Archive for the 'Education' Category

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I spoke Wednesday at Bryant and Stratton College’s in-world graduation for its online students, which I thought was a great Second Life moment.    So rewarding to see Second Life starting to be really useful for education.   I did the new thing of actually writing some thoughts down as a speech and then reading it – I have never done that before.  So I’m sure I probably sounded a bit wooden to the students listening, but I wanted to really give some deeper thoughts on the event.   Anyhow, here is what I said:

“I heard it said recently that engineering students entering college today will learn computer languages which will be outmoded and no longer be in use by the time they graduate.  This is a remarkable suggestion: because as an engineering student graduating fairly recently, in 1992, I learned languages which served me well and in fact some 10 years later formed the basic building blocks of this digital place where we stand today for your graduation.  But as both a futurist thinker and in my own experiences at my own company, I couldn’t agree more:  In the past 4 or 5 years I have seen the rise of whole new computing architectures unlike anything that existed when I was in school.  New technology platforms rise up and are built upon, rapidly obscuring the lower layers like sediment.  We don’t build software for computers anymore, instead we build Facebook and IPhone apps.  And those whole platforms didn’t even exist when Second Life launched in 2003.

It is this building of one thing on another that makes technology so exciting and terrifying.  Each advance creates tools or a platform that is used to make the next advance possible, and at least twice as fast as the one before.  Whether you are talking about computers, or batteries, or cell phones, or bioscience, we are now in the knee of the curve – the place where this acceleration suddenly becomes noticeable.  The crazy thing though, is what happens next.  The curve goes from rapid growth to an almost vertical climb toward infinity.  The company that took 2 years to start in the 1990’s takes a month today, and you can imagine a place like Second Life reducing that to 2 days.  The IPhone that we marvel at today – well in less than 10 years time that same amount of technology will fit inside one of your cells.  What will the world look like with changes of that magnitude?  Honestly I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

But fighting or ignoring these technology changes is like standing in the water at the beach and letting the waves hit you… can you remember doing that as a kid?  If you were strong, you could brace yourself and stay standing as the smaller waves crashed by you and the sand slid away under your toes.  But we live now in a time when each set of waves is twice as high as the one before, and to resist these larger waves, to pretend that they aren’t there or that you can stand against them quickly becomes hopeless.  Our hope and future lies instead in letting go of the bottom, surrendering ourselves and our pasts, and letting these waves carry us where they may, working instead to catch our breaths and try and figure out where we are going.  This isn’t an easy thing.  It is frightening.  In whatever world that is to come, we won’t yet know our own value or where we stand.  How we will make money is uncertain. Our friends, lovers, and co-workers won’t be the neighbors we grew up with, but instead will be people from all over the world, people our parent’s probably would never have even seen or met.

This college, and many of you as students, are from the United States, a country which at this very moment faces a serious economic crisis.  It seems unbelievable but possible that the US dollar could soon lose it’s status as the reserve currency – the gold standard – for the rest of the world.  The banks and industrial giants that drove so much historical growth in the US economy are declaring bankrupcy.  So much change after decades of constancy!  But does this mean that as the most recent children of the US educational system that you have already become as outmoded as the computer languages I mentioned earlier?  It does not.

By standing here at a formal graduation ceremony in the midst of a strange new virtual world, you are the embodiment of what I believe is the greatest and most unique part of the American Spirit – the willingness to take great risks:  to learn, to change, and to accept uncertainty.  This same spirit is what made at least some of your parents delighted and not dismayed to learn that you were going to be part of a virtual graduation.  I have traveled the world, and nowhere but here in America have I seen this persistent willingness to do new things and take chances.   You could be ridiculed for graduating as avatars, for wearing digital caps and gowns, but you are unafraid and in fact excited, or at the very least, amused.  This spirit, the one that made you willing to stand here today, will make you winners in the times to come.  As technology makes the future less and less certain, erasing the borders between countries, and rewriting the economic landscape, you can and will prevail if you strive to be as changeable and adaptable as your avatars.  Don’t trust the specific things you have learned, because they will change faster around you than you can imagine.  Trust instead that you have learned how to learn, and that by taking chances and letting go, you can ride the waves that are coming.  Graduating here today, in Second Life, is good evidence that you can.”

Posted in Education, Events |

Coming Soon…The Good Ol’ Days!

Friday, February 13th, 2009 by: Blue

[2009-02-25 @ 11:10 AM PST] The new blogs are UP NOW! blogs.secondlife.com (note the extra “s”, the singular will also redirect to the new blogs soon).

[11 AM PST] WE’RE SO CLOSE!

[8 AM PST] Pardon the mess, it’s temporary. We’re upgrading to our new blogs! Stay tuned… :) -Torley

UPDATE – Due to some last minute technical naughtiness, the launch of the new blogs has been delayed to early next week.

I’m disappointed about the delay of course, as I can’t wait to get started blogging in earnest.  If you are disappointed as well, I apologize.  But you know the old saying:  When life gives you lemmings, make lemmingade! And so without further ado…

Welcome to BLUE’S TOLD-YOU-SO COMPETITION where you can turn snark into valuable prizes!  The game is simple.  Just come up with the ultimate told-you-so to go with any event, whether it’s the delay of the new blogs, McCain losing the election, or your boyfriend getting towed for parking in a handicapped spot…it’s up to you.  I’ll even get you started with an example:

Yoz:  Hey Blue, we have to delay launch due to some technical issues.

Blue:  Told ya we shouldn’t be using that Commodore64.

The best comeback wins one lucky resident a dream date with me, your pal Blue, to an exciting inworld location as part of my SL Travel Blog.  Yes you heard right.  Immortalized…on a BLOG.  How can you resist?  Just write your comeback on a notecard with the title TOLD YOU SO and drop a copy on me inworld.   Even if you don’t win, a witty dis is its own reward!


The Second Life Blog was once a place where the Lindens talked casually with you about policy, their projects, recent news, the future of SL, etc.  Residents regularly told us that they loved having access to such broad insight into the company and frequent communication with the full range of Lindens.  And Lindens loved the ongoing dialog with residents.

Over time however, as more Lindens came to participate, the blog got a bit manic. Some of you complained that reports of temporary performance issues would eclipse larger conversations related to long term plans and features while others believed that tutorials and opinion pieces were distracting them from the hard news of inworld issues they needed to know about in order to run their businesses.

In other words, we outgrew our single channel blog.  It was no longer serving people’s individual needs. Perhaps worse was that the signal to noise ratio in comments had gotten bad enough that Lindens weren’t able to depend on them as a way to clearly hear the range of needs and desires of the community.  As such we had to limit blog participation to a smaller number of Lindens on certain types of topics and move extended discussion to the forums.

We knew it was important to get back to using the blog as a key means of constructive two way conversation with the community, so we put together a shopping list of must-haves for a new blog suite which included…

  • Individual channels of communication for each subject
  • Numerous means of accessing channels (including RSS and email subscription)
  • Discussion format sub-blogs for extended conversations with threading, voting etc…
  • Private sub-blogs for communities working in Second Life (like educators and Solution Providers)

After comparing options, we believe we’ve found one that will best suit our ongoing needs. We expect that it will allow us to get back to the days when any and all Lindens could participate freely and hope that it will provide a convenient way for you to engage us on a wide variety of topics.

So we hope that you’ll join us here, on Thursday the 19th of February, for the launch of a whole new Second Life Blog, where it will be the good ol’ days all over again!

See you then,
-Blue

Working in the Virtual World

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 by: amandalinden

Ok, I admit it. When I first joined Linden Lab to head up Enterprise Marketing three months ago, I wasn’t 100% convinced that working in virtual worlds really works. I mean, intellectually, immersive environments make perfect sense. We’ve all heard the key messages and I’ve been hard at work writing them. Meeting in Second Life allows global and mobile teams to collaborate in ways that aren’t possible other ways—improves efficiency, creativity, communication, and keeps travel costs in check. But, seriously—does working in the virtual world work?

My first official meeting in Second Life was an important and jarring experience for me—waking me up to how powerful the medium really is. The meeting took place in the Isabel conference room, here at the Battery Lab. The physical conference room—Isabel—has a virtual counterpart that is an exact replica—Virtual Isabel. A camera in Isabel captures what’s happening in the room and displays it in the virtual space. Simultaneously, the participants in Virtual Isabel are projected on the wall of physical Isabel. The result is a seamless experience—two conference spaces, one real and one virtual, merge into one. At first, it was a bit strange, but then I became absorbed into the discussion and the lines between the physical and virtual spaces blended. Then, in Virtual Isabel, I saw someone floating outside the window with a box on his head. What was my first reaction? I looked outside the physical window of the conference room to see if there was really someone floating outside. My colleagues caught me—in a completely confused state about what’s real and what’s virtual–and we all burst out laughing. I learned something very important that day. The virtual medium is extremely powerful and the ‘sense of presence’ is real—and that’s the magic ingredient that makes a meeting truly productive.

Virtual Isabel

Virtual Isabel

To that point, I believe that the only good alternative to virtual meetings is a face-to-face meeting. It would be a hard to argue the teleconference calls or WebEx can create as immersive an experience. I mean, how many wasted hours have we all spent staring at a Polycom or ‘multi-tasking’ (i.e. barely tuning into the meeting) during a WebEx presentation? Don’t remind me.

Video conferencing is increasingly being used as an immersive meeting technology, but there are some psychological aspects that limit its potential. Caleb Booker recently blogged on this very topic. He posits two very interesting theories. First, usually when you’re in a video conference, the camera is zoomed in on the speaker and—unconsciously—we pull back because we feel we’re in a conversation with a ‘close talker.” (Anyone remember that Seinfeld episode? A classic.)  He makes the case for virtual worlds and says, “The entire virtual world phenomena works because it accomplishes one simple thing: the perception of space. This is one of the most underestimated and wildly powerful tools of the past decade. Without even needing 3D glasses, a virtual space moves another person’s “presence” to a comfortable distance while still creating a sense that you are somehow physically together.”

His second point is even more compelling. As you know, there are three types of learners—visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (or experience-based). The virtual world is a perfect mix that accommodates all three. He says, “Visual folk can look around the room to ’place‘ the voice they’re hearing or the text they’re reading (critical for them if they want to remember anything that happened!). Auditory people can just sit back and chat, occasionally glancing at the typed text. As for the kinesthetic people, well, they’re in absolute heaven.”

In fact, there really isn’t any other collaboration platform that can successfully do all three for distributed teams—except for a physical meeting. And, with travel budgets completely decimated these days, the luxury of a physical meeting is no longer a viable option for day-to-day interactions.

These days, I’m spending at least 2-3 hours a day in Second Life, meeting with my colleagues distributed all over the world—collaborating, brainstorming, learning, and decorating my new office space in LindenWorld. Using Second Life as an enterprise solution is helping us get our enterprise solutions to market smarter, cheaper, and faster than we might otherwise.

Ok, I’m the Marketing gal who drinks my own Kool-Aid—true. But, I’m also a believer, and if you’re not already—you will be, too. Just try it and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Hello!

On January 10th we announced the inaugural
Education Support Faire. The goal of the Faire is to bring together educators, academics, and students to explore the support mechanisms available to Residents who use Second Life to enhance real world educational efforts. Upon announcement, we had a great response from the educational community.

The Faire opens this Sunday, January 25th at the region Supporte, and will last through Friday, January 30th. A full list of individuals and groups with displays and/or presentations at the Education Support Faire can be found here. Thank you to all participants and attendees for getting involved!

In addition to booths and presentations that will highlight the support services offered by Linden Lab to educators, there will be the opportunity to learn more about 46 Resident-run Support Organizations that help educators succeed in Second Life . Explore the ecosystem of support opportunities with people from organizations like the New Media Consortium, ISTE, Languagelab, and the Discovery Education Network. Learn the best way to teach your students how to use Second Life from organizations like New Citizens Incorporated, Info Island, and Global Kids. Find out how people dealing with disabilities can access Second Life for educational purposes from Virtual Ability Inc. and the SLHealthy Wiki. And be sure to stop by between 9am-1pm SLT on Monday, January 26 to speak with Lindens who can help you learn more about what Linden Lab offers to educators in terms of support and strategies for success!

If you are interested in Second Life educational discussions, events, and updates and are not yet joined to the Second Life Education mailing list, please check this link for details.

Finally, we were given good advice from participants who plan to document their travels at the Faire throughout the week; if you plan to do the same using Twitter or Flickr, ‘tag’ the content with “sledfair09.” Using this common tag will make the content easier to search and share in the future!

We are very excited to see this next week unfold and we want to again thank the educators, students, and academics for your inspiring ways of using Second Life as an educational and collaborative tool!

Greetings!

We have a special announcement for you today!

Inaugural Education Support Faire

To support the educational community, we would like to invite you to participate in and attend Linden Lab’s inaugural Education Support Faire! Over the years, Second Life has provided ways for the world of academia to put to use creativity lending to immersive education, distance learning, knowledge sharing, faculty networking–and many other ways to enhance the collective educational community’s efforts in the real world. The success of projects surrounding these efforts within Second Life can be attributed to the many innovative educators, academics, and students who have chosen to utilize Second Life for these purposes.

The main goal for the Education Support Faire is to bring together educators, academics, and students to explore the support mechanisms available to residents who use Second Life to enhance real world educational efforts.

With many networks of support provided by and for residents in Second Life, we would like especially to extend an invite to Second Life educational minds to take part in presenting at the Educational Support Faire.

While, as examples, Linden Lab will provide information regarding our Concierge and knowledge base support services, there are numerous resident developed programs in Second Life designed to orient new and experienced educators or help educators explore Second Life educational and academic opportunities. We want you!

The event will be held January 25th-30th, at Supporte /151/152/36. The venue will be built around a natural atmosphere with trees, rivers, and beaten paths, highlighting the theme of ‘Ecosystems of Support.’ The event will combine both displays and scheduled presentations in a central pavilion.

Organizations or individuals who specifically provide support services for educators, students, or academics in Second Life and would like to utilize space or give a speaking presentation should contact Pathfinder by email (pathfinder [at] lindenlab [dot] com). Please provide some information about the educational support service being highlighted for booths; if speaking, please specify a day/time they would like to reserve, along with the topic. There will be a finite amount of space, so booths and speaking time at the central pavilion will be first-come first-served.

A final list of scheduled events and participating/presenting Resident Support Organizations will be emailed to the SLED mailing list on January 21st.

If you have not yet joined the SLED mailing list, please check this link for details!

We are excited about the growth of the Second Life educational community over the years, and look forward to highlighting the support that will help educators in the years to come!

Pathfinder will be available to answer your questions about the Education Support Faire in this linked forum thread.

The world of Second Life is full of creative, innovative people from around the world, and the educators who teach and work inworld are no exception. Every semester hundreds of students participate in unique learning projects in Second Life. We’d like to highlight a few of 2008’s projects that we can all learn from and enjoy.

Second Life Education blog

Visit the Second Life Education blog (SLed blog) to read about many more great education projects from 2008.

Interested educators are also invited to join the SLed email list.

Hotel & Tourism Management – PolyU Resort Island

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University used Second Life for orientation for 400 freshman students.Over the course of three weeks, the inworld orientation program consisted of 7 individual learning activities: learning styles, multiple intelligences, active learning, academic honesty, classroom etiquette, citing references and hotel room design. They also held 3 competitions – parachuting, through the hoops and a fashion show, as well as 8 live sessions on learning challenges, plagiarism, library and open Q&A, finishing with a dance night and fashion show.

For details of the program see the Hong Kong Polytechnic University web site
Creator: Paul Penfold [RL] Paul Allandale [SL]
SLURL: HKPolyU Resort/121/167/26

hk-polyu_003

Virtual State Fair (Morrill) and Virtual County Extension (Morrill2)

The Virtual State Fair is home to the Cooperative Extension System, a collaboration of over 70 colleges and universities in the USA, providing educational outreach to communities and individuals via a network of county-based educators. Originally agricultural, the programs have expanded to include a broader range of topics such as personal finance, parenting, disaster preparedness, natural resources, and more. The Virtual State Fair offers a combination of entertaining activities and useful information for the general public.

College faculty, researchers, and educators are meeting regularly to collaborate on projects both in Second Life and real life. Second Life projects under development include family caregiving, turf grass, and integrated pest management. Classes on consumer education topics will be taught by extension educators’ inworld during 2009.

A short video of the Morrill islands can be seen on YouTube.
Creator: LuAnn Phillips aka Thynka Little
School: Cooperative Extension System
SLurl: Morrill/128/128/24

hk-polyu_005

Republica Dominicana Virtual

The Republica Dominicana Virtual project brings virtual worlds to the Dominican Republic. Several universities participate in the project including: students and faculty from the Technological Institute of the Americas (ITLA); the philosophy department from the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo (USAD), oldest University in the new world; and the virtual headquarters for Funglode (Foundacion Global Democracia y Desarollo) hosting art gallerys, various historical landmarks, and a library.

Creator: Jan Herder aka Pausanius Raymake
School: Funglode (Foundacion Global Democracia y Desarollo) of the Dominican Republic
SLURL: Ontos /82/114/23/

Counselor Education in a 3D Virtual Environment

Victoria L. Walker – PhD. Candidate at Regent University – built a counseling training facility in Second Life providing student counselors a location to practice and develop their counseling, interviewing, and diagnosis skills with avatars that display many of the physical and emotional features students may encounter once practicing in their communities. The inworld counselor training simulates the features of a community counseling facility or a school counselor’s office while providing instructors with access to observe without distracting the student counselor or the “client” avatar during sessions.

Creator: Victoria Walker aka Zeana Tammas
School: Regent University

hk-polyu_0081

Really Engaging Accounting

At the University of Central Florida, Steven Hornik aka Robins Hermano uses Second Life to teach a financial accounting course, and hopes to publish data he feels is among the first statistically significant empirical data showing a relationship between student engagement using SL and student performance. The course uses Second Life to help students learn the basic concepts of accounting through nontraditional methods.

The reason behind the project is simple, to engage the students in what is normally a very non-engaging course. Taught since the fall of 2007 when class size averaged 250, this fall class size was close to 900 students in one section, with 75-80% of them completing assignments inside of SL.

Creator: Steven Hornik aka Robins Hermano
School: University of Central Florida
SLURL: Teaching 4/68/158/22

The Hopkins Tibetan Treasures Multimedia Archive Project – The WylieWriter

Write Tibetan in Second Life. Tibetan presents a challenge for Second Life educators because of the complex way Tibetan words are written. This project allows Second Life educators to overcome the challenges of translating Tibetan words and write in Tibetan with the help of a proprietary system called the “Wall of WylieWriters”. This innovative teaching tool enables students and teachers to interact in Tibetan language classrooms in Second Life. Developed by Wamlabs of Shipley and the Eepaw Shop of Smoky. The project name refers to Wylie, the standard Tibetan transliteration method.

Creator: Bill Magee aka Wam7c Macchi
School: Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan, Funded by the Taiwan National Science Council.

SL Education Roundtable (SLER)

Hosted by Montclair State University, SLER’s mission is to provide a roundtable setting for interested parties to discuss various topics relevant to furthering the use of Second Life for education. Roundtables occur weekly and often have up to 50 participants. All are welcome to attend, whether presenting or just sitting in to learn about new possibilities Transcripts of past meetings are available in the Library Building just outside the CHSSSouth Amphitheater inworld.

Creator: AJ Kelton aka AJ Brooks
School: Montclair State University
SLURL: Montclair State CHSSSouth /128/156/22

Greetings. Pathfinder Linden here to discuss the growth and development of educational, scientific, and healthcare applications of Second Life, which I work to cultivate.

On December 1st, I had the honor of speaking at and attending World AIDS Day in Second Life.

The event was held at Karuna Island, a new project dedicated to HIV/AIDS education, outreach and support, and funded by the National Library of Medicine, with the support of the Alliance Library System.

The project goal is to provide HIV/AIDS information and outreach in Second Life, involving support group leaders and educators from around the world.

As Second Life grows and matures, I think we are seeing the emergence of a particularly beautiful pattern of organizations and individuals creating larger projects that change people’s lives for the better.

I like to call it an “Ecosystem of Support.” In a healthy developing ecosystem, life complements and depends on other life. Complex relationships between species translate into a robustness that helps all species thrive. More and more, I see this pattern in Second Life between people, groups and organizations.

In my presentation at World AIDS Day, I spoke about this pattern and encouraged people to help it grow even more.

Collaborative efforts to centralize and organize information like this include, for example, an amazing wiki on healthcare resources in Second Life.

With World AIDS Day and Karuna, we have a collection of real world organizations coming together to both fund and manage an ongoing project that addresses a serious public health issue. A vibrant new community of support has been created, kicked off by a very successful event that was attended by thousands of individuals.

All the wonderful details of the Karuna project can be found on their website, along with details about the World AIDS Day event.

In the future I look forward to writing more posts about about similar great projects in education, science and healthcare. And if you’d like to tell me about a particular one, please contact me in Second Life.

I’ll share my ideas on strategies for success, and update folks on how Linden Lab is working to better support these communities.

Take care,
-Pathfinder Linden

This is the second installment of “Stories from Second Life,” an occasional series of profiles of the people behind Second Life innovations, and the tangible benefits that these individuals and their businesses have brought to both the virtual and the real worlds.

Hadrian Yorke rezzed on June 26, 2003 and later Edgware Marker (real life name David Kaskel) first rezzed in Second Life on April 23, 2004, buying his first land in Second Life.  At the time he was a graduate student at the Center for Computing in Humanities at King’s College in Great Britain. His doctoral research was focused on looking at avatars as a theatrical paradigm, considering how much you as an individual are an audience for what your avatar is doing, and how much your avatar is a reflection of who you are. Among other projects, he worked on a visualization project for King’s College to recreate historic European theaters in Second Life.  The theaters reflect different time periods and different locations including Britain, Germany, Italy and Greece.  Designed to be learning theaters under the heading of King’s Visualization Lab, this project is still growing within Second Life.

At Languagelab, Class is in session

At Languagelab, Class is in session

Early in his Second Life experience, David paired up with master magician Starax Statosky and the two created a giant living room.  Within the build they placed a large magnetic board with word magnets that could be manipulated to form sentences.  It was the resulting collaborative play that led David to realize the potential of bringing people together in a virtual space to work together and learn.

In 2005 David laid out the idea for teaching English as a second language to the global audience within Second Life, and at the end of the year he incorporated Languagelab. At that point he decided to put all his focus on his new venture and by the fall of 2007 Languagelab was completing its beta.  This year they enrolled their first paying students.

A Student at Languagelab

A Student at Languagelab

Today Languagelab operates exclusively in Second Life and has invested a significant amount in terms of R&D and testing to provide an unparalleled virtual learning space where students can be paired with highly qualified, innovative language teachers from around the world.

It’s long been known that immersion in an environment with native speakers is the best way to practice and learn a second language. And as David realized early on, the virtual world environment naturally lends itself to language learning, due to its immersive nature and ability to make learning contextually relevant to both situations and locations.

Using the creation tools in Second Life, Languagelab built “English City” where students learn to have contextual conversations with native speakers, for example, by sitting in a café and ordering food together. This methodology of supervised user driven instruction is called in Languagelab parlance; IAL (Instructor Assisted Learning.)

Languagelab Students in Second Life

Languagelab Students in Second Life

David’s company now has 250 students from countries such as Yemen, France, Brazil, KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), China, India, Japan and Poland, registered to learn English in the immersive environment of Languagelab.

The company has also built a specific entry route from its website at www.languagelab.com and its own Registration Center in Second Life, enabling students to get up to speed quickly in the virtual environment and and providing support in choosing the best study plan.

Today Languagelab’s students pay a monthly subscription which gives them access to the City where they practice under teacher supervision to increase fluency. They also take structured classes in the classroom.  Beginning in 2009 full courses will begin, and allow students to pay by the course or to maintain a subscription.  David also plans to launch additional courses in 2009 including a 10 week elementary Spanish course.  The company has 11 full-time employees in London, eight teachers and an instructional designer plus 20-30 part-time staff populating the City and providing technical support, Second Life skills training and voice set-up.  If you’re interested in picking up a second language, visit Languagelab in Second Life, on Language Lab Island, or see their website.

A Languagelab dance

A Languagelab dance

It goes without saying that we’d love to feature more of these profiles, so we can continue to highlight the infinite number of ways the Second Life community is innovating.  Is there a hidden gem that you feel is worth the spotlight? If so, please comment in this Second Life forum thread, or email me at robin@lindenlab.com.

You can also visit more Second Life Grid success stories via the Solution Providers listing.

New First Look for SLim

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 by: Stephany Linden

We’re happy to announce a new First Look for SLim, a new voice and text instant messaging client.

SLim’s technology is provided by Vivox (www.vivox.com) and developed in partnership with Linden Lab to work with the Second Life viewer.  SLim enables Second Life Residents to conduct voice or text conversations with member of their Second Life friends list….whether they are logged into the virtual world or offline. While the Second Life viewer will still serve as the primary inworld communication engine, SLim is capable of running on most computers, and offers users a voice-enabled instant messaging client that extends the value of the Second Life Grid beyond the virtual world.

(more…)