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You find it anywhere, just go on the internet and try to search for the term – Second Life, and you will find more than 75 million articles written about this topic. Millions of web users visit these pages every day. And best of all is that more than 300 universities and colleges are actively experimenting with accredited courses using “second Life” technology. Linden Lab who operates the Second Life technology, believe only imagination sets limits to what you can do with this technology.

It is not about replicating the classroom in a virtual environment, but to replicate dangerous or not easy accessible areas or environments.

It makes no sense to replicate a classroom with chairs, whiteboards and such things, when you can create an environment where people can jump into a vehicle and perform dangerous tasks or even explore remote dangerous areas without taking any risks at all.

Second Life is not a video game for geeks, but it is a creative technological environment enabling learning and collaboration in a new and more innovative way, and also enable experimenting with new ways of acting in these environments.

BP (British Petroleum) has just recently created an immersive environment for their gas station employees. Trainees can learn in a safe environment at the same time as they have a virtual representation of a gas station with its tanks and pipe systems, just as in a typical BP gas station. This enables BP to train their employees in procedures and see the effect of actions taken in a gas station, by its trainees. All this without endanger their employees or their equipment.

IBM has also found use of this system for their internal between more than 6000 employees around the world and in external communications with partners and clients. They have even made an environment for their retired staff enabling them to keep a dialogue with previous colleagues and exchange experiences.

NASA use this system to prepare for the Mars expedition, a 800 days mission, enabling astronauts to keep in touch with their families and participate at the dinner table and even help their kids with their homework through their avatars.

Joe Miller, the VP of Platform and Technology Development at the Linden Lab says Second Life is a collaborative environment where you really can feel you are physical with other people. You interact through an avatar of your own, with others avatars in a 3D world. You schrink the physical distance almost to zero and it can have dramatic effects in a learning environment.

Pontiac has a second life environment that allows engineers to talk to customers which before was rare to experience for an engineer.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses second life to illustrate their hurricane aircraft operation by flying into virtual hurricanes. They have also created a fully immersive experience where the users can learn how tsunamis build up and play its path.

Second Life is driven on a free basis, with user created content all the way. You can visualize products, equipment, physical situations that would be to expensive to build in real life, or to dangerous to have a training situation in real life.

Museums were pioneers using Second Life environments to bring visitors closer to their exhibitions in a more unconventional way. Some have even gone so far that they have created virtual exhibitions were users can create their own exhibition and curate them their self.

http://www.secondlife.com