Second Life Education Research

I just listened to Joseph Jaffe’s Across the Sound podcast. It’s a new media marketing podcast but today’s episode is about identity and marketing and it’s absolutely fascinating (episode #38).  Jaffe and Eric Norlin are interviewed about the problems with identity and internet marketing. It’s fantastic to see the issue of online identity discussed from […]

What changes when we teach in a MUVE (Multi User Virtual Environment) vs. a Traditional classroom (TC)?

Traditional markers of authority such as age and classroom structure (teacher up front) are gone. Is this a bad thing? How is authority reestablished in […]

Extending the Psychosocial Moratorium and Transparent Translation of Semiotic Domains in SecondLife
Eric Erickson’s concept of the Psychosocial Moratorium has been used by Sherry Turkle, James Paul Gee and others to describe the suspension of responsibility and accountability that allows internet users to explore alternate identities without the repercussions and dangers one might face in real […]

John Paul Gee describes the relationship with one’s virtual and real self as a tripartite relationship consisting of:
1. The Real identity: who we are in the physical world. I am Sarah Robbins
2. The Virtual identity: who we are in the virtual space. I am Intellagirl
3. The Projected Identity: “Project” here is used in two ways. […]

Toward a Better Understanding of the Body in the Virtual Realm

I can distinctly remember back in 198*mumbles* when my body began to change. My legs got longer, my hips got a bit more ample, and then the whole breast thing happened. Of course, like any life-altering “you can’t go back no matter how much you […]

It may seem almost overly obvious to say that SecondLife is postmodern. It’s a virtual world. Enough said. Right? Well, not quite. So I’d like to explore it a bit.

What makes SecondLife postmodern? First, we should define postmodern. Through the lenses of Foucault, Lyotard, and Derrida, we can define postmodernism as a theory in which […]

You know you’ve spent too much time in SecondLife when…

You see a cute guy/gal at a bar and you want to right click on them to read their profile.
You stand naked in front of the mirror wishing there was a slider to reduce your belly.
You walk out of the mall, realize your car is at […]

Gorgias, a Sophist, believed that language had power: the power to move, the power to influence the will and the imagination, and the power to create understanding in an audience. As a Sophist, he believed that all arguments have multiple sides, that there was no one Truth, and that our interpretation of reality is subjective […]

Technorati Profile

Just a few observations about SecondLife that I want to mull over later but that I don’t want to forget.
1. Family: Because there is a set of standard last names to choose from when you create an account there are many people in the game who share your last name. Family? Distant relations? How could […]