Second Life Script

Although Second Life has been called a video game, it does not have to be an insult. I consider myself “a gamer” and have noticed a few skills that were learned while gaming to transfer to real life. For example, between the ages of 15 and 16, I spent a lot of time playing Gran Turismo 3, a driving simulator. Breaking early to accelerate through a turn and hitting the apex to take the ideal racing line were skills learned in a video game, not in Driver’s Education. The military has used flight simulators for several years and first person shooters have given soldiers a head start in military training. So if Second Life is a life simulator, what skills could be learned in this virtual world that can be transferred into real life? The first thing that came to my mind was learning social skills for students who suffer from social anxiety. Behind the safety and comfort of an avatar, students can practice meeting a superior for the first time, how to relax and have small talk in a large group setting, ask someone to prom, etc. If Call of Duty can make me more comfortable shooting a real M16, then Second Life can help people learn social skills. The learning more video “A second life in Second Life” notes a success story of how a woman with severe social anxiety was able to land a job in the real world because of skills learned in Second Life. A woman with cerebral palsy who was homebound and unable to walk without assistance created the video. It was touching to hear how much Second Life meant to her. She is able to walk, dance, and socialize in a way not possible in real life. The sense of fulfillment, connectedness, and relationship felt while socializing in Second Life can fill affective domain objectives and INTASC technology requirements. For quadriplegic, students with cerebral palsy, and other severally physically limited students, where psychomotor objectives are nearly impossible to meet, Second Life is a medium to help students meet cognitive and affective domain objects (every PE lesson plan is to have at least one psychomotor, one cognitive, and one affective domain objective).
Aside from assisting those with disabilities, Second Life has appealed to educators in several fields. Because of the global interconnectedness provided by the internet, the world is smaller and without walls, so therefore so is education. As great minds continue to develop ideas for the utilization of virtual worlds in education, the standards will increase. Allow me to expand. When reasonable, people will demand the best education possible. If there is room for 100,000 people to attend a class, and the top experts in the field are teaching that class, then why would you take a course taught by some state school graduate (no offensive to the state schools)? In the near future, this may be a common scenario. Parents who want to best for their children will insist that their child takes Bill Gate’s computer programming class, Bruce Lee’s martial arts course, and J.K. Rowling creative writing class. Virtual worlds such as Second Life can make this possible.
Second Life has the ability for us to get a small glimpse of what it may feel like to walk to someone else’s shoes. The “Remembering the Middle Passage” blog entry outlines what it was like to auctioned off as a slave in Second Life. This made me wonder what other kind of experience could be re-created in Second Life. The possibilities are endless! Islands could be set up to help people gain a sense of what it was like to be black in 1950s America, Jewish in Nazi Germany, or a Christ follower back when He was alive.
I will close with a quote from Rear Admiral Fred Lewis, a 33-year U.S. Navy veteran who now heads the National Training Systems Association: "There's been a huge change in the way we prepare for war…Live training on the field is still done, of course, but using simulations to train them (the recruits) is not only natural, it's necessary." (end quote)
It just makes sense to me that educational methods are not far behind.