My new pal Dr. Anthony Crider gave a fantastic talk at last month's AAAS Forum on Second Life and virtual worlds. Full disclosure: I was skeptical and even mildly anxious at the thought of wandering into a simulation I'd heard might rival scenes from Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut--only with vampires and uh, furries. Then I met Tony who convinced me it opens the door, errr... 'laptop', to seemingly infinite possibilities in science education! But you don't have to take my word for it--I'll let the brilliant and funny SciLands creator explain virtual worlds himself and skeptics can decide whether to give Second Life a second chance...
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So I work in stuff related to this area.
I am skeptical about what this can do for (natural) science education. The value of virtual worlds is the human interaction. The scientific material itself can be served through the web -- you do not need to have an actual Exploratorium building in a virtual world in order to provide users with the exhibits. Indeed, if you look at the pedagogical work that most distance learning people do, it can be implemented by an interactive web site and a chat channel. So I need to see novel pedagogical research before I believe this.
Social science is a totally different matter, on the other hand. We saw glimmers of this promise with LambdaMOO in the 90s, but it never achieved the critical mass that the modern virtual worlds do. Experimental economics is fascinating, particularly the stuff that EVE online is doing.
Thanks for sharing this clip - I am impressed now. And can also convey the news that there will be an Int'l Year of Astronomy island, thanks to a sponsor.
Sheril,
For those of us who run Linux, please don't embed this kind of video (Quicktime, I think). There's no plugin for Linux / Firefox.