Education and Second Life

I've been trying to comment on a post by another student in the class, but my comment hasn't shown up. I thought I'd post it here as well:

Second Life (SL) has a lot of potential for education, as many people have recognized, and probably even more for professional development as we figure out how we can use it.

I joined SL last May just in time to attend sessions at the Second Life Best Practices in Education 2007 Conference. Videos of some of the addresses are still available in the video archive.

Last week, the New Media Consortium held a Symposium on Creativity with an education track in SL. I heard some very positive feedback from a friend who attended.

The SLED (Second Life EDucators) listserv has over 3500 subscribers. In addition, a lot of colleges and universities, libraries, and professional organizations have bought sims or created groups in SL, including ISTE, AECT, and the Sloan Consortium.

Even though K-12 teachers can't actually use SL for their classes because of the age limit (though there is a teen grid for 13 to 18 year olds), ISTE is extremely active in SL. They have an island and weekly activities.

AECT has a group in SL, but I haven't found out any more.

The last couple of months, I've been working with the Sloan Consortium to organize networking and professional development activities for college and university educators in SL.

In using SL for educational purposes, we just need to be careful not to try to do things with it that can be done better with other tools.