Second Life

I enjoyed my virtual trip to Berlin, but after I suffered from technical difficulties. After creating the account in second life website, I created an avator with the name Hakan Ghennyn. The reason for choosing this name was to hide my real identity to guarantee a full anonymous new character in the virtual life in Second Life. My second name is not in the list of the names provided in the registration stage, so I tried to select another name other than Fahad. I avoided including my name because it might release the region I am from. Fahad is mostly used in the Arabian Gulf Countries.



Downloading the Second Life software was not as difficult as running it. Because its environment is three dimentional it needs a big virtual memory and storage cabapilties of the user's computer. Unfortunately mine was struggling to run Second Life and it often stopped which led me to free half of the storage space in my labtop. This implies that enjoing the detailed three dimential environment of Second Life may prevent a huge number of our students from this experience because not everyone is capable of buying a labtop with the needed cabapilities.


Because I was eager to try Second Life experience, I freed half of the space in my laptob, and I realised it deserves it. It was one of my wishes to visit Germany and that came true; at least in Second Life. Berlin was my first German City to visit and I think it was the new part of it as was shown from the indication of New Berlin in the top bar of the application as we as the various locations under construction. Some of the places I visited there were Alexa Shopping Center, German Newbie Center and the White Cube Gallery- although I am certain wheather they exisit in reality or their only location is Second Life.



In addition to the 3 dimentional environment, there are communication tools to facilitate interaction in the application. The user can use the chat tools to get help or communicate with the others. Voice chat and gestures are also available and the user can join groups as well. Once I logged to Second Life for the first time, I was invited to join a group and had the right to accept and decline it.

I also offered to buy land in the virtual world the thing I lacked in reality. So, the software tries to immitate the real life, but sometimes the user can prove himselfe a social staus more than is capable to do in real life.

Second Life In Education:
Second life can be an ideal platform in education because of its ease to use, it 3 dimentional environment and the collaboration, and communication tools. I found in it the potential for allowing the students to create their own activities and engage in interactions with learners from different regions of the world.
One of the possible uses of it is virtual tours. Others tools like youtube and google maps can show virtual tours with no or limited interaction in addition to the lack of details and minmising learners' choice. In Second Life the learner can visit a city as I experienced and walk in its streets and even enters its building to see what is inside.
I am sure that there are other cabapilities fo education that the application can offer for paid subscriptions and more add ins can make it a superpowerful learning environment.