Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

When I visited with EdTechTalk hosts, Dave Cormier and Jeff Lebow, on Wednesday, they turned me onto Second Life. I am so very green in this space, but from what I understand, this highly populated (by nearly 200,000 people) virtual environment–an artifical world with its own economy and real estate–is home to a whole universe of creative folks.  And it is now being explored and adopted by both educators and librarians. 

It’s not just for MMORPGers. Can school libraries exist in new synthetic environments?  Can we reach new groups of users with our avatars?  Can we convincingly represent the feel of a virtual school library in an artificial reality environment? I am eager to play with this concept.

Yes, the Second Life landscape is home to gambling and sex activities, but I think we can look forward to a growing number of zones that will be safe for our educational experiments and projects.  And I suspect, my students would love to see our own Virtual Library move into this kind of exciting and far more interactive environment. 

After my discussion with Jeff and Dave, I discovered other library bloggers are exploring Second Life’s potential.  Much of what is happening seems to be happening in the public library realm. 

Take a look at Shifted Librarian Jenny Levine’s thoughts on Second Life http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2006/04/12/second_library.html

And Michael Stephen’s Tame the Web blog: http://tametheweb.com/2006/05/second_life_library_20_introdu.html

The Alliance Library System and OPAL are collaborating and hope to offer programs and library services via Second Life. http://secondlife.com/education

Also see:  Alliance Second Life Library 2.0 to track the future and meet the Second Life Library movers and shakers http://secondlifelibrary.blogspot.com/2006/05/introduction-to-alliance-second-life.html

Teen Grid now exists for ages 13-17  http://teen.secondlife.com/