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Second Life

What is Second Life®?

Welcome to your Second Life! This guide will help you get started fast, by explaining how to complete some of the most common tasks you’ll need to get the most out of your new Second Life. It might be helpful to print this guide for reference as you explore the World.

Second Life is a free online virtual world imagined and created by its Residents. From the moment you enter Second Life, you'll discover a fast-growing digital world filled with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity.

Return to TopFaculty in one of our training classes explore using different avatars.

Is there a cost associated with Second Life®?

There is no cost to create an account and use Second Life for education. Many educators use only free accounts and free materials in Second Life to teach. If you pay for a premium account, it provides you with an opportunity to own more land and gives you a weekly “allowance” of Linden dollars nearly equivalent to the annual membership fee. You can spend money in Second Life purchasing virtual property and items. Many people make a full-time living in real life by creating and selling virtual goods in Second Life.

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Can I download Second Life®? Where?

Yes. To use Second Life:

  1. Check you computer to make sure it meets the minimum system requirements.
  2. Download and install the viewer on your computer.
  3. Setup a specialized account for educators.

Once your avatar is created, you will be teleported to ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), one of many vibrant education communities in Second Life. ISTE will help you discover education-related experiences in Second Life through a wide variety of programming and resources, including:

  • Live "Docent" assistance during regularly scheduled hours
  • Scheduled tours, speaker series, and special events
  • Showcased destinations and educational uses of SL
  • Socials to learn from other educators about how they are using SL
  • Tools to enable your educational uses of SL
  • Additional tutorials to land you on your feet
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How do I use Second Life®?

Tutorials

  • Linden Lab provides extensive training in the form of effective video tutorials for many skills in Second Life. If you have recently started in Second Life, we recommend that you select the “Browse” tab on this page and select the “Beginners” category from the pulldown menu. Just viewing the beginning tutorials and practicing the skills covered in this category will give you an excellent start in Second Life.
  • Customizing your Second Life avatar (comic book)
  • Welcome to Second Life (comic book)
  • Global Kids’ Second Life Curriculum is composed of nine sequential “levels.” Each level is composed of modules which, in turn, are composed of individual lesson plans or “missions”. In total there are 134 missions. These can be used as hand-outs to develop specific Second Life skills or within a broader educational program designed to teach such subjects as science, filmmaking or literature. The content is licensed as Creative Commons (attribution-noncommercial-share alike). You may adapt this curriculum, but always give credit to Global Kids and share significant changes or best practices with other professionals implementing the curriculum at RezEd.org.
Return to Top One of our training class students investigates cellular structure from inside a giant cell on Genome Island in Second Life.

Quick Reference Cards

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User Manual

(Paperback)

Frequently Asked Questions

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Do we offer Instructor-Led training for Second Life®

CRLT offers periodic Introduction to Second Life training classes for faculty who want to use Second Life in teaching. These classes meet for a series of five or six weeks, with the first session meeting together in a training lab. All other sessions are conducted in the virtual world of Second Life and we do not meet together physically in Real Life (RL). The In-World classes are designed so that instructors can drop in at any time after completing an initial training class which covers basics of communication and navigation.

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System Requirements

Faculty from Clemson and the University of Southampton in England attend a training class together in Second Life.

Second Life has high system requirements to render 3D graphics while providing text and voice communication along with interaction. The Second Life engine is installed on many public lab computers on campus.

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Additional Resources for Second Life®

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Articles

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