Week 6: Academic Blog

This week, I read an article which mainly talking about the educational uses of Second Life in the teaching of child and youth work. Several years ago, Second Life has been used to teach students who studied in Loyalist College’s Child and Youth Worker Program.

The data collected from the students which he taught in 2007. There were 80 students who were divided into to different groups—Inter-personal course group and Group Dynamics course group. He taught both of these two groups for 3 hours per week in a 15 week semester. Each week there were 2 hours were taught in traditional ways and the other hour was in a computer lab.

In this article, the author found that by teaching in Second Life, there will no more limitation in the distance, where students are and where teachers are. Another one is there is a great number of clients in Second Life who the author’s graduates will work with which means it provide more ways to their students to contact with their clients.

However, there are some challenges which limited on-line teaching. It requires the newer computers and high speed Internet. Furthermore, students should spends some time to learn how to use Second Life. But anyway, teaching in Second Life is a necessary step to help students learning knowledge and do some practice.

 

Thompson, L. (2012). Educational Uses of Second Life in the Teaching of Child and Youth Work. Relational Child & Youth Care Practice, 25(1), 43-51.