Antony Kontellis UTS Blog

Throughout my completion of six hours setting up and exploring 2^nd Life, I was able to learn new skills within the framework of a virtual world. My participation also led me to form a greater opinion and establish a well-rounded understanding of how a virtual world operates. After overseeing some educational places and resources available in 2^nd Life, as well as the initial setup and actions involved from the start to the end of the six hours, I ultimately met my objectives and expectations and discovered a totally new learning experience.

My objectives of gaining a general understanding of 2^nd Life, obtaining new online skills relating to navigating and communicating, developing a greater opinion and more informed understanding of virtual worlds in general, and overseeing some educational uses within 2nd Life were all adequately met. When I first decided to do this assignment on 2^nd Life, I had my reservations due to pre-conceived skepticisms I established through our lecture on 2^nd Life and class discussions on virtual worlds. However I understood that until I actually participated in a virtual world, I would not be able to make an informed decision. This is how I established the above objectives. The learning which followed both strengthened my initial views and allowed me to change certain perceptions, giving me the greater understanding, new online skills, and ability to navigate and communicate which I set up in the objectives. Thus, my expectations of gaining the skills, developing a more informed opinion, and forming new ideas and perspectives were put into motion. I was satisfied with my progress and meeting my objectives and expectations at the end of my 2^nd Life experience.

My blog posts were organized in the categories of the various stages of using 2^nd Life and a summary of time spent doing each item was listed in the conclusion of each post. After my objectives and expectations were set out, I began by installing 2^nd Life and setting up my account and avatar. As mentioned in the blog, this was a relatively easy task (which took approx. one hour) for me as it was similar to installing most other computer programs, therefore my learning did not really begin here.

Next, I spent two hours in Orientation Island (OI), which is where my online learning truly began. I had never participated in a virtual world or computer game involving navigation of this nature, so everything was brand new to me. Through communicating with other people on OI and developing my own initial skills, I was able to complete all tasks while simultaneously learning new skills. The next blog post was on my subsequent two hour time spent on Help Island (HI), which was my opportunity to perfect and further develop the skills I had learned relating to navigating, communicating, teleporting, using maps and inventory, searching, etc. This was where I began to form further opinions on the positive and negative aspects of 2^nd Life relating to user-friendliness and the concept in general of a virtual world.

The second-last blog post I made whilst in 2^nd Life was relating to educational tools within the virtual world. I now had the skills to search and teleport, which led to my exploration of various islands and places offering educational resources, training and assistance to trainers and learners. This one hour exploration was the true final aspect of my learning, as I was able to see, in action, not only the educational resources available, but also the fact that I was now able to explore 2^nd Life and had therefore learned a significant amount in the total six hours. This was the purpose of my final blog post, which re-capped my six hours in 2^nd Life and also contained some screencaps taken throughout this experience.

My learning style of Read/Write preference (and also my prior knowledge of my Myers-Briggs profile) was reflected during my time in 2^nd Life. Not only did I have clear objectives whilst traveling through the various stages, but I also made my blog posts in a very orderly and clear fashion. The posts reflected the title and stated the time spent, and the navigation within 2^nd Life was all for a specific purpose, which is a key trait of the Read/Write preference.

After the six hours and various different blog posts, I can honestly say the entire experience was valuable to me as a professional and as a student, opening my eyes to a whole new (virtual) world of possibility when it comes to online learning. When assessing if I learned anything, I therefore was able to truly say that I had learned a great deal in a relatively short span of time. Avatars, teleporting, educational islands, and virtual communication were all extremely foreign concepts to me, however they now are all things which I am able to do. Does this change my initial perception and ideas on virtual worlds? For the most part, the answer is no, as I was in 2^nd Life not only for educational purposes (and so I was able to see in more detail how some thing like 2^nd Life could be exploited and used for many unethical and addictive reasons). However this experience did change my perception and pre-conceived notions on a virtual world being a means for education. I definitely learned that if properly developed (which I believe will still take a number of years) 2^nd Life could be a very useful learning and teaching tool.