Happy 20th Birthday Second Life

 

IMAGE: Second Life resident looking at snow falling on the Quidditch pitch of the nighttime VWER Campus, 2010.

 

This is some of what I call my "kick out writing" that I did not include in some recent published writing. It starts:

The promise of the metaverse in education is like a mirage in the desert. Educators seem to be forever awaiting the arrival of the metaverse but still not yet embracing those technologies.

In 2003, #SecondLife launched as an immersive persistent virtual world. Just three years later, educators were publishing about their pioneering efforts on the platform. Kemp & Daniel Livingstone (2006) suggested pairing Second Life with a learning management system (LMS), a suggestion familiar to #instructionaldesigners of the Internet age. In 2007, the word "metaverse" first appeared in educational publications (Tilili, 2022). The popularity of virtual worlds briefly increased between 2007 and 2010. As cited in Warburton (2009), Kirriemuir estimated that “three quarters of UK universities are estimated to be actively developing or using Second Life.'' This adoption would wane by 2013 however after educational discounts were discontinued and the initial fervor of virtual spaces gave way to empty buildings and virtual ghost towns.

The arrival of the metaverse would have to wait a little while longer.

~

I just lean back in my chair and wax poetic sometimes. 💺 ✍

Happy 20th Birthday Second Life