3D Virtual Worlds / Second Life

    There is no doubt that technology is an indispensable part of the 21^st century. Day by day we make sure that this fact is true. Wherever we go, whatever we do we cannot imagine our life without today’ high tech tools.  Living in the age of learning we have to do our best to keep up with the rapidly growing technology in order to be skilled with the different technological tools. One of such tools or inventions that has widespread and rooted in peoples’ lives throughout the world are virtual worlds.

    What is a virtual world? Virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment where a user creates a character or as we generally say today takes the form of an avatar and starts his / her  extraordinary adventure to his /her second life. For the past years it has been proved that this term has found its direct implication not only as an entertainment tool, but also in such spheres as medicine, business and education. More and more researchers express their opinions about using virtual worlds for learning purposes, particularly in foreign language learning. The most well-known and largest social virtual world today is Second Life (SL). It was created in 2003 and has gained the population of the whole world. Over 300 universities use SL as a learning resource which is the alternative of traditional classrooms and teaching which educators find it very exciting. Let’s take a look and see what advantages the usage of SL in learning has over traditional classroom teaching.

     First of all, as any other social website SL provides an opportunity to connect with the whole world which in its turn allows students to meet and interact with tons of people from different corners of our universe, establishing cross-cultural interaction.  Secondly, it fosters collaboration and cooperation between students. SL caters experimental learning. For instance, when learning medical theories virtual world can be an excellent opportunity for creating labs where students will be able to test, practice or experiment with these new theories learnt in class. Therefore, SL is a great place to learn in natural settings, because it places students in real-life contexts and authentic situations which students themselves are allowed to create and design. Building their own world in its turn promotes creativity, imagination and innovative ideas that can be a good way for creating group work projects.SL also provides an opportunity for real-time interaction with native speakers as an authentic source for language enhancement. This interaction is highly desired and rarely achieved in classroom settings. Furthermore, automaticity and speed of response promotes developing oral and written communication fluency skills through incorporating avatars, voice or text chat. In this case communication will be more productive and effective and thus more enjoyable. SL offers stress-free environment in which students can feel comfortable without sense of anxiety and fear while communicating with native speakers. Therefore, it builds confidence in students to speak freely while interacting in the real world. Besides, developing speaking and writing skills, it has been suggested that SL increases students’ vocabulary. Thus, SL can be used for improving fours skills; however, it is mostly applicable for developing life skills.

      As any technological tool SL has also its challenges. First of all, this type of learning should be carefully planned by instructors before launching it. Secondly, it does not offer tools to monitor or track students. Thirdly, for students who are not subject to collaborative work inside “real classroom”, it will be more difficult for them to get adjusted in a virtual world, which may also lead to boredom. From the social perspective, SL may lead to social isolation in which the user of virtual reality relies more on interactions that take place in a virtual world than on experiences in the real world. The isolation could eventually cause depression, disassociation and other conditions, if it is severe enough. SL decreases human interaction. Entering virtual world leads people to lose sense of reality. Very often they are so plunged and addicted to their second life that they do not wish to come back to the real life. Being incapable to solve the problems in real life people try to escape from it through virtual world where everything seems solvable. That way, people involuntarily become the “prisoners” of the world they created and gradually cut off from the real life. From the ethical point of view, through offering a communication environment you do not know who you are talking to, which may cause blackmail, harassment and so forth.

     Technology, as well as virtual world is a real good thing, however day by day it deprives us from face-to-face communication, feeling real emotions, communication and interaction with people. Having all this in mind, why do people feel more confident and better life in this faked-up reality? Different people have different reasons. For instance, healthcare agencies offer to use SL for the disabled who can experience freedom by temporarily leaving their disabilities and doing things, through their avatars, like walking, fishing, exploring and other physical activities. For these people creating new world makes them feel confident, free and happy.

P. S.

     Recently I experienced Second Life (SL) virtual world. It was different from other games I played. It is such an unexplainable feeling when you are in two places at the same time. It’s like you are here in your reality, however you have another life, second life there in another reality. I did not turn to manuals; first, I just started to “play”.  I signed in and decided to see what it is, how it works. When I got into second life everything was so vague for me, I did not understand what to do, where to go, how to move around. At that moment I got message form one of the residents of SL who decided to help. To the answer how he understood whether I was new, he replied it was evident by my avatar appearance which I did not know how to change and the way I moved around. However, after all of the help he provided I couldn’t figure out what to do. I knew form the very beginning that it was not mine, however why not to try? I consider the reason why this “game” did not have any impact on me was the difficulty of handling this technology or the fact that I basically do not play this type of games. Finally, the reason might be that I ran out of interest towards games on the overall long time ago. Anyway, I cannot give a definite answer.

      As you see I am hesitating in the usefulness and rightfulness of this tool. With this hesitation I remembered the movie about virtual world that I have seen couple of times in order to get the very sense of it. This movie is called” Inception” where the world is created inside of the human mind, called artificial reality. It has some similarity with virtual world.

   Therefore, weighting all the above-mentioned facts, I can definitely say that I prefer to live in my own reality, where I can go to university, meet my peers, professors, communicate and interact with them, meet my friends, be surrounded with the people I love and share with them real feelings and emotions.   

     So what will you say? Are you ready to live in a virtual, faked-up world?

     While you are thinking, listen to the breathtaking piece of music “Time” by Hans Zimmer which is as a soundtrack to the movie “Inception”.

     Listen & Enjoy.