Week 4 - Blog Posting #7 -Second Life

So today I, I being Majestia Nayar in Second Life, checked out both the Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Multiple Intelligences areas.

First, I went to the MI area. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Koru/58/212/0 There was a self reflection mirror and meditation area to represent intrapersonal thinking. Then I went to the musical intelligence area where there were a number of steel drums, bells, and a harp to show musical ability. I think that by touching the objects you were supposed to hear the different sounds and patterns, but I couldn’t figure it out. There was tree, a swing and animals in another area to represent naturalistic intelligence, puzzles to solve in the math intelligence area, things to manipulate in the spatial intelligence area, a library for linguistic intelligence and group seating area to show interpersonal intelligence. I thought it was neat how they had represented all of the intelligences through the settings.

The second place I visited was the Bloom’s Taxonomy. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Teaching%204/208/175/25I liked how it had the stairs showing the levels of thinking, and as you clicked on each step it would describe the different levels of thinking. There only seemed to be two areas to represent Bloom’s Taxonomy, so I ended up flying around. I found an area that taught about the chemistry of water, a place to learn about world journalism, and also an accounting area.

When I was in the accounting area of second life, the first contact that was made by a fellow named Marshall Oleander. He said “Hello. I’m here for the orgy.” How’s that for learning about accounting/multiples in numbers?! Actually I found it sad that in an area that is to promote thinking and learning, there is this idea of “hooking up.” I am not a fan of many of the areas on SL because it is all about looking at nude avatars or watching nude avatars. It seemed so weird about being approached about an orgy on SL in an educational area.

I almost logged off after that moment, but I ended up going to the ISTE area. I found that this has been the most useful area I have found yet on SL. When I first got there I walked around. I found a board that displayed meeting times for ISTE members. I then saw Scott who is a greeter/go to guy in the ISTE. I asked him about meetings and he told me that the next on is on Thursday. I would love to see this next meeting time, but I have to go to an alumni band event that night. I did become a member, and I did check out an archived version of one of the ISTE Eduverse Talk series. http://www.iste-eduverse.org/ From watching this video I learned about the 4 C’s with Social Media and saw how ISTE is using Ning.

Overall, I am still not a huge fan of SL. I see that there could be a great potential for promoting learning on SL. I just wish that the porno side of SL would not be promoted in educational areas. It is such a drawback.