We looked at the use of games and virtual worlds in learning. Our hands on practical session using second life was interesting but prone to technical problems – most of the group could not get into the Imperial College area so my avatar did not interact with many people. We could have done with a longer session to allow us to mimic the medical students, I didn’t have time to register and start treating a patient. I did manage to open virtual folders and see course timetables though. I ran out of time to customise my avatar too. Maybe we should all have pre registered before the practical session had started?
I could see this technology being useful for remote or distance learning students as long as their PC can cope (plus they will need broadband) as it allows them to interact with each other visually instead of just text based media.
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September 3, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Jenny
Yes these are all really good points – we seemed to run out of time very quickly during this year’s session. And the idea of pre-registering sounds like a good one. Really we could easily spend 1.5 hours on the hands-on part of this session.
I’ve also solved the problem of gettnig to the Queens Tower now – so hopefully that won’t be as much of a problem when we have a try at the end of tomorrow’s session!