>> A good point,  but the richness of the virtual enviroinment requires that
>> you invest a significant amount of time to learn its many features on even a
>> basic level.   Still, the first time I got on Second Life  I did invest a
>> significant amount of time doing the various erxercises on Orientation
>> Island and by the time I got to the MainLand I could get around and manage
>> the environment. Learning to master Second Life is pretty much identical to
>> learning to master an online video game such as World of Warcraft, an
>> environment which is fairly similar.   It may be a little scary for mature
>> adults to

>> do this but kids will take to it as naturaly as ducks to water.  They
>> won't need extra motivation.  in practice, most

> That may be true if they want to play, but once it becomes a "teaching
> environment" I think you'll find that the ones who wouldn't already be doing
> stuff like WoW or SL will be ... less inspired, shall we say.  Along these
> lines, you may be interested in Keith Devlin's book, "Mathematics Education
> for a New Era: Video Games As a Medium for Learning" on this subject - I
> suspect you would resonate with a lot of what he says, though I think it
> would not work for all students, any more than current pedagogy does.

>> the extra effort to help out the total newbie (or "noob").  Most young
>> people have no trouble socializing and are flexible and inquisitive anyway
>> and usually quickly get up to speed.  Older people are more likely to be
>> standoffish and may experience great difficulties and frustration and are
>> likely to give up if they don't adequately pepare on Orientation and Help
>> Islands.  I don't think you fully realize what a huge part of the whole
>> learning experiece the Second Life environment is.  How long does it take
>> for a  student to learn the in's and out's of a new school?  I don't

> Right, but again this is for the *motivated* student.  Or faculty member.
> One does have limited time.

> One of the big shames about education is that one is often stuck in a local
> minimum with respect to (potentially useful or even ground-breaking) new
> ideas; the amount of time needed to not just get acquainted with Sage or IBL
> or Second Life or online grading systems or whatever, but also to become a
> truly excellent teacher in this new pedagogy (whichever it is) is often
> large enough that one would have to severely neglect one's current duties to
> do so.  I could totally imagine someone taking a sabbatical to learn how to
> do a whole course in SL, but for most people that is probably not the wisest
> use of their time unless they are truly passionate about it (and at the
> university level, unless they can make at least a small pedagogical article
> out of it - which you may find interesting for a journal like PRIMUS).   I
> have colleagues who will never use a computer in the classroom, not because
> it's not a good idea, but because they are extremely effective teachers who
> would likely suffer for many semesters until they grew accustomed to it.

> However, don't stop updating us, either!  Perhaps with more paragraph breaks
> for readability, though :) There are lots of people who read these messages
> who never respond, but definitely read them nonetheless, and ideally we want
> someone *already using SL for teaching* (which there certainly are out
> there) who wants to use mathematics software in it to think of Sage, and to
> find these discussions; your experience will be extremely valuable for them.

>> most active in Second life) have full sims and virtual schools set up.
>> There are lots of educational institutions involved in one way or another on
>> Second Life. Sage Math works perfectly in Second Life with the sole
>> exception of interactive 3D JMOL graphics.  But you can work around even
>> that easily by clicking on a gadget that opens

> By the way, see some recent posts on sage-notebook for HTML5 versions - like
> https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/sage-notebook/kkk...

> - kcrisman

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