Why/how would making a commercial site like Second Life Open-source make it better educationally??

I also said that there are powerful epiphanies to be had in SL, and you can certainly see that some people have had their lives changed forever. But the point I was making was this is not function of Second Life, but of having a powerful learning experience, gaining mastery over something, and wanting to share it with others. “Hard fun” is a precept of Seymour Papert’s view of constructionist learning, and SL gives some people that experience. This TYPE of epiphany should be treasured and shared, but everyone isn’t going to have that reaction to the same platform or tool.

And blog spam! Argh! It’s SO annoying and nothing seems to be the PERFECT solution. I apologize to you Doug. And you are right, open source would be an interesting exploration. I’m not convinced, though, that any 3D world will ever be really useful with a 2d bifurcated interface (screen and mouse).

Ryan, you know I support what’s going in Second Life and have joined the Blogger’s Cafe. I really hope you read my original post and comment. I think there are a lot of nuances to these issues, it’s not just that I am FOR or AGAINST Second Life. It’s one of the reasons I felt my post was both too long and too short. There is never enough space to explore all the subtle parts of any issue, and yet, if you go on too long, it’s not useful either.

Sandy, I am glad to hear you are finding SL a rewarding and worthwhile place to meet and visit with others, and learn. I think that is what Sylvia was acknowledging in her post about the collegial value of having interactions there… sort of hallway conversations. I definitely agree that those types of informal conversations, whether they happen in real life or virtually, tend to be the more valuable learning moments for me personally rather than formal presentations or lectures. (the “instructivist” moments)

It’s difficult to impossible to generalize about a context or location and have that generalization match with others’ perceptions– this is true for school contexts as well as SL. I don’t intend to try and generalize for the entire population in saying “SL doesn’t seem to be for me right now”– My main point was that SL is a place for the innovators and early adopters, and is not likely to attract the early/late majority teachers. That said, of course there is value in getting together as innovators/early adopters… I’m going to be back in SL at some point. I am wanting through this blog post and conversation to clarify some of my own thinking about SL, why I may be less enthusiastic about the educational potentials there right now… and also see what others think.

Thanks to each of you for sharing, I hope more people will chime in. Thanks also for that link to Project Wonderland, Doug, I hadn’t seen that before and will check it out. I apologize for the blog comment issues, I’ll look into that– I know if you try and add multiple links it can go into moderation– I have been pleased with Akismet’s ability to keep actual blog spam to a minimum, but I’m sorry it may be inhibiting conversation as well…

Second Life is very nice, but it has a seedy side like you said, plus it has growing pains (lots of lag, crashing, etc.).

It’s basically like most social software tools (wikis, blogs, forums…), which need to be customized, I believe, to be more suitable for education (for example, moodle). To be customized, they need to be open source. Second Life open sourced the client software, but not the server software, and they still control all the servers.

Until Second Life is fully open sourced, I think the Croquet project and Sun’s Project Wonderland have a better educational potential:
https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/

I’m hoping to look more into the java-based project wonderland sometime soon. I checked out Croquet, but it seems to be LAN-based (only people in your local area network can connect to a world), I have no idea how to connect to other people around the world with it like in second life, plus programming in Smalltalk/Squeak is so different from other common programming languages like java or C#.

By the way, your blog erased my comment 4 times. Something is definitely wrong with it.

For quite some time, I’ve been posting similar thoughts about Second Life but from the standpoint of educational use in the classroom:

As for professional development, I felt very much the same way you do a couple of months ago when I questioned whether I wished to remain a part of Second Life in any fashion especially after Atlanta where I was “stoked” about the dialogue occuring about educational technology and I wanted to have a way to continue that in as many ways possible. Thus, The Bloggers Cafe formed where educators could gather to discuss and debate education and ed tech. http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2007/07/is_it_time_to_add_sl_to_your_p.php

It has saved me from leaving Second Life because I using it as another environment for my personal learning environment in much the same way as I do wikis, blogs, nings, podcasts, and f2f. It is virtual f2f. I am no longer there to discuss SL and I’ve never been there for anything beyond exploring the educational and professional possibilities of SL.

Once again, thanks for a great post that I’m sure will promote great dialogue and that is what I’ve been hoping for: http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2007/05/you_dont_have_to_believe_every_1.php

I have had these conversations at strange times, convincing me that professional learning communities can meet at 9pm. One thing is for sure… Just as with my students, if I can get my teachers engaged in exploring how to use technology, be it with SL or any other tool, they are much more likely to use it than if I force them to sit through a training where they are watching the clock. Yes it has its limitations. For now, I am trying to think of it as an ongoing conference. One that can be accessed from the convenience of your living room, after the kids have gone to bed and I have had a chance to unwind.

Skirting the red light district is the same in SL as it is all over the internet. But because of the interactive nature, sometimes the red light can come to you in SL. That presents a challenge for sure, but a challenge that isn’t much different from the challenge of the online world in general.

Due to the popularity of your blog and your reputation (which are both well earned!), you have the opportunity to talk to some of the best minds in the world in educational technology. We do not all share your fortune. We do not all have widely read blogs or attend conferences often. SL is giving many educators, myself included, that opportunity.