The Joys of Lifelong Learning
A writer and a scientist tell us how they found their voices in Second Life
The yearly Virtual World Best Practices in Education Conference in Second Life (SL) is over. (For an overview of my participation, click this link.) If you’ve ever been to a conference, you know how it can pump you up and bring you new ideas and friends. Then you return to your everyday life. The ideas go on the back burner; the friends fade from your mind. You live far from each other; you won’t normally meet in your workaday world, not even on Zoom or Teams.
That doesn’t happen in quite the same way in SL, because you can continue to meet as part of an ongoing community. The new people you meet, the new friends you make, are easily reachable after the conference as their embodied avatars. They are just an Instant Message away from you when you are inworld and see their names pop up on your screen. You may just wave to each other – I mean that literally: you both IM the word “wave,” which suggests that you want to stay connected but don’t necessarily want to text chat right now. Or you can invite them for coffee in your SL home to continue the conversations you started at the conference.
At the end of this post you will be able to hear recordings of two of the people who spoke eloquently at the “Lifelong Learning Roundtable” that I co-moderated at the conference. They describe how SL has literally changed their lives. The panel itself barely scratched the surface of all the learning opportunities available to residents, even with many members of the audience contributing their own experiences. Some of the audience had learned how to build replicas of museums they loved or created new ones they imagined (for instance, a museum of cat lore); some had learned how to make and sell clothes that earned them real money; some had learned how to become DJs who then discovered how much they enjoyed sharing their research into the music they streamed. On and on….
All these folks are typical of the mature learners I meet every Monday at our informal Lifelong Learning Chats offered by the Virtual World Education Consortium, where I am a member of the founding board. Conversations there are full of energy, fun, and enlightenment as we share whatever is on our minds, usually something related to learning in virtual worlds. The topics can range from questions about the role of AI in SL and a call for help building a visionary sustainable city of the future in 3D to a question about the best places to buy a professional-looking outfit — all generated by whoever attends. It’s another easy, relaxed way for people with common interests to get to know and support each other inworld.
Give a listen to the voices of the two contributors to the “Lifelong Learning Roundtable” I mentioned earlier - Finn Bookmite and Tagline - in the recordings below. A word here about SL names: most people create Usernames other than their real names. This might be because, with SL’s thousands of users, finding a unique name – especially if it’s your name in your first life - isn’t simple, so most people make one up. Or it might be because someone prefers to separate their physical from their virtual identities to maintain their privacy. My practice is to use only their SL names when I talk about them. Tell us how you feel about their stories in the comments. They’d like to know.
Finn Bookmite
Tagline
by Lynne Berrett
Copyright 2025 by Lynne Berrett. All Rights Reserved.
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Incredibly fascinating!