Paradise Lost In Second Life...Then Found In Open Sim

I am finally starting to "get the feel" of using virtual worlds. I think that part of this is because of the transition to Open Sim from Second Life. While most features and actions are very similar, nevertheless, seeing the process "mirrored" in another environment reinforces and connects things that were not initially very clear in my mind. For example, OS seems to have much less "activity" and is less cluttered by advertisements and other attempts to monetize the virtual environment. However, I suspect that, given time and traffic, OS would erupt in very much the same way that SL has become commercialized. I think that this gives us a chance to see "paradise" before it was "lost" and compare aspects of the highly developed SL vs. the "purer" OS environment. When we did our annotated SL resource bibliography, I tried very hard to find good examples of gamification only to find that most "games" were thinly-veiled attempts to drive traffic to other sites. While I do not agree with this, it is what it is. SL is an open, virtual environment that allows commerce- very much like the "real world"- for both good and bad. It is up to us as educators to protect our students and to implement the resource in a proper manner. For example, I found myself thinking that some of the monetized SL games could be adapted as very nice quests or search games for students built in OS.

This is a good analogy for the current state of education in the Hawaii DOE. As a long time classroom teacher, I have noticed a divide between "younger" (physically and mentally) teachers who enthusiastically embrace technology and change as a way to meet students "half way" and give them better tools to improve learning outcomes vs. more entrenched and inflexible teachers who have a mindset of "no mobile devices" and no technology. I think that widespread adoption of virtual worlds in public education will be limited by the mindset of many of the teachers who don't believe that properly designed virtual and gaming environments is a valid form of learning. I think that it is our job, as "evangelists" of technology to do a good job of implementing effective technology learning designs so that others will someday "see the light."