Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching

The use of virtual environments or worlds for educational purposes sounds like a novel idea. The practicalities of actually using them for anything productive are another matter. It seems like a interesting research study, looking at people who live virtual worlds and how their virtual lives compares to the real world. I personally am not sold on the idea for using SL or similar programs to conduct instruction of students. I do agree that their are a number of learning and educational benefits in using these programs in general. However conducting a class in a virtual world at this point seems overly complicated and troublesome. The major benefit that I see as pointed out by the article is using the virtual world to conduct experiments that would be to dangerous or costly to do in the real world. A wonderful use of technology but this is far from how it seems to work right now. As the article states their are a number of barriers that prevent instructors from being able to use these CMC and software tools in a fluid and successful manner. I think first before we scramble to start using SL for teaching it has to come a lot further in terms of fixing SLs technical problems, simplicity of use and cost effectiveness. It requires a great deal of understanding of SL, hardware and software requirements, bandwidth, and support software to fully utilize SL. That puts a big burden on the teacher and the student just to use a program thats by the articles own admission is fraught with a variety of issues and limitations. While its potential is noted it appears to me that its scope of benefits are currently limited and educators would be better served for the most part to use a channel of CMC that is more conducive to achieving their goal in a more efficient manner.