Research Proposal

The use of Second Life by colleges around the world creates a virtual campus usually on an island and is an ideal medium to reach out to a generation and society that is surrounded by computers and online play. The game allows players to have a fantasy like environment where you can play as whoever you want and build whatever you choose, perfect for students who can join and learn more about a college that they no longer have to travel to see. The games allow schools to project the image they desire for students to be in a familiar environment like at home and still be able to visit the college and see and learn about it before they attend.

What I want to research is the impacts of games like Second Life on college campuses and how it can help with students. The topic of my study of virtual worlds like Second Life and its impacts in an educational field like schools and colleges can further help students who can participate in a virtual setting within an educational sphere created by the school. The recent use of Second Life by colleges around the world has brought up the idea of using it as a platform to teach and educate students who can easily associate and immerse themselves in online gaming. It provides a greater educational opportunity for students on a virtual campus that is both a learning environment and promotes educational benefits.

Using Purchase College’s existing virtual island in Second Life itself, I will look at the current outline and layout of the school and try to help add to it to better help create a more interactive and larger game play for students. Using tools from images recorded from Second Life, I plan to create a video with images of real life and a virtual Purchase College Campus to introduce an online tour guide of the campus itself which can be used later on to help students who want to take a look at the college without having to come here.

Splicing real life images and the views we can see in second life can help students or incoming students better associate and learn more about the college itself. The campus itself can be viewed in either real life or participating in Second Life and become a resident who can roam around and still be able to understand the layout and where to find help about anything in the school. The free roaming and the lack of set goals in this game gives the ideal environment for anyone to learn easily and at their own pace using their own imagination to immerse themselves in a world based on reality but without restrictions.

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The original song piece was done by a German band called Kraftwerk in 1981 and was called "Computer Love" from their album Computer World. The interesting thing about this song is that it has been remade over and over with different styles and different covers. The one we heard in class was a cover done by the group Glass Candy. If we read the lyrics carefully we start to realize the actual predictions of a life with the computer in our lives. It begins with saying, "Another lonely life, stare at the screen...or a data date...", the song was made by an electronic group in 1981, before the whole computer boom and it really is freaky how accurate the song describes our computer culture today. Sort of like the book we are reading by William Gibson, the past seemed to have a good prediction of what was to come in the future. Its important to study how the computer culture started and the impressions back then and how it relates to us now to better understand as a culture who we are and how we connect with each other.