A Chinese Teacher on Second Life: Fears SL Will Go the Way of Google & Advice for Effectively Engaging Students in SL

Somewhere near Shanghai, aston Leisen sends a farewell to Google from Second Life... and a greeting to New World Notes readers from China

Last Friday I briefly noted the beautiful new China simulator in Second Life, which its creator, Aston Leisen, has fashioned to resemble a 3D watercolor painting. Were you to visit this China of Second Life, you might have noticed Mr. Leisen's farewell message to Google placed within it, thanking the search engine company for "for making the invisible visible". His virtual shrine was a virtual version of the tributes young Chinese placed outside Google's Beijing headquarters, after Google announced it was withdrawing from their country. For as it happens, Aston Leisen is a new media professor living near Shanghai, who fears that Second Life may one day go the way of Google.

"Given the latest news of Google's leaving and the intensive hit on the Internet/free communication from government of China in last free months," he told me recently, "[I'm worried] how Second Life, as a wonderful open platform, will continue to survive. To be honest, I kinda like how SL stayed at the edge of the mainstream culture. [Because] SL might not be accessible from China when it gets popular."

Aston has taught two classes on Second Life at his college, which for obvious reasons, I won't name. (Concern over his safety is the same reason I asked him to send that greeting photo above, with his face obscured.) Censorship aside, Aston has some thoughts on teaching SL that I suspect educators who share the platform will relate to, and learn from. How do you engage students with Second Life? Based on his two classes, the best way is by doing:

"In the first one [I tried] to bring student into a question related to self-identity and that didn't work well," he said. "I learned that when students who 'have to' go to a virtual world as a group don't really have the desire to discover the world and who they could be (this also happens when I try bringing real life friend into Second Life.)

"The second class was all about taking SL simply as an application, a tool for creating images, sounds, videos, installations and performance. It went well, and I happily found some students began to explore the new world on their own after the class."

Another result of his teachings is this great machinima aston Leisen made. The result of China's recent crackdown on Internet freedom, unfortunately, still remains to be seen.

Comments

[Leondra]

Sooooo sad, yet true. How will we keep the internet "free"? These infinite learning resources, social communication interfaces (I barely grasp); flowing across multiple networks....are yet to be defined as basic human rights.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Perhaps the greatest sentence ever written in defining our relationships with each other.

The Berlin Wall seems a very small thing in comparison... and we now stand toe to toe with China over these issues. ...am I the only one biting one's nails?

(in the pursuit of happiness, peace...
understanding....)
-Leo

[Moggs Oceanlane]

I hope China stays... the Australian Government has a proposal due to go to parliament early this year that would mean Australia joins countries like China, Saudi Arabia and Iran who have centrally filtered/censored internet. I would be devastated if Google was no longer available in Australia - at the moment it's an imagined horror but it may become a real possibility if the Government get their way. Sighs.

[Ann Otoole]

If the people of China have a problem with their Maoist government then they need to deal with the issue. You don't win freedom by sitting on your ass whining about it.

[swannjie]

Judging from the art work and the success of both classes, he knows what he is talking about. As a by stander - its so easy to speak without knowing details. I think the ink painting sim is a very gd idea and some other people have dreamt of fog and light type of sl environments using various methods - this is a v clean and smart method. It is a great success. Also the previous sim content was a sinking boat, which is also a v gd metaphor w fine details from the 70s China. High quality sim, happy to see the work.

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Too many politicians are my age: old. We recall some sort of wonderland before the Internet flattened things globally.

I'm actually more horrified by the Australian proposal because at least, in China, one has the thuggish precedent of a government that will murder dissenters in public squares. If the Aussies pass the law, it won't be long before proponents of a Nanny State in the US again begin making noise on behalf of "our children."

The difference is that US and Aussie pols seek to protect our people from presumed harm. China's repressive government wants to protect itself from change and harmful truths such as what has happened in Tibet.

Wow...I sound like a right-winger, but left and right can equally fear overreach by government into our private lives.

[melponeme_k]

The majority of Chinese citizens are not rebelling in China because China does right by them for the most part. If not, why aren't there huge defection stories like during the cold war days?

We are talking about an economic powerhouse that owns most of the US debt. Our money is backed by yuan. Just about the only thing keeping the US solvent.

The last time I checked China was not making it's citizens pay down the debt created by bankers or covering their lousy market bets. We in the US are supporting these criminals.

Now who is free?

P.S. We should all start learning Mandarin now. That will be the lingua franca in the SL killer.

[Galena Qi]

When I chat with Chinese citizens in SL,I'm always a bit uneasy, thinking that the conversation could be used against them. There is more than one route of vulnerability: the SL servers and the Google translator service are the most obvious. Could anyone with some knowledge of internet security suggest some safety measures? Maybe hand out security tips on a notecard?