Second Life and Education

From (where else?) Wikipedia:

Education in Second Life

Second Life has recently emerged as one of the cutting-edge virtual classrooms for major colleges and universities, including Harvard, Pepperdine, Elon University, Ohio University, Ball State, New York University, Stanford University, Delft University of Technology[32] and AFEKA Tel-Aviv Academic College of Engineering.[33] Second Life fosters a welcoming atmosphere for administrators to host lectures and projects online, selling more than 100 islands for educational purposes, according to a New York Times article.[34] The article quoted Rebecca Nesson, an instructor at Harvard who brought her Legal Studies class to Second Life in the second half of 2006. "Normally, no matter how good a distance-learning class is, an inherent distance does still exist between you and your students," she says. "Second Life has really bridged that gap. There is just more unofficial time that we spend together outside of the typical class session." Joe Sanchez, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin evaluated the use of Second Life in education in an interactive qualitative analysis, finding that once students overcome the technical and interface difficulties with Second Life, they "indicate a preference to social learning activites and find it enjoyable to interact with other avatars while learning in this space".[35]

Issues and criticisms

Because it is under constant development, and is an open environment that can be used by almost anyone with broadband internet access,[40] Second Life has encountered a number of challenges. These range from the technical (Budgeting of server resources) and moral (pornography) to legal (legal position of the Linden Dollar, Linden Lab lawsuit).

Prior to June 6, 2006, all Residents were required to verify their identities by providing Linden Lab with a valid credit card or PayPal account number, or by responding to a cell phone SMS text message.[41] (Residents providing information were not charged if their account type cost nothing to create.) After that date, it became possible to create an account with only an e-mail address; even standard verification methods such as e-mail reply verification are not used.[42] Access to Teen Second Life still requires credit card details. Linden Lab has the ability to ban Residents from Second Life based on a hardware hash of their local PC,[43] preventing them from returning with other accounts.

In January 2007, two articles were published on the Internet which compared the economy of Second Life to a pyramid scheme.[44][45] In the same month, a "virtual riot" erupted between members of the French extremist party National Front who had established a virtual HQ on Second Life, and opponents, including Second Life Left Unity, a socialist and anti-capitalist user-group.[46][47][48][49] Since then, several small internet based organizations have claimed some responsibility for instigating the riots.[50]