Second Life - a technology for online education?

Learning in 3D - Second Life?  I am not so sure of the value or if it is something I would engage my students in.  I have worked with Second Life, about 5 or 6 years ago.  It wasn't one of my more successful projects and I was glad when it was over.  I couldn't understand why so many of my peers raved about it.  I was curious and interested to catch up with Second Life when I saw it on our agenda. I was curious how it was being used and I wanted to see what had changed.

I was disappointed to read that a major barrier still remained - learning how to use and navigate in Second Life (Warburton 2009).  This brought back an uncomfortable memory of the SVP of IBM Learning not being able to dress her avatar and showing looking very different than those attending the event.  Even the best preparation doesn't always work.   If a learning course is relatively short - like a semester - I would not use Second Life.  The course time is too valuable to spend it learning how to use a technology.  However, I could understand investing in the time to set it up and learn it if it were going to be a core technology and used all the time over the length of a program (a few years).  As cited in our reading, the virtual world does allow for simultaneous participation and could be set up to look like the classroom. (Warburton 2009).   This could appeal to certain types of learners and possibly those learners that also enjoy simulated virtual games.

The social aspect of Second Life seems to be the most compelling.  If a user engages in Second Life they are in effect walking (or flying) into a space like a coffee shop, open pavilion, or some type of gathering space and will come in contact with others. It was noted in the study by Petrakou that the initial contact in the space was centered around how to use the application - how to walk, talk, move, etc.  For me, this can be distracting and taking the student away from what they are there to learn (unless the lesson is to learn Second Life).

I am looking forward to reading what others post, I would like to learn how others feel it can be used effectively