space that really, no one even visits; and 2. to figure out how (or if) the space will be useful and effective. Shouldn't its usefulness have been researched BEFORE the investment was approved? And how long will the university fund this trial period? I would like to see how many man-hours it has already taken to create the island, maintain it and update it. Then I, too, would like to see that same amount of time and effort and money to go toward the online version of the newspaper. Maybe we should figure out who convinced the school to allocate time and manpower to this effort and have them do the same for the paper.
ReplyDeleteWow Ben! You seem angry about Second Life haha. I agree with you. I don't get it at all... it is really ridiculous that we are spending money on Second Life, and even planning to extend our presence, no one uses it but Organizational Communication, and it was just as dumb there, as it was in this class.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea whose blog this is, but thanks for the shout-out on taking Hilltop Views online. We're working on it, hard....Stay tuned. Jena Heath, adviser, HTV
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm a teacher so I can't resist: You've got generation spelled wrong up top. Cheers, JH
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