One reason educators are going to OpenSim grids

Location: Dancing my way out of trouble

This post began as a comment in New World Notes, where Hamlet Au notes the 20 most popular places in-world this August. Sigh...better that he had not.

College Dean: So you are teaching in this "Second World" thing again?

Faculty Member: I am. It's "Second Life," too.

Dean: Yeah, I read a little about it. We have a replica of our campus there?

Faculty: It's more of a series of projects on a virtual island...

Dean: Island? Well, can students walk to the rest of this place?

Faculty: They can actually fly or go from place to place by a teleport...kinda like Star Trek.

Dean: Really? One of our I.T. guys e-mailed me a link to some information on what's popular in The Second Life. I saw this list of places that you can "teleport" to visit. So what the hell is a "Bondage Ranch?"

Faculty: /facepalm

Faculty: Um, that sort of content is adult zoned and has a lot of bots.

Dean: Lot of what? So what about "Sexy Islands" and "Lesbian Paradise"? I.T. says we are paying something called "tier" to this Linden Labs company.

Faculty: We have four faculty using the campus island for class-related work.

Dean: Good, but to continue this experiment we'll need assessment data you've collected that shows it improves retention and performance on our communications-skills rubrics as compared to similar courses. And then we'll call a meeting of the Academic Computing Committee...

Faculty: I'll let my colleagues know. See you.

Dean: (when door closes, picking up the phone) "Can you get me the Director of Academic Computing?....." (under his breath) "Bondage Ranch???