Second Life: What's it for?

Last night I decided to give Second Life another chance. Most of my experiences there have been rather boring. I've been wandering around without much ado, often being the only avatar in sight. Well last night this changed a bit. How you ask?

1. I clicked on Search on the bottom of the screen.
2. I clicked on places (not popular places just places) on the top of the pop-up window.
3. I clicked on ISTE or International Society for Technology in Education
4. I teleported myself over there.
5. The rest was easy and fun.

I met KJ, wonderful guy who gave me a tour of an island that many edtechers live on. I'm still getting used to moving around my avatar, but that was OK because KJ teleported me. We ended up chatting for a while and it was the most fun that I've had in SL. I'm looking forward to going back.

But, I"ve still got a question. What's the point of it. It's got to be more than just an opportunity to chat about technology. I'm not a technology person and frankly I don't think that technology for its own sake is very important. It's got to help people accomplish an important task or it's worthless.

Here's the thought that I'm playing with. I'm thinking about renting an apartment in SL and hosting a weekly get together. The purpose of the get together would be to discuss current events. We'd consider three questions: 1. What are the important current events of the week? 2. How could we most effectively engage students in thinking about these current events? 3. What standards and benchmarks would we be achieving when discussing these current events?

I think it might also be neat to make one of the walls in my apartment, which I don't have yet, continuous feeds of newspaper articles from around the world. I'm not sure if it is possible to do this, but it should be.

If SL is to have any real educational value, within the K-12 system, different groups should be forming around different topics. For example, what about having a meet up for science teachers once a week to discuss the use of experiments, it could certainly be more specific than this.

What do you think of such an idea?

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