Virtual Worlds

This week in class we talked about virtual gaming and its place in education. We read an article and watched a youtube video about Second Life, which is a virtual world similar to The Sims. I remember playing The Sims a few times but I just could not get into it. My brother loved it though! I think that because I have a hard time getting excited about it, it would be difficult to use this in my classroom. Also being a mother of 2 little ones I don't have the time available to invest in developing a "virtual world" to use with my curriculum. I also think that with the limited time teachers have to teach each topic, this would/could be a total time waster. Students could spend a lot of time and not complete the task at hand. If I taught in an area that had a laptop program I might think about doing something that deals with the virtual world, because they have time at home to complete the work and spend as much extra time on it as they would like.

I'm all over the place on my feelings for it. Because of how involved people get in virtual worlds it becomes another gaming problem. Students will be spending more time indoors on the laptop or computer all because of an assignment that a teacher gave them!

I don't think that VR is a fad because I remember it when I was in 6th grade with a VR game at Studio 28 and it's still around. It is evolving and there are still people out there who enjoy it. As long as there is bullying, depression, etc. there will be VR. There will always be someone who wants/needs to escape the reality that they are in and VR gives them that opportunity.

-Amy Miles

Checking out some educational technology blogs

http://www.emergingedtech.com/2011/12/education-technology-tweet-wrap-for-the-week-of-11-28-11/comment-page-1/#comment-27058

This week it was hard to find an actual blog for some reason. Lots of them I found seemed to be articles more than a blog.