Salmon, G. (2009). The future for (second) life and learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(3), pp.526-538.
Available at: http://edtc6325group2.pbworks.com/f/Future_for_Second_Life_and_Learning.pdf
Brief Summary:
Within this journal article, the author Gilly Salmon, who is a professor of e-learning and learning technologies talks about the potential of three-dimensional multi-user environments and the future developments there are in the environment of learning. Gilly Salmon talks about the trends there are to date, talks about the realism and the creativity that this has given back in to education.
Although this journal is quite long, it gives the reader a very clear overview of what will be spoken about throughout, it explores the aspects of the constructions into the virtual representations of learners and teachers as avatars, and she reveals a wide range of intriguing issues that are yet to be researched. Because this journal is quite long, I have chosen to focus on the introduction and key points from the conclusion to give an in depth overview into what this article aims to get across.
My choice to review this article comes from it going into detail about one route of virtual reality but also because it is one mode of virtual reality that has existed since 2006 and is becoming more and more popular, especially in the educational sector and is contributing to moving beyond traditional classroom based lessons.
Critical Discussion:
This journal begins with the author making it very clear that she doesn’t want to attempt to talk about creating and constructing the future and intertwining the advances there has been in economics, technology, sociology, engineering, and other disciplines but that she wants to focus on the stimulating systematic and imaginative thoughts about the future. As a reader I thought this was very captivating as there is already a lot of research that has been done on this topic, about the creation and construction of three-dimensional multi-user environments and what plans there are for it in the future but I am yet to find research that is written to stimulate thinking about the future. The author notes that nothing can be predicted but that it is important to contemplate possible futures and the choices that are available to all of us. The focus of the article is based around her research on second life which has suggested that it is low cost but holds a high value for learning.
The author goes on to mention that the spotlight focus throughout this article is the emergence of three-dimensional multi-user environments within the education sector and highlights that she will ignore the word ‘if’ as she hopes to demonstrate that the future for three-dimensional multi-user environments rests on learning design and pedagogical application. As mentioned above, to me it is easy to grasp what this article is about and I believe it is an article that is all about the emergence of second life and how it is becoming a very popular virtual reality, which is reiterated in the introduction of the article as it is mentioned that the article will only touch upon three perspectives that there are in the future of three-dimensional multi-user environments being in the sector of higher education.
Moving into the main body of this article the author talks about how the web-based virtual worlds are increasing in importance and have been since 2006. It notes that the number of registered users of second life have grown rapidly over the years, and how now there is an increasing interest from educational institutions. The author believes that second life is experiential, collaborative and immersive in ways that no virtual learning environment or classroom ever could be and she believes that this mode of teaching is important in the future. To me, this highlights the issue that comes with the educational sector taking a huge interest into this route of teaching as this is completely technology based and if it continues to improve in the way it has since 2006 it will result in children no longer needing to go to school to be taught but to just go into their virtual world whilst being at home.
Final Summary:
To finish, I believe that this article gives an in-depth overview into second life and the possible paths that second life has to go down in the future. As the author mentions at the end of this article ‘it was inevitable that in the early days of second life people would reproduce the buildings and classrooms they were familiar with in real life’, reiterating the worry of classroom based teaching being wiped out completely by virtual worlds in the future.
Virtual Reality 