Has it ever crossed your mind that the laptop you own right now will not just be a classroom tool to aid your learning, but THE classroom itself? With the continued advancement of technology, such a scenario would most probably be the future digital classroom. Let’s take a look at a video of the usage of Second Life in education.
Second Life can be used as a digital classroom, in which students are able to immersed in their own education: they can visit and explore virtual replicas of places mentioned in class or attend lectures in a virtual auditorium, thus enabling them to be “there” while being anywhere. Students and teachers are also able to connect visually online through illustrations, drawings and even construction of models, establishing interactivity among them.
To further facilitate learning, outside experts from all parts of the world could be invited to speak to students in Second Life. This will enable the students to be in closer proximity with these renowned speakers and learn more from them. Second Life is also useful for increasing inter-faculty, inter-campus and intercultural exchanges. By setting up a venue in Second Life where the people from different areas can meet, the exchange of ideas, opinions, etc can take place, making the students’ education so much more interesting and experiential.
In addition to the utilization of Second Life, both instructors and students can use current platforms like Twitter to disseminate small chunks of information for receivers to act on immediately. For example, students could tweet short questions and either the instructors or fellow students could give an answer. Also, instructors could tweet their students to remind them of any upcoming quizzes or tests.
I agree with the video producer that education needs to adapt and cater to the needs of today’s digital learners – the students who are so used to having technology incorporated into their daily activities. Who said that education could not be merged with entertainment? I personally believe that the merging of these two seemingly contradicting entities would greatly enhance learning, simply because the integration of entertainment would better meet the 3 educational objectives, especially that of the affective “domain”. When students are immersed in their own learning environment, they would take more ownership of their education and hence learn more effectively. However, platforms such as Second Life face the challenge of having real-time updates of events that are happening all over the world. Without these essential information, Second Life would become obsolete and lose its relevance in the rapidly-changing world of today.
Other informative videos:
Education in Second Life:
Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life:
References:
The Digital Classroom: http://thedigitalclassroom.com/
Teaching With Technology: http://twt.wikispaces.com/Profile+of+a+Digital+Classroom
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