Just finished Kathy Schrock’s talk on her thoughts about using multi-user virtual environments. I have run into Kathy in-world around ISTE quite a few times and she is doing some great things on Lighthouse Learning Island. The session was introductory but it was great to see how many people are interested in this new medium. Less and less people are asking “why” and instead wondering how they can actually start using tools such as Second Life.
She made a great analogy to the Second Life interface. It is a little hard to use and its adoption is hampered by the new paridigms its use bring to the table. She equated this change to the jump from text based computer interfaces to graphical user interfaces. GUIs were a change for existing computer users, but the change was worthwhile in the longrun. Learning to operate in MUVEs may take a bit, but the investment is worth it.
Kathy has put up all her resources for the presentation at kathyschrock.net/muve. Great links and resources there. I am having some thoughts on how we could get SL into more Maine schools. Can’t wait to try and flesh them out over the summer.
