"Second Life" Comes to Life

There are many things that I will admit to.

1) I am addicted to reality television

2) I can't get enough of celebrity news

3) iCarly is one of my favorite shows (and I constantly watch Disney and Nick)

4) At this very moment I have a Hello Kitty Band-Aid on my finger

However, one thing that I never really got into was the whole video game thing. While I will never hate on Nintendo and Super Nintendo, and I have caught a little Wii fever (I mean who doesn't want to get into an intense game of Wii table tennis), I just couldn't understand how my guy friends could spend days playing the new Halo or Madden.

Anywho, one thing that has been the new buzz on the web and in my classrooms is Second Life. Second Life is "virtual world launched...in 2003....that enables it users to interact with each other through avatars." Here is the the video one of my professors showed us in class over the educational uses of Second Life.


After watching this video I became somewhat familiar with the in's and out's of Second Life, however I was not sold on just how much relevant Second Life was to my life. Then as I was riding the bus to school the other day, I was reading a copy of the Daily Texan and came across this article which outlined how our University hundreds of thousands of dollars in virtual realty in Second Life. It amazes me that cyber-space can cost that much, and that in the middle of an economic crisis UT deems it important to buy virtual land. What are your thoughts on this expenditure?

A couple days later I was going through some articles on my Google Reader, and came across this article on ReadWriteWeb, which outlined the investment that The University of Texas made in Second Life and the implications it would have on the future of Second Life.

Are we starting a new phenomenom? Is the classroom going to go entirely virtual? How do students feel about this? Personally I like going to class, creating relationships not only with my peers but with my professors. I don't think that relationship can be made through avatars. Plus, not everyone is going to be who they really are in person, online.