College of Education launches 3-D virtual environment Second Life Island

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Jennifer L Parks, (808) 956-0416
Communications Coordinator, College of Education
Peter Leong, 956-3902
Posted: Feb 28, 2011

The UH Mānoa College of Education Second Life Island (COE SL) is complete. Second Life is a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment where residents can explore, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another. The COE SL Island will be officially launched at an event on March 4 at the College Collaboration Center (CCC) in Wist Hall 134 from 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
 
The opening ceremony will include a welcome address, ribbon-cutting, a simulcast in SL, real life faculty presentations about SL uses in the classroom, and a virtual hula performance in the SL Holomua Learning Area. Refreshments will be also provided.

Partly funded by the Department of Educational Technology LEI Aloha's Connections to Teaching Careers grant project, the COE SL Island was built with the help of an advisory board, consisting of COE faculty and students as well as faculty from the Hawai‘inuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge. The island features a replica of Wist and Everly Halls, Diamond Head Amphitheatre, Holomua Learning Area, Get FIT program tree house, Hale Anuenue dormitory, and a dockside coffee shop.

COE assistant professor Peter Leong directed the COE SL island development project and teaches a course entirely in SL. “We wanted to create spaces on the island for faculty and students to socialize and collaborate; for experimental teaching and research; and for outreach, cultural and entrepreneurial initiatives,” he said. “In addition, we felt strongly about creating a virtual campus with a Hawaiian sense of place and made the decision to design our virtual campus to partially resemble our real campus while creating other new fictitious places, such as an amphitheatre inside the crater of a virtual Diamond Head and the Holomua Learning Area which features Hawaiian hale, taro patches and waterfalls.”

For more information about the official launch event and the COE SL Island, please contact Leong at peterleo@hawaii.edu or (808) 956-3902.

 
 

For more information, visit: http://www.coe.hawaii.edu/about/stories/SL_Island