“Second Life” Exploring Virtual Worlds for Social Work Education

Dr. Bob Vernon, Indiana University School of Social Work

Dr. Darlene Lynch, Ball State University Department of Social Work

Dr. Paul Freddolino, Michigan State University School of Social Work

Dr. Lorrie Greenhouse Gardella, St. Joseph College

Ms. Susan Tenby, TechSoup.org

Contact: http://hsmedia.biz

Today…• Just what IS “Second Life”• You and your “avatar”• Communications in “SL”• Potentials for Social Work Education• Implications and findings so far• How to function in a virtual world• Potential conversations

Just what IS “Second Life”People voluntarily create online virtual worlds...

TravelArt/museumsFantasy/role play

SportsTheater

Shopping

WorshipAgencies/Services

Nasties

You and your “avatar”You can change your avatar at will…

This is the same avatar!

Control over Dress Gender Age Race Ethnicity Ability Species!

You and your “avatar”You can move your avatar at will…

This becomes easy with practice.

Gestures

Walking

Flying

Teleporting

CommunicationsWith individuals, groups, and objects…

Chat/Typing

IM Voice

Languages

Groups

Meetings

You can record everything through copying and pasting text, taking pictures, and making movies…

Potentials for SW Education

DiversityHBSEJustice and RiskValues and Ethics

Policy and Services

Research

Field and Training

Practice

There are potentials for all of the eight EPAS curriculum areas!

Implications so far…

“How ya goina keep ‘em down on the farm…”

Adaptable to multiple teaching agendasmicro-macro, generalist or concentrations, training, (?) field

Practice diversitylocal-global-virtual

Access issuesconnection, hardware, ADA

Liability & riskuncharted territory

The universitylocal-global-virtual

 

Functioning in a virtual world• Remember what the Web was like in 1994?

This is about as challenging!

• Be prepared for a belligerent learning curve with crummy documentation!

• Cut yourself some slack! Your students too!

• Get a mentor! Make friends with librarians, teckies, and gamers!

• Connect in both “SL” and “RL” peers, listservs, wikis, blogs, youtube!

Potential conversations• Theoretical concepts

Social and individual identity, neighborhoods, control

• Practice concepts Professional boundaries, self-awareness, professional use of self

• Research concepts Participant observation, reflective ethnography

• Degrees of abstraction The “medical textbook illustration” issue

• Implications for distance education Many distance education possibilities

Second Life: http://www.secondlife.com