Second Life and Cyber Teams: Linking Networks

By Emilie Kozol, Alex Pron, Steve Villamarin, Colleen Scalzo and

Surbhi Patel

What was your experience as a new comer to Second Life?

Positives Easy to learn basics like walking, flying, talking,

etc. Orientation Island was helpful in communicating basic skills

Second Life offers the ability to connect students especially in the management field. Dr. Wankel’s Emgeetee island is a successful way of allowing people to interact and learn together.

Second Life is an effective means of allowing users to portray themselves in any way they wish

What was your experience as a new comer to Second Life?

Negatives Overall our group felt that as new comers to

Second Life, the experience was rather overwhelming due to the extensive nature of the program. It would take years to experience all Second Life has to offer.

Difficult for the average (two to three log on per week) user to function, especially with shaky hardware and poor internet connection

What helped and hindered your progress on a learning curve?

Orientation island was somewhat helpful if you stuck around and tried to successfully complete each task. The problem is though, that it is not required to do the tasks to get off the island so the majority of people wander off the island before having leaned all the skills.

Not one person in our group completed the tasks and we think it might be helpful to implement the rule that until you complete all the tasks you are unable to leave the island.

Another thing that hindered the ability of some of the users in our group was the fact that Second Life is far more geared towards PC users rather than MAC users. This made it difficult for tasks such as flying where on a PC you use the “page up” and “page down” keys because these keys do not exist on a MAC and it was difficult to find the equivalent.

How effective is Second Life as a platform for online community, culture and commerce?

Our group believes that your experiences on Second Life can only be as effective as the effort you put into them. If you are invested in using the site and devote large amounts of time to it, it does have the potential to be a highly effective social networking site.

As college students though with hectic schedules and our own “real” social lives it was difficult to get fully invested, and therefore it wasn’t a very effective platform for online community within our group.

Although not participating in Second Life commerce, we have made contacts who turn a profit by designing different clothing, housing and even weapons. With the online community ever expanding, conducting business virtually could become a more standard trend in the coming years.

What was it like to work on a cyber team? What did you learn about this?

While our group feels that working on a cyber team is an innovative approach to student learning and has the potential to connect global networks, we found that working on a cyber team is far more difficult than working on a regular team.

It was quite challenging to get everyone together at once via the internet. In fact our group was never able to get the five of us together on Second Life all at once due to conflicting schedules.

In general we found that it was pretty hard to work with people we had never met before. Having no physical contact with the people your working with lowers accountability, while differing goals amongst team members hurts the efficiency and effectiveness of the team.

What are examples of successful or effective uses of Second Life as you observed them?

The majority of successful uses of second life our group found were specific Sims, or locations.

Jobs, athletics, and other commitments did not permit us to explore these Sims as an entire group on Second Life, despite several efforts. We were able to coordinate efforts to explore and research the following Second Life Sims as individuals and in smaller groups within the team in order to gain a fuller understanding on Second Life: The Blues Fusion Jazz Club The CNN I-Report Hub Weather Island SL Investor’s Bank

The Blue Fusion Jazz Club

“A place built for Sight, Sound and Emotion” (http://www.bluefusionsl.com/).

The Blues fusion jazz club is a place where you can find art, music and the chance to dance.

The Blue Fusion Jazz Club is an example of a successful use of Second Life due to the fact that it is an interactive spot where you can meet people from all over the world. People go to experience the excitement and ambiance of love and romance.  Dancing the night away on the dance floor to the sound of music. Blue Fusion is an elegant club with a full bar, ocean view, lots of dances and romance balls. 

CNN I-Report Hub

I-Report Hub allows users to submit I-Reports CNN gains the ability to report on the people,

places, events, and other news, that people want to hear about within the realm of Second Life

News desk holds weekly editorial sessions Reports are also discussed on CNN.com’s SL I-

Report Blog, linking Second Life to the real world CNN Amphitheater

For hosting larger events, including training sessions and appearances by CNN anchors

CNN I-Report Hub

These images show avatar WinstonB Weatherwax exploring the scene

(Top)- The CNN news desk, where CNN does its SL reporting

(Bottom)- CNN amphitheater, where larger events are held

Weather Island

Weather Island is easier to explore compared to other places within second life. I was quickly able to view videos and find out more information on the epic sports.

Weather themed destination Island which is very popular within second life.

Ability to allow your avatar to play sports including epic skiing, biking, and surfing. Watch videos and link to their websites which are also being broadcast around the Island from The Weather Channel.

Chat with other second life members from all over the world. This was very helpful since so many people answered questions I had.

An open policy virtual bank within the virtual world of Second Life. Maintain the virtues of open policies and honesty. Every client can make a difference

and every client is made knowledgeable of SL Investors Bank operations SL Investors Bank Deals with Products such as:

Automated land sales tracking & listing tool. Rez on parcel to be sold. Deed if necessary, say on a channel sqm, price and description, lists on website. Informs upon sale including tier costs. Also some weekly stats reporting etc. SLIB PBA: Personal Banking Assistant, a HUD attachment to make life easier.

SL Investor’s Banks Future Plans Mini continent, expansion from the current three islands to an mini-continent of

islands. Full accounting database will allow clients to check their financial status at any

time, offering excellent tracking. Progress Graphs of just about everything: land values, average balances,

account information, interest, etc. (Data collection done for bank functions already)

Other Second Life scripts to ease tracking.

From my observation I found SL Investors Bank to be a pretty

successful Business for the residents of SL.

I had some unanswered questions and attempted to contact Tyrian

Camilo the creator of SL Investors Bank, but was unsuccessful.

If I were an avid user of SL, the SL investors Bank would really be

beneficial to me in purchasing Land as well as managing my SL

funds.

Effects of visiting these Sims on our Second Life group

The group felt that by visiting these places, we gained a better understanding of how Second Life, and other virtual worlds parallel the real world (clubs, news desks, entertainment centers, and banks).

We also gained a firmer understanding of the vast possibilities within virtual worlds. With the right code and strong enough efforts, almost nothing is impossible within virtual worlds