Second Life Review

      Live the moment ! You don't have another life just try to enjoy your life and even don't try just enjoy! These sentences are what the Carpe Diem effect says and most probably you have seen this sentences previously it is not the first time that you encounter with these statements but what if i tell you that you have a second life ?  Don't misunderstand i don't talk about the afterworld which is always presented as 'second life' but i mean a technologically created world in which you have the sense of another world and what the best is that you don't have to travel very far locations like 'afterworld'. 

     Second Life is a three dimensional virtual world in where you can exist with your avatar. Simply you can think that the main difference between second life and real life is the virtuality, for example as in the real world you can go to the school (i am not sure would you prefer to do this),to a cafe, a business center or a library you can do shopping, meet your friends, create buildings, trade, dance, communicate with other avatars and more activities like in the real world.

 The avatars can interact with other avatars, places and objects too you can socialize with this way. Users aged 16 and over can use Second Life with a free account and there are also priced accounts too for example the accounts that educators use are priced ones. In the Second Life your avatar might be in any form such as a human, animal, a fantastic character or an object, it also may resemble you like in the real world. You are able to create your own avatar or you can just select a pre-made avatar it depends on your choose. 

An avatar may have several appearances in other words an account may have different avatars and an account which has only one avatar can change its appearance during the second life experience. Besides abilities like running, speaking, swimming, dancing and eating which are possible in the real world too, you can also fly or teleport isn't it fantastic ! As a group or individual you can communicate with other avatars via voice. group chat, local chat and global instant messaging. In Second Life there are fields like education, economy, religion, business, science, music and art you can join these fields and be active in these fields. Second Life can be used in the Mac OS, Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms. 

       Benefits of Second Life in Education

An image from the Tuncer Can's Tweet

    

       Second Life can facilitate distance learning. It enhances collaborative and constructivist learning which both includes the cognitive and social learning, gives the opportunity of learning outside classroom, helps autonomy in the laerning, increases ownership of learners in the learning process, gain self awareness, and help the learners learn with experiences. Second Life also motivates the learners they become more active in the learning process. The affective filter also can be decreased with the help of Second Life because students can make themselves anonymous and can easily express themselves so it also increases the participation to the course. 

     Some Examples of Second Life

An image from Tuncer Can's Tweet

    Machinima (combination of machine and cinema) conducted to equip foreign language learners with digital literacy by Tuncer Can and İrfan Şimşek with the participation of 80 pre-service language teachers, Language Park created to teach Italian to the Turkish learners, Coordinate System Robot which is a game to teach the coordinate system in the math to the 7th grade learners, Snow Dogs to teach fractions again in the math to the 5th grade learners all of these examples are from the projects by Tuncer Can and İrfan Şimşek with the contribution of the İstanbul University. 

With the help of Second Life İstanbul University has created its own 3D virtual campus too. If you want to take more information about these examples and virtual campus of İstanbul University you can read the article named 'The Design and Use of Educational Games in 3D Virtual Worlds'. Another Second Life examples are The Museum of Philisophy, Genome Island, The Most Beautiful Campus on Second Life, SimCity and SimEarth. 

                                             Here is a video about Second Life for you: