The following post showed up in my ‘gator via OLDaily this morning:
Can Second Life be used as a reliable Corporate Training Tool?
Today, I set up a demonstration of Second Life for some of my senior management. I signed up for a conference on how to use Second Life for business, and went through some hoops with our IT department to get IT to open up the firewall for me.It did not turn out well.
I realize that this is a post about corporate training and not K-12 education but how many of the “issues” are based on misconceptions and pre-supposition? Go read the whole thing and see what you think is wrong with this picture?
September 18th, 2008 at 7:15 AM
Hi – interested in your thoughts on my misconceptions. I simply reported the difficulties I had in accessing Second Life for two individual events.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:20 AM
Let me offer my sincere and public apology to gminks. It occurred to me that I was playing unfairly with this story by characterizing it as a kind of “what not to do” when I *really* wanted to make the point that this is a really common practice relative to educational activity in Second Life and why this practice is so problematic.
I meant no disrespect to gminks or her efforts on behalf of her company.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:21 AM
None taken — looking forward to the discussion!
September 18th, 2008 at 2:35 PM
Ok.. i left my comment on the other blog…duh! After reading the article, i still do not know how to answer the question. I am not a computer guru and i dont’ understand the terminology.
I can see where the actual working of a program can be a problem in a proxied network. Our school has been reimaging computers and it has been a nightmare. Just getting some programs to work can be an issue.
September 18th, 2008 at 7:22 PM
It seems that Second Life is offering things that cannot deliver. They are claiming to be able to offer spots that can hold virtual meetings, classes, and provide training in their virtual world, but it looks as if they do not have all of their bugs worked out. Not only are their still issues, but it looks as if there is no immediate plan of resolution.
People have busy schedules and if they make time out of their day to attend an online conference or meeting, then they expect it to work. It should not be more a hassel and less productive than the more traditional methods. I would much rather attend a conference that is a few hours away from home then to have the frustration of SL not working.
Many servers in schools or business have proxy servers and the issue with having to continuously update IP addresses to access SL would be aggravating and almost impossible for an online community that is growing at such a rapid pace.
September 18th, 2008 at 10:06 PM
Number one problem= SL should have their P’s and Q’s in order. They seem much unorganized with materials/ information. There management team does not seem very well equipped with extensive training and there should always be enough seating for your business. If you accept customers…make sure there’s room. I am not familiar with SL; however, it seems similar to Taking it Global. How could one use this resource effectively if the glitches are not removed first?
September 18th, 2008 at 11:16 PM
It sounds like SL is working on a great concept. A place where professionals can log on and participate in conferences or give conferences to students. An online community to build and construct. When new land or new IP addresses are added it caused the cooperate computers to block the new addresses until they were unblocked. Firewalls are made to protect our computers and even in our school we run into the same problems. There is a site that is educational but firewalls prohibit access. Other problems are limited seating, lack of agendas to review, and time that it takes up. All these seem to be problems that needs to be addressed in this community. These same problems can occur in traditional trainings. Agendas are not given or unclear, it takes an hour to drive to a conference hall for a two hour meeting, and there are times that there is limited seating. SL should elevate these traditional problems to add appeal to the program.
September 19th, 2008 at 7:48 AM
This has drifted away from the basics.
Beyond the corporate firewall problem (which is a company policy and nothing to do with SL), there are some clues that this design is missing a basic factor: What’s an appropriate use for the platform?
The issues surrounding number of people in a region at a time, and the tight scheduling indicate that the issue is the kind of activity planned was not actually taking advantage of the platform. This is a common problem.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:32 PM
Are you saying SL is the platform and the mistakes are factors brought into the community?
September 19th, 2008 at 9:45 PM
yes. see my post for today on Exotic Tools: Second Life
September 21st, 2008 at 6:32 PM
O.K. I agree with Carla on this one. I have not been sure how to answer this question. I do understand now that Dr. Lowell has clarified it more.