Second Life: Difference between revisions

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* See also the [[3D interactive environment]] article.
* See also the [[3D interactive environment]] article.


* In "Second Life", there are educational events and even some learning activities (to be documented).
* In "Second Life", there are educational events and even some learning activities (to be documented, for the moment see the education links below).
 
* [[Sloodle]] is an attempt to integrate this with an [[LMS]].


== How to ==
== How to ==
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  /usr/local/sl/secondlife &
  /usr/local/sl/secondlife &


=== Finding things ===
=== Finding places in Second Life ===


A good way to find things is to use SLURLs that provide direct teleport links to locations.
A good way to find things is to use [http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLURL SLURL]s that provide direct teleport links to locations. Do not try to find things inside SL (e.g. from the starting area). I could become a big frustration to you. Rather, find interesting things
through web sites like the [http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki Second Life Education Wiki].


Syntax:
Syntax of a SLURL
<pre>
<pre>
http://slurl.com/secondlife/<region>/<x-coordinate>/<y-coordinate>/<z-coordinate>/
http://slurl.com/secondlife/<region>/<x-coordinate>/<y-coordinate>/<z-coordinate>/
</pre>
</pre>


You also may add a picture, e.g.
Example (the Sistine Chapel of Vassar):
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vassar/200/85/27
 
If your second life client is correctly installed, then you simply can enter a SLURL [[URI]] in your default browser.
I will show you first a kind of google map. You then can click to teleport to the location in your Second life client. Note for Linux users: if can't make it work from your web browser, open the Second life help in the Second life client (or hit ''F1''). This will open a internal little web browser within wich you can enter the SLURL....
 
SLURLs can be customized, e.g. you add a picture, e.g.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/<region><x/y/z>?img=http://yourdomain/pict.jpg&title=Your title&msg=Your message
http://slurl.com/secondlife/<region><x/y/z>?img=http://yourdomain/pict.jpg&title=Your title&msg=Your message


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; Mailing lists
; Mailing lists
* [https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators SL Educators Mailing list]
* [https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators SL Educators Mailing list]


* [http://list.academ-x.com/listinfo.cgi/slrl-academ-x.com Second Life Researchers List]
* [http://list.academ-x.com/listinfo.cgi/slrl-academ-x.com Second Life Researchers List]
* [https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educatorsandteens Educators and Teens (for educators working with teens 13-17)]


=== Manuals ===
=== Manuals ===
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* [http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pinastri/118/169/23 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pinastri/118/169/23] (SecondPresentation Display Panel)
* [http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pinastri/118/169/23 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pinastri/118/169/23] (SecondPresentation Display Panel)


=== In education ===
* [http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki Second Life Education Wiki]
* [http://sl-educationblog.org/ Second Life Education Blog]
* [http://simteach.com/ Simteach resources]
* [http://del.icio.us/secondlife/Education Del.icio.us postings]
* [http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Membership/Member_Networking/ISTE_Second_Life.htm International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE): Second Life]
* [http://community.discoveryeducation.com/ Discovery Educator Network]


=== Other ===
=== Other ===


* [http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki Second Life Education Wiki]
* [[Sloodle]] is an attempt to integrate this with an [[LMS]].


* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life Wikipedia Second Life entry]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life Wikipedia Second Life entry]

Revision as of 13:07, 25 August 2008

Draft

Definition

“Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 2,938,247 people from around the globe.” ([1], 17:22, 26 January 2007 (MET)).

See also: Active Worlds

In education

  • In "Second Life", there are educational events and even some learning activities (to be documented, for the moment see the education links below).

How to

To experience second life you should have a computer with a 3D graphics card (e.g. nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4 MX or better). Clients exist for Win/Mac and Linux (alpha as of dec 2007)

Installation

  • Easy on Windows ...
For Linux (procedure shown for root install)

Daniel K. Schneider tested SL on Ubuntu 8.04 with a Dell Precision 380 desktop with a Quadro FX 3450 card. Seems to work perfectly well...

The little installation note applies to the version you can see below (aug 2008).

  • Open a terminal and become root (type 'su').
  • Download from here and save to some directory
  • Uncompress, e.g. type: bunzip2 SecondLife_XXXX.bz2. This will give you a tar archive
  • Untar the thing to some place, e.g. put it in /usr/local
tar xf SecondLife_i686_1_20_15_92456.tar -C /usr/local
  • You may want to change permission to your normal user name
chown -R xxx:yyy SecondLife_i686_1_20_15_92456/
  • Then you may make the directory name more general (change it next time)
ln -s SecondLife_i686_1_20_15_92456/ sl
  • Finally read README-Linux.txt file that sits in the top directory

To use it, open a terminal and type something like:

/usr/local/sl/secondlife &

Finding places in Second Life

A good way to find things is to use SLURLs that provide direct teleport links to locations. Do not try to find things inside SL (e.g. from the starting area). I could become a big frustration to you. Rather, find interesting things through web sites like the Second Life Education Wiki.

Syntax of a SLURL

http://slurl.com/secondlife/<region>/<x-coordinate>/<y-coordinate>/<z-coordinate>/

Example (the Sistine Chapel of Vassar):

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vassar/200/85/27

If your second life client is correctly installed, then you simply can enter a SLURL URI in your default browser. I will show you first a kind of google map. You then can click to teleport to the location in your Second life client. Note for Linux users: if can't make it work from your web browser, open the Second life help in the Second life client (or hit F1). This will open a internal little web browser within wich you can enter the SLURL....

SLURLs can be customized, e.g. you add a picture, e.g. http://slurl.com/secondlife/<region><x/y/z>?img=http://yourdomain/pict.jpg&title=Your title&msg=Your message

Links

Official or closely related to SL/Linden

Of interest to education
Mailing lists

Manuals

  • LSL Portal community wiki to provide accurate documentation for the scripting language of Second Life (LSL)
  • There is also a manual that you can find from the second life client. (lsl_guide.html)

Extensions

In education

Other

  • Sloodle is an attempt to integrate this with an LMS.

Example educational sites

Search "slurl education" or something like this in google.

References

  • Gregory M. Lamb, Real learning in a virtual world, Christian Science Monitor, October 05, 2006 edition. HTML
  • Davis, Vicki A. (2007). The frontier of education: Web 3D, Blog Entry. HTML, retrieved 20:03, 25 April 2007 (MEST). (This is the best blog article on SL Daniel K. Schneider has seen so far).
  • Antonacci, David M. and Nellie Modaress (2005). The Educational Possibilities of a Massively Multiplayer Virtual World (MMVW). EDUCAUSE HTML