I had a rewarding moment last Thursday, as I watched students from Stoke Damerel Community College getting a pleasant surprise as they walked into their English lesson. It was the first lesson to introduce to the concepts of Teen Second Life and the literacy project. The lesson got underway with few problems and the excitement around the room was unforgettable. I found the students were keen to explore, socialize and experiment with this new environment. Their feedback was extremely encouraging…! I was surprised at how quickly some of them discovered the different elements on the island.

One really interesting thing that happened was to see one student gathering all of the ‘dragon’ avatars up and telling them to meet at a certain point - which they all did. I think he then said they were going to have a ‘dragon club’ and go around the island together. It’s marvellous to see students investing immediately in their new environment, developing social structure, and discerning and engaging with the inherent concepts of both their island and Teen Second Life itself.

The atmosphere in the room was amazing. They were focused for the whole lesson and were very disappointed when the lesson had ended.

It’s hard to deny the sheer learning potential of Computer Game technologies when you see first hand such high levels of engagement. The key to using Teen Second Life in education is how the technology is used, delivered and understood. The Stoke Damerel students benefitted from all three.

Twofour Learning are really looking forward to the next ten weeks and seeing how this project develops. And so, I think, are the students.

Click here to view the news coverage of the lesson.

With news that the Government is to put more money into tackling dyslexia, and early literacy intervention, it seems like a good moment to talk about the ‘Literacy Island’ in Teen Second Life. The project, designed to support struggling readers at KS3… is being piloted by Stoke Damerel Community College in Plymouth, and is a joint initiative between Twofour and the Plymouth Local Authority.

The build we created has a Treasure Island theme to it, spacious enough to accommodate several in-world events, and to allow the roll out of the weekly lesson structured tasks.

Teen Second Life is a secure environment for 13-17 year olds. The benefit of creating, as we have, a closed island in this grid is that access can be regulated and students can be brought in with access only to the island. This obviously helps manage content in a safe environment and allows teachers/authorised adults to guide students through the content contained within.

The benefits of using an immersive environment such as Second Life goes much deeper than mere novelty. With the rapid increase of ‘casual’ gaming opening up the computer games market to a greater range of ages, online gaming and Virtual Worlds is becoming increasingly targeted towards younger audiences. There are currently 158 online games or Virtual Worlds launched and in development specifically designed for children. Coupled with the fact that in families with school-aged children 76% have access to a PC and around 80% have access to a games console, this shows that children are becoming more adept in the use of virtual environments and web 2.0, and so more open to eLearning.

Obviously the worry is that merging the act of learning and ‘games’ might detract from the educational content, but this is a very limited view of the potential of this technology. Some would say that ‘serious games’ is a contradiction in terms, however with the narrative driven structure of computer games balanced with the increasing level of procedurally (and user) generated content, creativity, logical progression, literacy, and any number of specific specialisms can benefit greatly.

Welcome to the brave, new, virtual world of learning.