The first session I went to focused on Second Life (I know… it won’t die) in the virtual school environment.  The room was packed with web-two-point-opians that all wanted to replace whatever they were currently doing with some sort of Second Life environment.  We took a tour of an Egyptian Pyramid led by a person actually in California.  It went pretty well until someone in a gargoyle suite tried to talk to our avatar.  We moved on to a new web 2.0 technology before things got out of hand.

More than anything I was disappointed by the number of people that simply said “web 2.0″ without offering a good educational situation or example showing how the technology could improve learning.  I actually heard someone say they would hype their online school with an event using Google Earth.

Hey everyone.  Our school uses Google Earth.  It’s a cool web 2.0 technology.  Need we say more?

I said (rather, I typed) something funny to someone in SL and got back a “LOL” in the chat dialog. Isn’t it bad enough that we can only chat with a keyboard and not with our real voices? Now I have to imagine that the virtual representation of someone I’m talking with is also laughing based on the fact that “LOL” was typed back to me. Shouldn’t the avatar grab his gut and roll around on the ground? Maybe there is a way to make the avatar do this and no one I have talked with knows how to do it. I could create a cheat sheet of all the body language needed in SL. Then when someone says (types) something funny I could say “PWWILAMCC”.

Please Wait While I Look At My Cheat Sheet… and then I could roll around on the ground laughing.

hi: 6
can i help you: 4
greetings earthling: 1

Extended conversations were variations of “what have you found around here that is interesting?” Let’s face it. This is a chat room where everyone has an avatar that looks like Barbie. Am I suppose to think that watching someone’s avatar typing is better than IRC? I have been in SL four days straight and I can’t find anyone doing anything interesting. In the educational areas it is hard to find anyone… period.

I did manage to get a free ISTE T-Shirt on EDUIsland. I swept the floor in a Univ Cincy building and made a dollar. Actually it is a Linden dollar. I saw a link where I could exchange Linden dollars for real dollars. I didn’t have enough cash to make it worth a look. Frankly, I didn’t have enough to buy a tattoo from a kid on a skateboard.

I visited the computer museum, a farm with sheep, a camp ground and many corporate buildings. The corporate people were usually the ones that asked if they could help me. I did like I do in Best Buy and told them I was just looking around.

Behind the scenes there are some things that could be used in education. All the objects created in SL are programmed by SL users. There is value in learning how to create objects that are interactive in real time. An art person can express a lot of creativity here.

I can’t imagine trying to teach a class in SL. With no voice broadcasting, it is just a glorified chat. I also saw a lot of “questionable” things in the educational areas. Once again I am bagging SL for a while. Maybe later in the summer I will have some time to mess around some more. I bet people will flock to me if I say I’m John Rappold.

Since then, I have seen many articles concerning the use of SL as an educational tool. Check out the SL site dedicated to education. There was a SL presentation at eTech this year. OLN and several educational institutions in Ohio have purchased real estate to be used for educational purposes.

I created a new account today. Of the six male avatars, I picked the one with glasses and a beard. For some reason, I didn’t get the glasses but instead ended up with fairly large bosoms. The clothes were “downloading” according to the on screen message. I switched from the laptop to the more powerful desktop. That seems to have corrected my anatomy problem. I’m still waiting on the clothes.

So far I have visited a couple of virtual campuses and ISTE. Sunday must not be a popular day for these places because I only found two other people surfing around. I did take a ride on the ISTE skydiving machine. That was fun.

I’ll keep you posted on how things go this week.