Learning/Teaching Opportunities through Virtual Worlds

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This last week we spent the class in SecondLife. It was an interesting experience. I was told that I was good at it, even though it was like my 3rd time on it. I do think that it is an interesting thing to have to communicate with other people from all over the world. I don't know if I know really all of the point for it as an educational use. Sure it's cool that you can fly and you can change your avatar to look like whatever you like, but still...

Looking at it from a mathematical standpoint, I don't know if I would use something like SecondLife in the classroom. I did like the fact that you could make the different shapes and such, but so can other programs like Google-Sketchup. I think my problem with something like SecondLife is that there are other things that are not educational on there. I guess what sticks out in my mind is the fact that essentially anything could happen there, and not good things. If I were to teach my students about shapes, then I would use the Sketchup because you don't have the problems of the avatars and what could happen in not safe areas.

I do think that SecondLife could be used to possibly build a house for an educational aspect, but I don't know. I would think that you could do the same thing in Sketchup to an extent and it would be a little safer.

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