Exploration in Second Life Part I

Well, over the past couple of days I have been searching within Second Life for worlds that I might use in my Technology Education classes. Although they have a search function within SL, I found it to be fairly hard to search for worlds that fit my criteria.

Here are some of the worlds I found and a screen shot of my avatar (Oldman Mavendorf, who is dressed as a sumo wrestler) in their world, with a slurl for you to check these places out for yourselves!
1. Institute of Physics.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rakshasa/162/27/28

Software for physics teaching, classroom area, displays and links to web pages where the software can be downloaded. I will use this as a resource for my electronics course that I team teach with our physics instructor. This has some great resources I have already begun to use!

2. Computer history Museum

http://slurl.com/secondlife/DotNetNuke/108/231/24

The Second Life Computer History Museum is a grass roots project to compile a history of computing, by those who were ‘there’ as history was being made and by professional educators who are early SL adopters. Their objective is to develop a Museum to showcase information about the history of Computers, Computing and Computer Science. I will use this in my middle school exploratory classes when we have our unit on Inventions and Innovations. The computer is an invention that most student identify with so it's great to have found this world on SL!

3. Dell Island

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dell%20Island%202/237/226/79

Go inside a computer to learn all the different parts! This was a fun time for me exploring inside of one of Dell's XPS model computers. This will be a great introduction to my students taking computer work study for me. They help preform basic computer maitenence and some come with little to no experience on the different components of a computer. This will give them a different approach to learn the parts of a computer. I was very impressed with Dell's SL world.

4. Information & Communications Technology (ICT) Library

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/58/204/33

The largest collection of resources for educators and trainers in SL. This is a world I will use myself when planning for lessons. In the short time I was in this world I was overwhelmed with all the resources and information made available here. While some of the information was tutorials on SL, there were also a good deal of general information that takes you to different videos, web sites, and even some search features. This is one I have made a landmark for. I know I will be visiting here again.

5. Institute of Physics II

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rakshasa/31/11/32

A small sandbox for the making of physically realistic objects. A playground of sorts. Allows users to work with objects in SL that use the same physics as the real world. I am still somewhat a newbie at creating things in SL, so this will be a great area for me to work on my skills. Although it is a small sandbox, there are great signs helping you along the way.

6. Discovery Education Network

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduisland%20II/92/114/22

Discovery Education Network. We had a nice guided tour of this place during Monday night with the class. There are lots of services that DEN offers including united streaming media.

The last two stops will be posted later on.