Second Life

Second Life Igbokwe, O Module 4 Blog Posting
What is Second Life?

Second Life is a virtual world that was developed and launched by Linden Lab in 2003. It is accessible through the internet and a free program called second life viewer allows the users called the residents to interact with one another through the avatars. Participants (residents) can through this media explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities. They can create, trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the virtual world, which residents refer to as the grid. Second Life is divided into two major groups. One is for people aged 18 and over, while Teen Second Life is for people aged 13 to 17.

Why is it called disruptive technology?
Second life is a disruptive technology because it is new, has performance problems while generally appealing to a limited audience and does not have proven practical application like Twitter for many. However, it has the potential to drastically, radically, and overwhelmingly change the way people learn. It provides us alternative ways of doing things like why read about how to build a widget, when you can walk (as an avatar) through the inner workings of a widget and see not only how to build it, but why it's important to build it the way it is built? It provides us the world (though virtual) to experience some of the things we dream about’ for example, why sit in a classroom and listen to someone talk about leadership theories and how they apply to a team climbing Mt. Everest, when you can take a team and actually climb the mountain yourself?. This you can achieve by using the skills in an immersive virtual space.
What are the social benefits of Second Life, and what might be the social implications of virtual worlds in your industry?

Many schools and universities are building structures in Second Life, and they build them to look like a regular classroom with walls, desks and chairs. If you can create a classroom floating in the sky or in a park, then there will be no need for buildings for schools. If students can work on a project together, learning from each other, and only need a coach to guide the team, then academic activities will be conducted virtually and that will have a great impact on the manner we conduct education, social interaction and business transactions. Obviously, Second Life is a disruptive technology.
Second Life's usefulness as a platform for pre-K–12 education is limited due to the age restrictions on the main grid and the difficulties of collaborating among various educational projects on the teen grid. New approaches to fostering collaboration on the teen grid, such as the Virtual World Campus, offer some hope of overcoming some of these obstacles. For now, however, the primary utility of Second Life for pre-K–12 education is in the education and professional development of teachers and school librarians. Still, K–12 educators use Second Life to meet each other and to create objects and structures that help them develop curriculum, as EnergyTeachers.org does with its Sustainability Energy Science Lab
The influx of evolving technologies and a new generation of wired consumers has created the speculation about how people will consume and produce media. The worldwide phenomenon of Second Life, an online digital game, allows its ‘residents’ to live out an entirely alternate reality. Residents can socialize, dance, work, play and buy virtual real estate. Second Life has a fully developed economy and goods, services and property are bought with Linden dollars, which can be exchanged for US dollars. There are a reported 5 million residents in Second Life, and they can shop at digital stores like Adidas and American Apparel. It is difficult to predict the survivability of neither Second Life nor the technology that may displace or obsolete it. It must however continue to evolve in order to remain relevant to the ever changing technologies that are disrupted frequently.
References:
Carmody, L. E. (2009). [Review of the book Disrupting class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns, by C. M. Christensen, M. B. Horn, & C. W. Johnson] Educational Technology Research and Development, 57(2), 267−269.
Retrieved from the Academic Search Premier database (Accession Number: 36778565).
Christensen, C. (2002). The innovation economy: How technology is transforming existing industries and creating new ones [Video]. Retrieved from http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/108
Rosedale, P. (2008). Second Life [Video] Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/the_inspiration_of_second_life.html
What is Second Life: www.secondlife.com/whatis
Second Life-What is the Hype: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/second-life-what-is-the-hype/
Computer Weekly: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/11/24/233528/a-second-life-for-virtual-worlds.htm