Using the virtual world of Second Life to snag young IT talent

Organizations are standing shoulder to shoulder around the global talent pool, trying to hook their share of Gen X and Gen Y keepers. But despite their youth, these new recruits are as wary and tight-lipped as a wily old bass. If you don’t find just the right way to attract them, they won’t give you a nibble.

[From Using the virtual world of Second Life to snag young IT talent ]

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Frequently we forget that the students we teach are going to need jobs. As various IT skills move into the virtual realm, will environments like Second Life become richer recruiting environments? Can we use this to diffuse some of the creepy treehouse of second life?

Hi everyone,

This is my first post on the SLED® Blog, good to be here, greatful for the opportunity…

Anyway, as an advocate for virtual worlds in education, particularly Second Life, I’m constantly looking for articles to share with “non-believers.”  Colleagues, family, friends often want to know “what Second Life is all about” and/or “what are its educational uses?”

These aren’t questions that can be answered with an elevator speech. Thankfully both the mainstream media as well as established educational journals have taken this subject on, providing excellent resources to help answer those questions, and more.

The first article I want to share is “If Second Life isn’t a game, what is it?” (MSNBC.com, March 2007). This is one of the best articles I’ve ever seen in the mainstream press about Second Life. It’s balanced, well written, thoughtful and hits all the important features and benefits of Second Life. For people who are used to reading news online, it’s a great starting point.

The second, published by School Library Journal, is called “Meet the New You.” Kelly Czarnecki and Matt Gullet do a fantastic job describing Teen Second Life in this piece. It’s a little bit longer but precisely the type of article you’d want to share with an administrator or school board member. It’s low on jargon but high on vision; it paints a realistic, powerful picture of several innoative educators (like my good friend Peggy Sheehy at Suffern Middle School.)

The third, which I just recently saw, is called “School, virtually: Higher education gets a Second Life” and it appears on the San Diego CityBeat ezine. Focused on higher education, this is one of the most detailed, well supported, unbiased, example-laden explorations of Second Life I’ve come across to date. Megan Burks gets her facts right and manages to poke fun while being completely serious in her treatment of the subject. While the source might raise eyebrows from a stuffy higher-ed adminstrator type, it’s still an excellent read, and makes a powerful, balanced case for the use of virtual worlds.

Ok, so there are a few of my favorites. How about you? Let us know - post a comment!

Best,

Kevin Jarrett

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Resources:

Burks, M. (2008, July 24). School, virtually. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/school_virtually/7126/.

Czarnecki , K., & Gullet, M. (2001, January 2). Meet the New You - 1/1/2007 - School Library Journal. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6403251.html.

Kalning, K. (2007, March 12). If Second Life isn’t a game, what is it? - On the Level - MSNBC.com. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17538999/wid/11915829.

Sometimes we are so awash in resources that some real gems pass us by. So it has been with some the New Media Consortium published in November, the 2007 NMC Conference Proceedings which has a good set of SL papers authored by SLED colleagues.

The papers in the proceedings were authored by presenters at the 2007 NMC Summer Conference in Indianapolis. Participants at the conference voted on sessions that ought to be invited to author papers, and the final product represents a more formal write-up of their conference sessions.

The entire proceedings is available as a free, Creative Commons licensed PDF (2.6 Mb, 133 pages) and is full color with active hyperlinks and embedded video (note to Mac OSX users- view with Adobe Acrobat Reader and not Preview for the full media effect).

Among the papers relevant to Second Life and virtual worlds you may find of interest

• The Arts Metaverse in Open Croquet: Exploring an Open Source 3-D Online Digital World Ulrich Rauch and Tim Wang | University of British Columbia
• Beyond World of Warcraft: the Universe of MMOGs Ruben R. Puentedura | Hippasus
• ClevelandPlus in Second Life Wendy Shapiro, Lev Gonick, and Sue Shick | Case Western Reserve University
• Out of the Cave or Further In? The Realities of Second Life Gregory Reihman | Lehigh University
• Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: Socio-emotional Dimensions of Digital Culture Which Are Transforming the Shape of New Media Literacies Angela Thomas | University of Sydney
• Teaching Field Research in a Virtual World Ed Lamoureux | Bradley University
• A View from Second Life’s Trenches: Are You a Pioneer or a Settler? Cynthia Calongne | Colorado Technical University

We will be repeating this effort for the NMC 2008 Summer Conference, hosted this year at the RL Princeton University, which will offer sessions and pre-conference workshops on Second Life and Wonderland.

    Associate Professor Robert Walker wanted to take advantage of the synchronous learning opportunities that Second Life offers in teaching an online version of his Music Appreciate course. In the planning stages, he identified a key skill in the course that students found particularly challenging - learning to listen to a composition critically - and then developed period appropriate locations in Second Life to house the music files students otherwise would have listened to alone.

Read more about his experience Using Second Life to Enhance Teaching and Learning, including early data and assessment results.

Instructional designers often talk about using the specific affordances of a technology to achieve a specific course objective, and this is an excellent example of how one instructor is taking advantage of Second Life to provide an enriched learning experience for his online students!

- Posted by Fleep Tuque

NYT article about kid’s virtual worlds. Thanks to Steve Hornick

Reuters article about Gen Y and libraries. Thanks to Ken Hubble