Educators need to get real about their unrealistic expectations of Second Life

Photograph from the University of Delaware build in Second Life built by Ravenelle Zugzwang

Recently on New World Notes, Hamlet Au wrote about Educators not having proper equipment to run Second Life and suggested that Second Life is not friendly toward educators needs.

Here is a snip from the article:

Now Stan Trevena of Pacificrimx is frantically trying to upgrade his Modesto high school’s computers in preparation for a visit from their Kyoto counterparts.  In a later update he writes:

I know that I am not alone in wrestling with older machines in the labs and classrooms in K12. There has been little money over the past five years for replacing computers, many of which were purchased back in the digital high school days (now approaching ten years old!)  While I strongly support the increased fidelity of the new client with respect to atmospheric effects, I strongly denounce the abandoning of lower end computers that are all too common on our high school campuses.

TEN YEAR OLD COMPUTERS????? HOLY COW, this isn’t a problem with Second Life my friends.

Here is a link to the current system requirements for running Second Life. You will find that the minimum requirement support  Windows 2000, 800mhz Pentium II, 512 MB, NVIDIA GeForce 2. I imagine you can’t run with all the bells and whistles that Second Life has but that certainly isn’t any blazing top of the line system requirement there for you to come into Second Life.

Do you care? Should you care? I guess that depends on where you sit with technology and education. I’ve been in bed with both and have some opinions I’d like to share from my experiences.

First, I believe that in no way development should be throttled in any way. Second, if you don’t have a machine to run Second Life then you need to get one and you need to upgrade your hardware as needed.

This reminds me of when I was working at Microsoft on the Windows platform: save your groans, I don’t care to hear it, most of you don’t know what you are talking about anyway, and the groans really sound more like sheep baaaa baaa ing to me anyway. I worked specifically on compatibility issues with 3rd-party software on the developing platform. Let me tell you, that isn’t an easy task and people who want to maintain their software that ran in 1992 in 2000 had a pretty large task ahead of them and made a lot of work for us at Microsoft in the effort to help them. Mostly what had needed to happen hadn’t been happening and that was to upgrade their software and hardware along the way but that costs large enterprise companies a lot of money and I mean millions of dollars. I understand the complexity of these issues and don’t mean to make light of them but it breaks down into simple concept. Keep current. If you don’t keep current you will be passed by. No, we can’t wait up for you to invest $1500 (retail no edu discount there folks) which is a low number for a kick ass machine and hardware costs increasingly dropping. IF it’s important to you then you’ll do it, development and new technology is truly something I am interested in and believe is necessary. Someone always has to be in the front leading the way and that is Linden Lab at least for now.

Over the last year I worked for a company that boasts its leading edge technology support for educators and they moved into Second Life to help understand what was going on so they could regurgitate it to their educator membership of about 2,500 colleges and Universities.

What I learned is educators and non-profits get this fuzzy kid glove treatment that perhaps they don’t deserve.  They get special price discounts, that are equivalent to half of what a normal user has to pay. They set up shop and get some press but then as I have experienced they don’t do anything. It’s a spurt and then a bunch of apostatizing about how leading-edge they are. They can’t have it both ways: you can’t sit there, pay half price, tell the world you are leading edge educators in technology and then say your machines can’t keep up please to stop development kthxbai and not be called on the bullshit.  What have you done to add to the Second Life community?

I can haz facebook!! Yes please stay there, add your friends, send funny gifs and talk about what you have for breakfast. Hopefully your computer can run that.

Maybe Second Life isn’t for you at this time, you don’t have resources for it, you don’t have anyone really learning SL to teach it. Second Life does have a learning curve this isn’t Care Bear Fantasy land, there are downtimes, there is wonky technology glitching, stuff that breaks and you have to be flexible. What does pioneer mean anyway..when I think pioneer I think covered wagons and bumpy trails being MADE..not sitting in your Buick LeSabre with crushed velvet seating listening to talk radio on your way to the office.

Second Life is free to join and come in and try it out. Take that time to learn how to use it and what you will use it for and then make an investment or not. Pretty simple. Then value that IT guy who is in Second Life, listen to him and keep abreast of what is going on and when it’s time and your shitty 1999 machine can run SL come on in, run with half features, make a flag and rent a parcel from the latest land rental guy, call up your local newspaper to declare how innovative your university is. What you don’t get to do is get to declare yourselves innovative while complaining you can’t run Second Life.

IT guy, keep current with development, don’t over-promise stuff that you yourself don’t understand. When that happens, and it happens often enough, you get people with mismanaged expectations. While you may see it as the promised land, it’s not all that pretty yet. It’s still in it’s infancy and has made great strides since I came inworld in 2002.

If your University or College can’t provide computers that will run Second Life and maintain those computers with upgrades as needed, then you will be passed by. Learning is evolving, and soon enough we’ll be doing all that from our computers anyway. I also think Educators really need to get a grasp on or create new teaching technology, and administrators need to look long and hard at their own retention numbers.  Instead of screaming “Wake up SL!”, I think you need to spend more time looking in the mirror.

How many stories have I heard about how such and such couldn’t get so and so administrator to understand what SL was to get funding from the college to support their program? A LOT OF TIMES. You need to understand what you are asking for so that you can explain yourself to your whoever person that has the money in a way that they can understand, in the way a lay person to technology can get it, if you can’t do that then you don’t understand it well enough yourself. This just speaks to a larger problem than not having good enough computers on their campuses to run Second Life.

Did I just slam all educators in SL? No, some Universities are getting it but it’s a small group.

Before we stand up and spoon feed these educators trying to run leading-edge technology on TEN YEAR OLD computers, let’s ask ourselves if doing so is helping the problem.  Like I said in the beginning of this I don’t think SL developing beyond the reach of their computers is their problem, go back to the chalk board and find another goat to blame or fix your ship then you can sail into Second Life.

and last..learn what options are already in the Second Life client that you can control via preferences and options to adjust accordingly what your machine can handle, that would make a huge difference. Preferences is under the Edit menu, which is toward the top of your client next to File. Oh wait, I think I know a good video tutorial for you.

Graphic Preferences Guide thank you Torley.

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