Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Hooray for the Second Life backlash!

Well, its about time. You know you're in the right space when the hype wagon tips over.
I like Dr. Kapp's thought on this here. Here's to "plodding along"...and I'll drink to that!

Thanks Cammy...for getting back in there and giving Second Life a second try.

Knowing where to go and how to get there is half the battle. One thing that helps, but is HIGHLY underutilized is SL links: Special URLs that take you directly to a certain location "inworld" from a normal webpage or email.

HOMEWORK for EVERYONE: When you find a cool educational place in SL, create a direct link and blog, post it, email it, whatever. Spread the word.

3 comments:

Karl Kapp said...

Brent, I'll drink to that myself...both virtually and physically:)

Anonymous said...

One of the items that was left on "the cutting room floor" in my Interview with Joe Miller (VP of Linden Labs) was my asking if he was concerned that Second Life was getting too *much* exposure and that folks would be dissapointed.

He of course indicated that they were delighted by all the attention.

I was speaking yesterday with David Holcombe, CEO of The eLearning Guild, about Second Life and that he wasn't compelled to spend lots of time there. This led to a discussion of synch learning in a 3D environment vs. traditional flat environment (which was the subject of Karl Kapp and Tony O'Driscoll's most excellent essay.) It became clear to me at least that what's missing is scheduled events. This way, you will go "in world" knowing that something worthwhile will be going on.

Think about web meeting rooms and Second Life. Would you ever go to a web meeting room when an event was not scheduled, hoping that you would run into somebody with whom you could chat?

Cammy Bean said...

I agree with Steve that we'd probably all get it more if we were to take part in a scheduled event.

But I would point out that there can be serendipitous learning in SL when you just go in with no plan and start chatting someone up. That's what happened to me the other day.

So let's keep plodding along....