The title of this post comes from Claudia L’Amoreaux, a community developer and educator for Linden Lab, who was recently interviewed for an eSchool News article. She states that

Today’s teens are creating their own content, uploading photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube, and in Second Life they’re making their own games and stepping into them–you could call Second Life a participatory game platform.

As I sit down to reflect on our very own Virtual Classroom Project and the work of our first ever Educator-in-Residence Leigh Blackall, I realize that Second Life is indeed a participatory platform. Those of you who attended our Virtual Classroom Project sessions experienced this first-hand. Leigh’s project gave us an opportunity not only to discuss teaching and learning in virtual environments and in real life, but also to experience his prototype by interacting with it as if it were a physical space. The virtual experience of walking around the “classroom” he has designed taught me a lot about designing spaces for learning and provided numerous opportunities to reflect on the art of designing such spaces both in real life and in a virtual environment such as Second Life.

Photo by joannamkay

It’s hardly surprising that Leigh’s work has already inspired one of our jokaydian residents, slammed Aabye (Dean Groom), to think about exploring some aspects of the Virtual Classroom Project on the Teen Grid where he is creating a presence for his high school students. In fact, both he and another inspiring jokaydian, Judy O’Connell (Heyjude Jenns), have started a Ning group to facilitate their efforts in Teen Second Life and encourage discussion among educators about meaningful, collaborative, and project-based approaches to teaching in Second Life.

As I read through their entries in the new Ning community and look at photos of their Teen Grid spaces, my thoughts return to that eSchool News article on gaming, Second Life, and 21st-century skills. I am sure that their work will culminate in a virtual environment and numerous activities that will help their students develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. I am sure that their work will confirm some of the following conclusions about the use of games and virtual worlds in education:

• Gaming and simulations are highly interactive, allow for instant feedback, immerse students in collaborative environments, and allow for rapid decision-making.

• Studies of the brain have pointed to data suggesting that repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli.

• Video games engage students and help foster some of the 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving, which may be more difficult to acquire in a traditional classroom with a textbook.

• “When you think about the skills that students need when they leave school, like creativity and curiosity … identifying problems and solving them - these are skills that [can be] hard to teach in the traditional face-to-face classroom,” [...] “And a lot of these technologies are being used in the corporate world–IBM is now using games to train its employees, so you see simulations and games emerging outside of K-12 education.

I am looking forward to following the work that Judy and Dean have started in their Ning group. I hope that the Virtual Classroom Project will continue to inspire Second Life educators and explore the potential of Second Life as “an engine for creativity.”

If you’re interested in sharing your thoughts on Second Life and education, please feel free to join the Diigo group I created to collect and reflect on online resources that focus on teaching and learning in virtual environments.