Sunday, July 22, 2007

Dear Sister, do you have a second life?

Well, if only I had a first life I'd be happy. But, yes, I have tried Second Life and lived to tell the tale, although huge problems with downloads and other technical irritants totally put me off. I did have a great name though which I miss terribly.

Some museums have also dabbled in Second Life. A comprehensive review is reported in this paper A Second Life for Your Museum by Urban, Marty and Twidale. For those interested in museums and Second Life (SL) it is a must-read.

Main points for me were:

  • Increase in mainstream activities are occurring in SL and the ideas around SL as a concept are not new
  • There is a lot of museum-like activity occurring in SL [suggesting to me that we could perhaps use SL as another way to investigate what people understand museums to currently be and how they'd like them to be??]
  • "The social nature of Second Life is a critical component of understanding what it is and how it can, and should, be used." (p.2) – issue for me here is that museums in real life (RL) have also always been about the social experience. One outcome from a (marvellous J) thesis I read recently was that the findings strongly supported views expressed in the literature about the significance of social learning in museums.
  • Early museum worlds were developed specifically by the museum, for the museum and carefully structured and controlled.
  • SL as a third place for "serious leisure", engaging adults in a collaboration rather than as a consumer. Again, museums in RL are about this too. The thesis mentioned before also looked at the relationship between entertainment, learning and education and found that they were linked in visitors' minds in positive ways. Further info can be found on this wiki - audience-research » Museum Learning

The authors detail characteristics of museums in SL:

  • Different scales, with new opportunities to display objects (e.g. vertically, in places where you can fly to them)
  • Some duplicate RL and some not
  • The evolution and change in museums in SL can be surprising for visitors in SL who expect to 'take up where they left off'
  • Rich multimedia opportunities are available – yet this will increase visitor expectations
  • Encourage repeat visitors and build on communities
  • Opportunities for social engagement [yet, that what happens in museums in RL, see above]
  • Can display objects that don't lend themselves to physical display
  • Hard to work out the audience, and any attempts to do audience research in SL may be limited [not sure I agree...]

These characteristics led me to wonder why are museums dabbling in SL, as they seem no different to museums in RL. Given my technical problems there is also a huge point about access here...

The paper ends with some examples of museum in SL and interviews with those who have been working in this medium.

Overall, the conclusions are that we need to understand the museums' role as collaborative partners with communities in SL – well, this really isn't new. This is what happens in museums in RL! Seems to me that museums are not really thinking outside the square and using SL as a totally experimental platform. Perhaps that's the next step??

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sister, there has also been some discussion of SecondLife on various museum lists, such as this one and on both Beth's blog and Museum 2.0.

This time it shall be me that retires to the vestry to ponder further my various lives ...

Anonymous said...

This post from Wendy Ennes, Teacher Services and e-Learning Coordinator at the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago via Museum-L:

"The Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago recently conducted, with the Chicago Public Schools Department of Libraries, and the eCUIP Digital Library Project also here at U of C, what may have been the first Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) session in Second Life. This unique session successfully illustrated how museums can facilitate and teach about their collections within the Second Life environment.

Uploading good quality jpgs and using a projection method available in SL allowed participants to see the details of an intricate artifact from our ancient Mesopotamian collection.

While delivery of this VTS session was a little clunky, due to the nature of the chat feature, once voice comes to Second Life use of this facilitation technique will be even more applicable and easier to use.

It was a very exciting evening for many of us to discover another way of bringing the museum and works of art into Second Life."

And this from Jeremy Hunsinger, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, also via Museum-L:

"Please join us in a workshop on learning and research in Second Life on October 17, 2007 in Vancouver at Internet Research 8.0.

Second Life(R) is a 3d virtual environment created by Linden Lab which has captured the attentions of researchers and teachers from around the world from a variety of disciplines.

This workshop aims to improve the understanding of Second Life as a Learning and Research environment. It will bring 35 researchers together to collaborate, discuss and workshop diverse topics related to research and learning in Second Life. ... As a highlight, Robin Linden will give a talk to the group, and members of Linden Lab will participate throughout the day."

Go to their wiki for more information.

Anonymous said...

Sister, this via Russ the Pious: Getting Started in Second Life.