Second life - aka - Get a life.

This is the second "oh oh moment" - I attended another session this week whereby I again had to bottle the indignant librarian within me. A briefing on an EQ Virtual Worlds trial project we sat through the usual demo of a Second Life styled "Active World". Apparently uses the Virtual Worlds software, which is in competition with Second Life.

The good points were that student involvement in the project is strong - from the mentor group of students working to establish and support the trial, to those students who were encouraged to sign on as test scenario partners for the duration of the 4 week project. So, with a 2 week set up period, and the actual project period, 6 weeks to get immersed. Designing an alternate learning environment online is fun I guess and certainly provides scope for students to have a choice of options for engaging in the project. So, overall "brownie points" from this critic.

The cringe factor for me came when I questioned the presenter as to awareness of copyright issues - hers or the students - given the heavy reliance of Youtube footage and other web based images (people, places, artworks etc) While the web link to image source was annotated, the response from the coordinator that "as it was a trial project I didn't worry about copyright too much" made me think.