I think Second Life would be great for certain types of learning. Prof McLeod did a demo for how to build basic furniture in Second Life but she also had a couple of pictures of complex structures that were build on enormous scales. In addition there is the ability to add script to create effect like the art gallery that dynamically changes hallways, rooms, and much more depending on the people in it and the flow of traffic. This is an interesting idea and can open people up to learning about programming because it gives them not only a structured environment to build whatever they wish but they can "visually" see the outcome, versus creating a JAVA object and running some commands from the command prompt and getting nothing really interesting from the experience.
In the read, Linden Labs stated "imagined, created, and owned by its residents;" in order to promote the idea of creating even for novice users. But this creates and interesting segue for areas where Second Life lacks. Though the abilities are vast the technologies that each user has available to them might not be. It would be like trying to hold a video conference with someone who is on a 56K connection. Many of the bells and whistles available can cause the environment to not work well with some users
I think Second Life would be lacking in the area of trust. As Prof. McLeod spoke about her having many different avatars in order to infiltrate and question specific cliques within Second Life, it becomes a matter of looking like them or not looking like you are clueless for how to "play the game." Trust is not defined the same way and people can chose to develop personas that are nothing like their actual characteristic. The feeling of trust a Second Life user has is bound to Second Life and that avatar, and may not apply to the other avatars under the users control.
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I definitely agree that the visual aspect of Second Life provides better feedback when you're building an object than you get in more traditional programming environments. Second Life also has the benefit of many people wandering around who may be able to help someone who is new to building/programming.
ReplyDeleteThe trust issue is a good point, too. I was surprised when Professor McLeod said she had over ten different avatars. Linden Labs clearly wants people to be able to shape their own identities in SL. In general I think such freedom is a good thing, but it also makes deception easier.
I like your idea for using Second Life to encourage and teach programming concepts. It reminds me of MOO (a text-based object-oriented MUD where users can create their own objects and place them in the environment for people to interact with). It adds a sense of tangibility to programming which is otherwise difficult to achieve without having to resort to robotics or other more heavyweight solutions.
ReplyDeleteLike Jesse mentioned, it’s also great for converting what might have been a solitude activity into a socially collaborative task. People wandering past can give feedback to the person creating an object as it’s being built and refined.