Friday, September 26, 2008

Second Life in Education - A Peek...

I guess this would be one video everyone would have found but it sure gives us a good insight into what future second life might lead to!~





I suppose that if it's really as awesome as it seems, it will get alot of us sucked straight into the world of second life. I still feel that it is a double-edged sword though. Cos we won't know if we are opening up a can of sardines or a can of worms. But the ability to go so many places at a touch of a mouse is incredible.

Question... will we lose touch with reality? We watched the Matrix and we've seen that with extremely advanced technology, will the things we touch, smell, see and hear be just "wool pulled over our eyes?" (quoted from Morpheus in the Matrix) We'll need to be able to discern between what's real and what's fiction. Learning is fun but is it the truth? With the internet, there is an ever increasing need to verify the validity of the information posted there. Even though Wikipedia is an ever growing vault of knowledge, it is not 100% accurate. So is there a possibility that we what we learn is not what really is?

Gosh... that's a whole chunk of stuff that I've rattled on about...



And as put up in my previous post, I think it's worth looking at this blog

http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/

In addition this is a little slideshow i got off the above website to summarize what they have been working on!

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi David,

Excellent finds on SL!

One response about your comment on Wikipedia: There is NO source that can be 100% accurate, not even libraries. In fact, libraries probably contain the most fallacies since they contain books that have not been updated!

Nowadays it is pointless to think of a source of absolute truth or that "the truth is out there". The "truth" is negotiated and constructed by people cognitively and socially.

On a side note, you might be interested to know that Nature, a well-respected journal, did a comparison of science articles in online Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia. Based on a sample of equivalent articles (and assuming my math is correct), Britannica had an average of almost 2.5 errors per article. Wikipedia had 3.2 errors. However, Wikipedians respond more quickly to correcting errors. It is the social construction (and correction) of knowledge in action!

In short, what you think you know is quite subjective. It depends on your education, culture, access to technology, and many other things. This was true in the past and it is true now. And that's the truth! :)

Dr Tan

September 27, 2008 at 7:02 AM

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