Glen's presentation began with discussing many different online environments and social networking sites..many of which we had been exposed to earlier. What I found to be the most interesting topic was Second Life. Not interesting in the sense that I have any motivation to become involved in it, but more thought provoking. Glen certainly made some great points on how it could be used in an educational sense but I don't see myself utilizing it for my own classes. It definitely has a lot of things to explore which is probably why I would stay away from it as it would distract from what my original goals were for using it. I think that a big concern would be cyberbullying. I believe that students using second life would only increase the amount of cyberbullying that goes on, because people would use a second life to be bad people, especially if there are no real consequences. People would be doing a lot of things they know they can't do in real life, because this way they can. I pretty much feel that it is just another way to waste time...which i do enough of already.
Those are my thoughts on it...let me know yours!
I agree with you, I don't see myself using this program in my classroom. There are some benefits to this program such as learning from people from all over the world. If you are researching a different part of the world this could be a great resource for learning from people who live there.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you when you talk about cyberbullying. I feel the negatives out weigh the positives and cyberbullying is a huge negative. I feel we, as teachers, would have to do a lot of research on safe places to be. Even after we do all this research students are going to find places where they shouldn't.
Although this a great program I feel it is more geared towards a facebook/sims crowd who want to socalize.
Dan, you'd better be sorry about the late blog!! ;)
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you. I am not sure how I would be able to use this in my classroom. I don't like how it is so anonymous and no one knows who exactly they are interacting with. There is also the problem with inappropriate content, but that's another story all together!
I also don't like how Second Life costs money to do things. This seems like a bad situation. Schools are already stingy with their money, there is no way they would give you money to use for "digital products" when they wouldn't get anything concrete out of the bargain!
Anyway, that's my two cents!