While I can’t say I have a full understanding of the pitfalls or possibilities with Second Life, I can tell you that many colleges and universities are wondering should they enter into this unknown world.
Second Life is a 3-D virtual community where members participate via an “avatar.” Second Life has now grown to millions of residents; corporations like Nissan, media outlets such as CNN, and yes even colleges and universities have begun to take advantage. A few institutions have created their campus with buildings and professors while others have created a virtual tour (not the photo ones done online just years ago).
You have to join Second Life to see, however we are lucky that several have been posted to YouTube for us all to get a good look.
What does this mean for your campus?
It depends greatly on your resources. This type of effort takes financial capital as well as man power. It also takes buy-in from skeptical senior administration. Some schools have luckily hired current students to help them create their “second life” while others have begun to outsource this to firms who specialize in creating these web spaces.
Sadly, most schools are barely catching up on today’s popular web 2.0 items including blogs, podcasts, etc. For the few that can afford the effort they may see some unique benefits. The market using Second Life are the types of students that many institutions would like to have in their applicant pool. Do you I consider this frontier as necessary? Not at this point. Should you be aware of this trend and let others know about this new frontier….you bet! You may even be surprised to find your campus on Second Life…your students have added more parking, created a pub on campus and demolished old main!
Happy New Year,
Rich
January 14th, 2008
…to sign up for this year’s eduWeb Conference … honest! And I want to thank our June Guest Blog Author — Jeff Kallay, the Experience Evangelist at TargetX — for some great posts so far this June! So keep reading them at this blog, eduWeb BUZZ.
There is a great schedule of presentations, including some recent newsmakers, such as:
… we have two presentations and 1 workshop, of which the presenters have been recently featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN for their success in their undergraduate admissions campaign, admissions blogs and a community-noticed website.
Daniel Creasy, Senior Asst. Dir. of Admissions, of Johns Hopkins University, was featured in The Washington Post in March 2007. He will speak on “The Blog Revolution: Admissions Office Blogs” on Monday, July 23rd from 9:45 - 10:45 am.
Jack Chielli, Exec. Dir. of Marketing Communications, at Wilkes University, whose institution was featured in The New York Times about their successful undergraduate advertising campaign. Jack’s presentation is titled A Majority of One and scheduled for Monday, July 23rd, from 4 - 5 pm.
For the workshop on Tuesday afternoon, from 2- 5 pm, there is Jeff Keeton and Deborah Lucas, from The University of Alabama Birmingham, whose site on the biennial journey to Antartica was featured on CNN. The workshop is titled “Architecting a Hit: How UAB Built a Site the Community Noticed.”
Besides Daniel, Jack, Jeff & Deborah, we have plenty of great presenters speaking on wide range of topics … Second Life, RSS, Web Re-designs, Recruitment, Viewbooks, Microformats and Semantic HTML, Crisis Communications and lots MORE! Check out our program schedule
Come and join us soon for a great learning experience … not only from the presenters but from your peers as well. Look who’s coming!
Sign up NOW!
Shelley Wetzel
Dir. of Marketing Communications &
Conference Director
eduWeb Conference
June 15th, 2007
July 15 - Note from June Guest Author: Since this post I came across a timely AdAge article Second Life losing lock on virtual-site marketing Downloads of the application and unique visits have stabilized while visitors and marketers are increasing activity at Zwinky, Stardoll and Doppelganger. (JEK)
In the last month the Chronicle of Education or it’s Wired Campus Blog have reported on three interesting stories about schools creating Second Life islands to connect with various audiences:
- Case Western Reserve Builds Virtual Campus to Woo Prospective Students (requires login) at the cost of $30K Case provides a very virtual tour
- Library Makes its Debut, in Second Life Santa Clara University’s new library won’t be open until fall 2008 but you can tour it online in Second Life
- MIT’s Virtual Dormitories for Freshmen Tour your dorm virtually before you select it
I think Web 2.0 is all about connection - about giving people the tools to create their own stories, memories and experiences.
Is this the start of something really big? Or just a passing fad? Is your school considering a “Second Life?”
Please weigh in on the subject.
Jeff Kallay
June Guest Blogger
Experience Evangelist
TargetX
kallay@targetx.com
June 12th, 2007
