final project for ITEC 830

Well, I guess the think that was on my mind all week (actually for the past two weeks) is about the final project. There are a lot of interesting things in this world, but not a lot of time to focus on them ALL. One thing that I had on my mind before even joining the ITEC program was the uses of Second Life for education. No one is surprised by this, I'm sure. I wondered why SFSU didn't have a presence in Second Life.

Well, I did some poking around and I learned some interesting things. The SF State Visioning project, which has a small toe-print in Second Life. It looks like the DAI department has had some virtual world building classes in the past. But that's about it. I was told that one reason we don't have a Second Life presence is because our president and provost have not been big technology-type folks. A push for a Second Life presence would have to be a grass-roots movement. I was also told that the new provost is much more technologically oriented and we can expect to see some big strides in the technology area.

So, for my final project I'd like to research what other schools have done or had to go through in order to introduce Second Life to their campuses. What are the characteristics of the stakeholders? What were the hurdles to overcome? What were the pitfalls? Would they have done anything differently? What are the benefits to having a Second Life presence? What kinds of metrics would one use to measure the benefits/drawbacks. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.