Peoria Journal Star
Sci Tech
Tuesday October 17, 2006
original URL [no longer available] <http://www.pjstar.com/stories/101706/SCI_BB7JRGPD.065.shtml>
Imagine being able to roll out of bed two minutes before your college class starts and still show up on time, with perfectly styled hair, in a crisp, new outfit.
Sound attractive?
What if, after class, you realize you've been gaining a little weight, so you decide to drop 15 pounds - and it's done, just like that, in 15 seconds. Or maybe you don't really feel like doing homework, so you instantly teleport yourself to a hopping casino or a peaceful cabin on a secluded lake.
Even better?
Well, it's possible, if you plan to take Professor Ed Lamoureux's ethnography class at Bradley University this January.
That's because - for the first time at Bradley and in one of the earliest attempts nationwide - this college course will be taught in a totally different dimension: a 3-D, multimedia, entirely virtual world.
It's not real life, it's Second Life, a digital online community created by its residents. The site, which opened to the public in 2003, has grown exponentially in recent months. Today it is inhabited by nearly a million people from around the globe.
For this three-week, interim multimedia class, Lamoureux and eight students will, from their own personal computers, all log on to secondlife.com at the same time each day and maneuver their online, video-game-looking personas - called avatars - to a virtual classroom for an hour of lecture and discussion.
Special technology will allow each member's avatar to speak and listen in real time. They'll simply press a button to communicate.
"Really it'll be just like a face-to-face class, except when I have to speak, I'll have to hold down my walkie-talkie (button)," Lamoureux said.
The class content is ethnography, or studying a group of people through field research. Essentially, these students will be studying interactions in the very virtual environment they'll be exploring for the first time themselves, attempting to gather information about how people communicate in Second Life - at virtual stores, music venues, yard sales, libraries, casinos and other locales.
Students will maintain blogs to document their observations. The online field research will be safer both for students and their subjects, Lamoureux noted, because students won't actually be knocking on doors or hanging out on the streets in a real-world environment.
Another reality
Second Life is a place where you can go dancing at virtual nightclubs, attend fashion shows and art openings, experience reenactments of historical events, attend support groups or just play games. You can join the community for free, but it costs $10 a month to own your own piece of property in the virtual world.
There is a real economy in Second Life. Users pay real money to acquire online money, called Linden dollars, which can be converted back to real cash. So the casinos are real casinos, and real estate speculators are able to turn a real-life profit on their online dealings. Users also can sell what they create in this online world, such as art, buildings, animations and cars, Lamoureux said.
The Alliance Library System, a network of central Illinois libraries based in East Peoria, has developed a presence in Second Life over the past five months. They're the first library system in North America to set up an Info Island in Second Life. It includes a main virtual library and a variety of others specializing in medicine, government documents, science fiction and other topics.
Those who enter the virtual libraries can click to access online card catalogs and various databases. Volunteer librarians staff virtual reference desks to help connect people with the information they seek.
"We have been attracting a lot of interest around the world," said Kitty Pope, the Alliance's executive director. "What is really important to the Alliance is this is an international cooperation."
Bradley's Cullom-Davis Library has its own virtual library in Second Life that resembles the building on campus, as well as a Lydia Moss Bradley House featuring photos of the Bradley founder and her family, as well as photos of historical Bradley artifacts. Barbara Galik, executive director at Cullom-Davis, says they hope to eventually display student exhibits there, too.
The goal, Pope and Galik say, is to reach out to a segment of the population that may never enter a traditional, bricks-and-mortar library, with an engaging, multimedia approach.
"As I watch the younger kids, this is a world they're very comfortable with. I think we're trying to get to the places where students are and teach them there as well as in the real world," Galik said.
"Especially the younger people, they want to contribute, they want to create," said Lori Bell, the Alliance Library System's director of innovation. "They don't just want to be passive and see a flat Web page anymore. They want more interaction. They want to create environments and participate in them."
But Second Life isn't just a world for the young, notes Bell, 45, who recently encountered an 82-year-old resident in Second Life. She said the virtual world is a great place for people seeking a support network, including those who are homebound. There are a variety of special communities designed for those with autism, Alzheimer's and more.
"It gives the chance for people to participate in a supportive environment without having to reveal who they really are," she said.
"There are a lot of social aspects to it, too. . . . The other night me and my husband went dancing at the Ritz Hotel."
An idealized world
Lamoureux estimates he spends an hour a day in Second Life, mostly just learning to navigate the software. "But I have made some friends, visited some venues," he said.
One of his initial observations is that users seem to be very concerned about their virtual identities.
"One spends a lot of time tweaking their appearance. They're constantly changing clothes, styles. How long does it take to lose 100 pounds in real life? In Second Life it's instantaneous," he said.
Lamoureux's online avatar has a young face with a goatee, rippling muscles and a Harley Davidson jacket.
He describes Second Life as almost an idealized world. The graphics and landscape - all "built" by users - are aesthetically pleasing, and "people tend to be very nice to each other."
Lamoureux, an associate professor for Bradley's multimedia program, typically teaches the theory end of the spectrum. So jumping into this highly technical world was a bit of a leap at first.
"I was a little disconnected in that way from my students," he said, explaining that many in the program are gamers, and all want to produce multimedia in some form.
Pope applauds the professor's efforts.
"I really think that Bradley is very astute in evaluating trends and knowing how they need to position students," she said. "There's going to be a lot of students coming out of the university in the next couple of years that are going to have to know how to work in a virtual world."
Lamoureux got involved in the Second Life class as co-director of Bradley's New Media Consortium, part of an international group of 200 colleges, universities, museums and other organizations dedicated to the use of new media and new technologies in higher education. The consortium recently set up a campus in Second Life, hoping to explore the potential for teaching in a virtual environment.
"There's a chance this could be a platform for continuing education in this country," Lamoureux said. In fact, this sort of virtual world could become the next version of the Web, he said, where instead of logging on to the New York Times Web site, you manipulate your online body into the Times' lobby and virtually thumb through a paper there.
Galik said it took her many months to really grasp the potential of this medium, but now, every time she discusses it, she gets more ideas. Second Life could be used to teach business students how to operate a business. It can transport students to the places they're studying, such as religious temples in Asia or the castle of King Henry VIII. It can provide a simulated learning environment for teaching people how to fight fires or respond to bioterrorism.
"There's so much you can learn and do in Second Life, but you have to stretch your mind a little," Galik said.
republished by permission of the Peoria Journal Star. No further republication allowed without written permission of PJS .