There.com, an alternative to Second Life

In a previous post, I was exploring Second Life and its use in law schools, found out that it is blocked here at Albany Law.

While reading this issue of Campus Technology, I discovered There.com:

There.com (Makena Technologies), which boasts about 750,000 members worldwide, is “an immersive 3D environment.” But of all the virtual worlds, There  is the most user-friendly, and even New York Law School holds classes within it.

So I dowloaded the software, created an Avatar (I’m DSC59 in There and Evelyn Shabazz in SL) and it works so far.

“Currently, New York Law School cosponsors an offshoot of There.com: the State of Play Academy, or SOPA, an entire academy built in a virtual world. Users can take courses in patent law, copyright law, virtual world law, and municipal WiFi policy, among others. The classes are scheduled at a wide variety of times; law professors, journalists, and technologists line up to teach them.”

I enrolled in the State of Play Academy and found a large selection of papers, conversations and how-to’s offered this semester related to law and technology.

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What is Second Life?

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 2,813,588 people from around the globe.

Educationally:

Students and Educators can work together in Second Life from anywhere in the world as part of a globally networked virtual classroom environment. Using Second Life as a supplement to traditional classroom environments also provides new opportunities for enriching an existing curriculum. Many universities and educational institutions are already using Second Life.

The Campus:Second Life program will give professors the use of 1 acre of land in Second Life completely free for the duration of your class. This allows them to try out Second Life with their class for the first time at no cost!

 This article in The Phoenix gives more information on Second Life.

Law School:

Students at Harvard Law School use Second Life.  In fact, they use Second Life for a course entitled CyberOne (the students meet on Berman Island). You can also take the course, watch video lectures, sign up for virtual office hours and participate in discussions and the like through the Law school in Second Life

This is an exercept from the course blog:

“Last night we had our first official class in Second Life. The 40 students enrolled in our class came to Berkman Island in two groups, half at 9pm and half at 10pm. When they arrived on the island they gathered in the outdoor meeting space in front of Austin Hall. We further split them into two groups and Gene took one group into Austin Hall and I took the other over to our Library. .. At our library you can view the videos of each of the lectures as well as all of our assignments! After making sure that we all knew how to sit down and stand up, we started a simple introductory activity….”

Are we ready for Second Life at Albany Law?  Should we buy an island?

First I’d like to explore it. I chose Evelyn Shabazz as my avatar’s name.  My own computer does not have an update to date graphics card and the firewall here is blocking the program on my office computer.

For now, I’ll stick to blogging.

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