Thing #15 Get a Second Life

I spent some time exploring Second Life. I can see where it would appeal to some people. I read through all of the FAQs and was absolutely astonished to read about the millions of people and millions of dollars, real dollars, being spent in a virtual world. Crazy! I have no frame of reference for that. I have friend who spend hours on My Space and Facebook so can believe that people really do immerse themselves in an online world. Therefore the need for different services would be apparent - like virtual libraries. As with most of the other Things I've been experimenting with, it won't be something our school will be taking advantage of do to our filtering, monitoring, etc. of student activities. Our students aren't even allowed to access their email at school so I really don't think they'll be establishing second lives at school. Most have a hard enough time dealing with their actual lives. Isn't there a line in a song about being much cooler online? I think we're heading down a slippery slope of not being able to conduct ourselves in actual real settings. It's much easier to be the person you'd like to be in the semi-anonymous online world.