The property, named Anteater Island, was made available to interested faculty as a pilot project to use as a place where teams of students could create group projects.

In December 2006, the Libraries purchased an island in Second Life and have been developing opportunities for it to be used as an educational space. Second Life is a virtual environment where its over 7.5 million residents can build, shop, play, and interact with each other.

The property, named Anteater Island, was made available to interested faculty as a pilot project to use as a place where teams of students could create group projects. These student teams not only use Second Life as a platform to build computer games, they also use it as a collaborative work environment. Andrew Ho, a computer science student participant, really enjoyed working in such an environment. He and his classmates rose to the challenge of learning to build things in Second Life. “This is a very useful skill to have in my opinion, because you cannot always expect everything to be taught to you through school.”

Second Life residents watch a lecture on Anteater Island.

Upcoming plans for Anteater Island include building an amphitheater for broadcasting live events, a prefab classroom, and selected library services. The Libraries have already streamed into Second Life a lecture on scholarly publishing given by Dr. Christine Borgman from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

The Libraries is looking for more faculty partners in a variety of disciplines in Anteater Island. “We want to be able to provide a place in Second Life where UCI faculty and students can experience it without having to go through a huge learning curve” said Kristine Ferry, a member of the Libraries’ Second Life task force. “Then, if they like what they see, we can point them to the resources they’ll need to develop their skills.”

For more information on this project, please contact Kristine Ferry at kferry@uci.edu. For general information about Second Life visit www.secondlife.com.