Again I ventured into SL with slightly less dread. I decided that I wasn’t going to be the idiot that couldn’t find the classroom on Monday. I used the link that was provided to port myself to the educational island and started to explore.
The good news is I had procrastinated so long there was absolutely no one on the island because it was so late at night. I wandered around and found the lecture hall and various meeting areas. I even ventured far enough to find a cow and to find a building with a coffee maker and a grand piano. I tried to take a picture but I was too tired to figure it out. The good news was that by the end of my travels I was confident I wouldn’t make an idiot out of myself by failing to show up for class.
At class time I did something unique – I managed to be in 2 classes at once. The class I am in F2F was still meeting but I could keep SL running and keep an eye on what was going on in class and type a quick message while still following the general conversation in my F2F class. Pauses in conversation give the opportunity to scan the written conversation allowing me to participate in both places in a reasonable way. This of course isn’t ideal, but it was better than non-attendance in one class.
I really expected the chaos that ensued. Any class where you investigate new technology the class becomes more about the technology itself (IMHO) than about the subject of the day. I answered more questions about where I got my shoes and who I was than about any course material. The conversation went really fast and was not cohesive.
It was an experience – it is the first time I’ve ever been in class with a fox. The classroom experience in SL was anything but smooth. People had different Internet speeds causing the movie to finish at different times, conversation in groups was impossible, once people started to move getting attention to change instructions was chaotic, moving from place to place caused people to get lost, following the flying guy doesn’t work, and tables don’t seem to work as advertised. With that all said, the class was still fun in a novel sort of way. One of my classmates from my F2F class ended up hanging with me for almost an hour watching our antics; I think it is fair to say that it was an entertaining thing to watch.
My conclusion is the technology isn’t ready for education to occur in SL and we as students aren’t really ready for it either. Getting to know each other is hard enough online without using different names and avatars that you have to keep straight. Perhaps as students grow up with these environments and technology advances these environments will become very practical. But for now I will stick with environments where foxes don’t show up to class.
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