 "Photo: Screen shot courtesy of Linden Lab")
The journalism school is beginning a second life.
Seemingly unsatisfied with plans to start construction on a new building next year, the College of Journalism has also decided to purchase its own private island.
No, the $5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation won't stretch far enough to build the new Knight Hall and buy real estate in the Caribbean. The school is planning for a paradise in the virtual online world Second Life.
The Knight Foundation, an organization that fosters journalism and community initiatives nationwide, approached Dean Thomas Kunkel about the building project and asked if he'd be interested in putting a version of Knight Hall in Second Life to explore the program as a form of new media, Kunkel said.
His response: "Actually, that would be pretty cool."
Since San Francisco-based developer Linden Lab took Second Life public in 2003, the virtual world has met with critical acclaim. Part video game, part chat room and populated by at least a million users, the program has attracted many from around the globe tocreate "avatars" - visual representations that look like and do whatever the user desires.
The journalism school would join more than 140 higher education institutions across the globe that are seeking to utilize Second Life's 3-D world for a new generation of educational activities, according to a Linden Lab informational wiki. The school already has at its disposal a virtual Second Life expert, Associate Dean Don Heider, who has been doing research in the digital world for more than two years.
As Heider works up a funding proposal for the project, which he hopes to submit to the Knight Foundation this fall, the question he faces is "How can we use what's interesting and fun about Second Life to sort of communicate our message?"
"What I want is something that's going to be fun and interesting and kind of ... whimsical," Heider said. "You don't want to just go into a building - that's pretty boring."
Instead, he hopes to use the program's flexible creative tools and cartoon-like graphics to create a learning space that is academic and also entertaining.
Though many academic institutions have established a presence in the virtual world and touted Second Life's innovative capability, most aren't utilizing its full potential. It's a step up from services found on the university's popular course website, Blackboard.com, such as e-mail or a message board. But some institutions have created a space for virtual students to sit in virtual chairs and watch a virtual teacher give a virtual lecture, which doesn't seem much more whimsical or engaging than any real-world classroom, Heider said.
"A lot of corporations or educational institutions have come into Second Life, and they just sort of put up a building or some billboards, and what it demonstrates is a very poor understanding of Second Life - of the virtual world," Heider said.
In the fall of last year, Harvard Law School and the Harvard Extension School partnered in a course that displayed a more avant-garde approach, displaying real-world law school lectures as video in the school's digital classroom reenacting real court cases in a virtual courtroom.
Even the Department of Homeland Security has jumped on the cyber-wagon with funding for a project at Dartmouth College's Institute for Security Technology Studies to simulate disaster scenarios in Second Life. Based on the virtual world's efficacy in replicating real-world catastrophes, Second Life may be used in teaching emergency response, according to Second Life commentator Wagner James Au's blog, New World Notes.
This university's Office of Information Technology has explored using Second Life as an education tool, although no formal initiative now exists.
"We think it's an intriguing possibility for reaching certain groups of people," said Phyllis Dickerson Johnson, OIT's Director of Communications, who added that other priorities within her office are now taking precedent.
With Second Life, a college education could cost the university less and better reach students who are far away from the classroom, which may make the $837.50 island with a nearly $150 monthly upkeep fee worthwhile.
"I would hope it would be more a demonstration of how a mainstream institution can think unconventionally and operate in untraditional environments," Kunkel said.
newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu
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