Life Long Learning: Seniors in Second Life Continuum

This study is aimed to find out that practices for conducting and creating applications for senior people and also impoving the use of computer and Internet among senior population. It was indicated that designing virtual classrooms in Second Life was feasile and useful  for seniors education. The potential significant purpose of this project was to creat a efficient, dependable and reproducible model for outreach to senior activity centers and retirement communities.

 

Reserchers planed for targeted population to interact in a series of workshops to test wherher seniors wer benefited from this type of virtual education experience:

 

Virtual health fair: to provide seniors with information about searching for health and health-related topics on the Internet.

E-mail  classroom: to teach seniors to setup and use an E-mail account.

Art classroom: to expose seniors to different kinds of art

 

According to the article, most seniors participants showed enjoyment of the virtual education experience. SecondLife is accessible to a large population and it provides an interesting learning environment to seniors. With the rapid growth of old population, it is important for seniors to be aware of  computer use and the advantages of using computer. The experience of virtual classroom in SecondLife improved computer application

knowledge of seniors as well as the use of computer technology. Senior people could access information conveniently with the applications and tutorials in SecondLife. The advatages of the experience of virtual classroom might be shown in the aspects of time and location, because the traditional classroom teaching had a limitaion of them. The researchers identified areas of interest for seniors and intergrated them into learning environment in SecondLife. This kind of experience greatly promoted their interest of internet.Also, the researcher assumed that the virtual classroom might be effective in promoting learning activities and increasing interests in using virtul worlds for educational or academic purposes.

 

References:

Seals, C. D., & Moses, W., & Nyagwencha, J.,& Martin, A., & Clanton, K., & Thomos,  C.M., & Doswell, F. (2008). Life Long Learning: Seniors in Second Life  Continuum. Journal of Computer Science, 4 (12).

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