Education in a virtual world

The question may come up - why use a virtual world to do the same thing you could do in a physical class. It has been asked why the virtual world has buildings, chairs, TVs, etc and why you walk around (although in Second Life (SL) you can fly and teleport also).

This is a question that is being tested in many ways beyond the scope of this post, but let me offer a few ideas.

In many ways it's fantastical (I haven't seen a fat person yet - everyone is good looking and above average - my avitar came out of the box at 2 meters tall - over 6 ft.), and yet you have more of a sense of being somewhere with other people, even though they may be half-way across the world. Even though it's all virtual, you feel like there's a connection. Certainly more-so than asynchronous communication, and perhaps more than synchronous methods, such as text based chat, audio and/or video (all of which are available in SL).

When I first went in, I searched for some interests - Japanese and French languages. I found a site that offered English tutoring. I signed up to be an English tutor and have had two sessions this week tutoring Japanese students. The first was pretty last-minute and it took a while for me to get my bearings and figure out how to use the 'book,' which was projected up on the 'wall' of the room like a PowerPoint presentation. The second went more smoothly. We used audio, which worked much like a telephone, and was critical so that they could hear me speaking and I could hear them practicing speaking and correct and reinforce them.

Plus you have the capability of having simulations, such as the nursing one. The instructor demostrated a simulation where a 'patient' lies on a hospital bed/guerney. There's a big display with the patient's vital signs above it. Near the bed, there's an IV stand, oxygen tank, defibrullator and maybe other gadgets. The instructor has a control where he can change the vital signs and the student has a control where he can interact with the abovementioned objects to respond to the changes. So if the patient's oxygen level dropped, the student could give him oxygen, etc.

I also watched part of an archived presentation on using SL for education on the Edunation II Island (Centralia CC has an island, as does the SBCTC which is for the CTCs to experiment with.)