Virtual environments for the category: 'News'
Second Life Education Workshop 2007 Proceedings
The third annual Second Life Community Convention (SLCC2007) was held on August 24-26 in Chicago, a conference where over 800 enthusiasts of the virtual world gather and share ideas and best practices. How popular has making use of the virtual environment Second Life for educational purposes become? The size of the proceedings, three times as large as last years (118 pages!) should be a good indication. The preface notes that membership on the Second Life Educators Listserv grew from 500 members in 2006 to 3900 this past year.
These proceedings serve as a snapshot of the state of education in Second Life as it is today. It includes “exemplar case studies illustrating how institutional issues in establishing Second Life can be overcome and a number of examples showing how the platform is being adapted to support learning in a wide range of fields and with diverse groups of learners.” It is notable that the sciences and arts are both well represented, demonstrating the breadth of interest and content found in the community of educators that use Second Life.
Selected highlights include Global Kids Inc. Best Practices for Using Virtual Worlds for Education, various ways educators have taught nutrition, emergency preparedness training, the environment, creative arts. etc.
Read the Second Life Education Workshop Proceedings here.
Coldwell Banker Sells Real House in Second Life
Second Life is a virtual environment where people spend real money in exchange for a virtual currency known Linden dollars. They use Linden dollars to buy virtual real estate, often to build virtual homes or various other items for their virtual lives.
Coldwell Banker, one of America’s largest real estate brokerage firms, has been selling and building virtual houses in Second Life for $20 per home. The idea of marketing a real home seemed like the next natural step. On August 2, 2007, Coldwell Banker placed a real $3 million US dollar brick-and-mortar house on the block in Second Life — yet another example of a growing trend with virtual environments: the mixed nature of reality and virtuality.
A photo of the real world and virtual Seattle home.
Second Life avatars can meet with an real Coldwell Banker agent, tour the house virtually — a more than $3 million new home near Seattle. Prospective customers can make bids on the home, and even negotiate a deal. Not everything is digital though: any paperwork would have to be done in the real world, though. To take a tour of the virtual home, just visit Coldwell Banker Headquarters within Second Life located in the Ranchero sim using the following SLURL (requires login to Second Life): http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ranchero%20/210/229/32/. The design, execution, and ongoing maintenance of the Coldwell Banker presence in Second Life is handled by Code4Software LLC.
E-commerce and buying merchandise and services, is big business in many virtual worlds. Over $1 million US is exchanged in Second Life on an average day.