Exploring Second Life: CAVE Island

CAVE Island, an acronym for Community of Academic Virtual Educators, is a space dedicated to supporting online and virtual learning. The island have five partners: Boise State University's Department of Educational Technology, The Association for Educational Communications and Technology's virtual worlds committee (AECT SL), the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), and the Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning special interest group (ARVEL SIG).

I started by visiting the ICT Library. The emphasis was not on books, as in a traditional library, but on interactive displays packed with information with links to websites with additional information.

The ARVEL SIG area took advantage of the opportunities provided by a virtual center. Rather than trying to create a building that resembles what the organization may have in the real world, they created a tropical region with a teleporter to get between portions of the ARVEL SIG compound.

One of the most interesting aspects of the ARVEL SIG compound was the virtual room. A door in empty space lead to a small room that reminded me of Star Trek's holodeck where the user can switch between a selection of vignettes. The room is an extension of Harvard's Virtual Assessments Project which is exploring how immersive technologies can be used to assess science inquiry skills.

I was also intrigued by the presence of meeting rooms in the AECT area of CAVE Island. While placed in unique locations, such as a cave or the top of a mountain, these rooms contained many of the trappings of a traditional real-world meeting room, including a conference table, chairs, and even a laptop attached to an LCD projector. These spaces provide the opportunity to hold otherwise traditional meetings in a virtual space. The use of Second Life, where each person appears as an avatar, certainly provides a different sort of online presence than other formats for synchronous meetings.

The most interesting aspect of CAVE Island, however, isn't any of the details or specific aspects of any one group's area. What is most exciting is the fact that five groups with related goals and interests, but spread across the globe, are able to share a proximity in a virtual setting, emphasizing their connections and providing them a space to collaborate and support each other's goals.