Chinese Island class times?

[RoyBlakeley]

Chinese Island is one of my favorite sims. I find it pretty fun to explore, and think it would be cool to actually see other people there. It was created by an Australian University's Chinese language department, which makes me think that there must be regularly-scheduled class times where students log in and visit it. Does anyone know if I am correct in thinking that, and if so, when are the classes?

Thanks!

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, RoyBlakeley said:

...

which makes me think that there must be regularly-scheduled class times where students log in and visit it.

...

No, it's not an active region. The traffic count is only 48 for the Chinese and 449 and 14 respectively for the other two regions there.

Second Life never worked out as an educational platform and I don't think any of the virtual university campuses are still active. This one is fairly recent - created as late as 2013 - but those traffic counts says it all.

It's a lovely build though, a very good example of the best of late prim age SL. The Italian region next to it is lovely too even though it's obviously not quite finished. I think I've found tw more sims to my list of great SL classics there, thank you for telling us about it!

For those who want to take a look Here are the SLURLs:

Chinese: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Monash University 2/195/144/26

Italian: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Monash University/251/182/23

Edited September 5, 2020 by ChinRey

[animats]

The National University of Singapore also has an empty campus in SL.

North Carolina State University's business school also has an empty campus. This is the home of Accounting Island. They even have a business you can audit.

It's sad. Even with millions of students locked down at home, SL can't do education.

[AdminGirl]

3 hours ago, animats said:

This is the home of Accounting Island. They even have a business you can audit.

Performing an audit voluntarily? Hmmmmmm...

[Rat Luv]

Maybe if you IM them they will come back online and start a new course? I'll  come to learn Chinese too. 

[ChinRey]

13 hours ago, animats said:

The National University of Singapore also has an empty campus in SL.

There used to be almost 300 of them. I don't know how many still remains.

 

13 hours ago, animats said:

Even with millions of students locked down at home, SL can't do education.

Second Life doesn't have any value worth speaking of when it comes to classroom teaching, especially not at college/university level. There's not much you can do there that can't be done as well or better in RL or through video conferencing. It's hard enough for a lecturer to create the neccessary rapport when meeting the students face to face; a virtual reality only adds more barriers and distractions.

That does not mean SL is inherently unsuitable as a teaching platform though. It obviously has a lot of unreleased potential, only not for "dry" lecturing. Interactive learning experiences and demonstrations, that's where SL could have excelled. Let engineer students watch the inside of a working stirling engine, learn carpentry by building a hip roof in virtual space, learn history and geography by going to places you'll never see in RL, learn history and culture by studying 3 dimensional models of artifacts, learn interior design by furnishing virtual rooms, etc., etc.

Developing a virtual world as a relevant learning platform is a big task though and somebody would have to finance it. Personally I think it would be a very good investment but I'm hardly unbiased there for obvious reasons.

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by ChinRey

[RoyBlakeley]

On 9/4/2020 at 10:52 PM, ChinRey said:

No, it's not an active region. The traffic count is only 48 for the Chinese and 449 and 14 respectively for the other two regions there.

Second Life never worked out as an educational platform and I don't think any of the virtual university campuses are still active. This one is fairly recent - created as late as 2013 - but those traffic counts says it all.

It's a lovely build though, a very good example of the best of late prim age SL. The Italian region next to it is lovely too even though it's obviously not quite finished. I think I've found tw more sims to my list of great SL classics there, thank you for telling us about it!

For those who want to take a look Here are the SLURLs:

Chinese: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Monash University 2/195/144/26

Italian: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Monash University/251/182/23

Thanks. Is the traffic count per day, week, month, or what interval?

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, RoyBlakeley said:

Thanks. Is the traffic count per day, week, month, or what interval?

It's a bit more complicated than that. The traffic count isn't simply the number of visitors, it also takes into account how long they stay there and how active they are. But those numbers are really low. To give you an idea how low, the old amusement park at RIzal that nobody ever visits anymore has a traffic count of 316. NCI's main help center at Kuula has 13,479.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

some of these places you see are being paid for, but not used, basically they got swept under the desk and nobody remembers they are paying for it until it's audited and brought up or somebody randomly remembers it and reports it,  seen a few schools have it happen too over the years.

[RoyBlakeley]

On 9/5/2020 at 12:10 PM, ChinRey said:

That does not mean SL is inherently unsuitable as a teaching platform though. It obviously has a lot of unreleased potential, only not for "dry" lecturing. Interactive learning experiences and demonstrations, that's where SL could have excelled. Let engineer students watch the inside of a working stirling engine, learn carpentry by building a hip roof in virtual space, learn history and geography by going to places you'll never see in RL, learn history and culture by studying 3 dimensional models of artifacts, learn interior design by furnishing virtual rooms, etc., etc.

Developing a virtual world as a relevant learning platform is a big task though and somebody would have to finance it. Personally I think it would be a very good investment but I'm hardly unbiased there for obvious reasons.

 

Chinese Island is meant to be interactive. There's a HUD you can use to communicate with NPCs in Mandarin characters in order to accomplish certain tasks.