This week was spent getting to know more about building and owning/renting land in Second Life. I finally found a book that I liked at Borders and have been reading about the pros and cons of land ownership, what to look out for, and the differences in where and what you buy. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet, so I’ll hold off on buying anything just yet. Okay, so I went to our classroom space in Sakamaki Hall and started to build our hale. Building is fun, but also very time consuming.

So my thoughts for this week center around building. Some of the questions that I’ve been wrestling with are what should our goals be for building in Second Life? Actually, before we even begin building, what should we be thinking about when designing learning environments in Second Life? Are we going to try and design around the real world or are we going to really look at the potential that virtual worlds like Second Life offer and build based on that? What “that” is, I really don’t know at this point, but it does excite me to think that we have the potential to invent new ways of learning. I think I might have mentioned that before in one of my previous posts, but it’s an area that I’m definitely interested in exploring further. So far, one goal of our project is to create something familiar for our target audience – a hale, a local setting for local teachers. In this case, I think parallels to the real world is a good thing; however, I think the real potential for transformation will can only be realized when we begin creating new types of learning environments. That’s where we should be setting our sights. You heard the saying, “Doing new things in new ways.” That’s what I’m after. To me, this will determine whether or not virtual worlds like Second Life add real value to education. The environment is there. It’s really up to us to make transformation a reality.