 

  # Second Life in the Classroom

  

 

 

 

   ![](/sites/default/files/styles/small_thumbnail/public/tlayton_0.jpg?itok=qJHgrkYp) 

 

 

 [Tom Layton](/team/tlayton) 

 

 Online Learning Evangelist 

 

 

 

 

 

  Date  
 May 23, 2007

  

 At some point you are going to have to ask yourself, "What the heck is Layton doing down there?"

I have been on a wild ride and it is not over. However, I now have my head above water and am ready to report. As you probably know two things have been consuming me: Google Tools and Second Life. In this post, I want to tell you about the latter.

Second Life: Learning in a Virtual World In 1982 I was in a new job, teaching English at the prestigious South Eugene High School. They would never have hired me if they had not been desperate. Their ESL teacher resigned one week before the opening of school and a tsunami of Vietnamese, Thai, Hmong, Cambodian and ethnic Chinese children anxious to learn the language of their new country. My only demand was an Apple Computer and printer in the room. While learning English, we would also learn word processing, something that would be banned for all students by the faculty council the following year.

I tell that story because, when I talk about Second Life in Education, I typically get the same reaction from my peers today that I got from them so long ago. "Why are you wasting your/their time? Why would anyone want to process words? Kids need to communicate with real people, not computer screens."

Of course at 40 I was more open to new ideas than I am at 60. Frankly, I thought this whole Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) thing was a bit silly. Why would anyone want to stare into a computer screen for hours to watch your six-foot vampire bunny rabbit avatar bounce around the screen building tree houses and surf boards? Why waste your time?

It was easy to dismiss the Bunny, but it was impossible to dismiss Second Life's numbers:

- total residents (account holders) -- 6,578,194
- logged in within the last 60 days -- 1,734,041
- online now (6:21 AM PST) -- 28,040
- amount spent in SL in the last 24 hours -- $1,432,798
- median age of residents (account holders) -- 36
- sex of residents (account holders) - 42% male, 57% female
- location of residents -- 34% North American, 54% European
- growth rate per month -- 15%
- Universities teaching classes in (not about) SL -- 17
- major newspapers covering SL -- 10+

Of course educators often make the mistake of taking their cue from educational community rather than the outside world. This is the reason, for example, that we doggedly infuse our curriculum with testing for standards (all 50 sets of them) instead of empowering our students through technology. So when I realized that traditional media outlets were focusing on Second Life, I knew there was more here than bunnies.

Reporters Covering SL:

- David Kirkpatrick, Fortune
- Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN
- Michael Yessis, USA TODAY
- Richard Siklos, New York Times
- Reuben Steiger, CNET News
- Mark Ward, BBC News
- Elizabeth Corcoran, Forbes
- Warren Ellis &amp; Adam Pasick, Reuters

We know that our schools in the US are in trouble. We have a huge teacher shortage and 50% of new teachers leave by their fifth year of service. Between 30% and 40% of our secondary students take math, social studies, English and science classes from teachers who do not have a major or minor in the subject the teach. 30% of our high school students do not graduate. And worst of all, our present curriculum fails to prepare our students for the life they will lead as adults.

As Bill Gates says, "America's high schools are obsolete."

By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points.

By obsolete, I mean our high schools - even when they're working as designed - cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.

So what do high school students need to know and can Second Life, or something very much like it, help teachers to deliver that new curriculum.

The New Curriculum Thomas L. Friedman put it simply. To thrive in the 21st century you will need to be able to . . .

1. create meaningful content in digital form (data, text, images, audio, video),
2. transmit that content around the world, in order to
3. collaborate with other people to make that content even more valuable

This means that students will need to be able to learn qickly; to make use of that knowledge, let go of that knowledge, and then learn new, relevant things. They must be extremely discerning and able learn to distinguish the useful from the hype, the genuine from the imitation, the sincere from the con, the quality from the flash, the truth from the propaganda.

Essentially, our students need to be able to work in small groups to solve problems and create new things. These groups will consist of people whose first language, culture and location is very different from their own.

What platform is best? I believe that applications like Second Life are the best ways for us to teach our children these skills. Virtual Universes are the playground and classroom of the future.   
   
 In Second Life students in Oregon could collaborate with students around the globe to:

- Produce Romeo and Juliet - build the theatre, make the costumes, act the parts, market the performances
- Build a particle accelerator - build the simulation, conduct experiments
- Re-create the Oregon Trail - build the trail, equip yourself for the journey and try to reach Oregon
- Start a Business - design and create products, market the products and manage the business
- Elect a President - create an action committee for the candidate of your choice, raise money, get out the vote
- Create a City - from the future or from the past
- Have a bit of fun - What good is it to get an "A" in Algebra and vow to avoid math the rest of your life?