Using Second Life

Once you have created your avatar and entered the world, you will have to become familiar with the ways of moving your avatar around. When you first arrive, you are given a short tutorial about how to move, and it would be a good idea to practice various things to become comfortable with the basic movements.

You can also start to explore the parts of the world that could be interesting from a language and communication point of view. This ranges from the kinds of “lands” that people create (including copying famous landmarks) to what and how you would interact with others. In most educational settings, we have found that it is a good idea to have some basic rules about maintaining conversation. As there are more limited indications of the desire to contribute, for example, we need to be able to know when and how to give someone a turn in the conversation.

List your ideas of what would be useful rules to have note these for yourself prepare some ideas of what you might want to talk about in Second Life when you meet the others come to the group meeting in Holyrood Park (check with the tutor when this will be) ready to try out some conversations try out some further communication and interaction episodes with others (you will have to arrange to “meet” at a certain place and time)

As with the blogs and wikis, you will spend some time getting to grips with what the environment offers, but you can continue to make notes about what you find easy, what is confusing, what instructions you think your students would need, and so on