Second Life Basics

When you first log into the system, you are put on the tutorial island where you can learn to move, fly, talk, and work with your inventory. It is highly recommended that you go through the whole tutorial.

Movement

Walking. You can walk using the arrow keys on your keyboard.

Flying. You can fly by clicking on “Fly” button on the menu on the bottom of the screen and use the arrow keys to navigate. Click on “Stop Flying” button when you are done.

Movement shortcuts:

W or UpArrowkey Move forward (away from the camera)
S or DownArrowkey Move backward (towards the camera)
A or LeftArrowkey Spin or turn to the left / bank left when flying
D or RightArrowkey Spin or turn to the right / bank right when flying
E or PageUp Jump when on the ground / ascend when flying
C or PageDown Crouch when on the ground / descend when flying. If whilst descending you reach the ground, you will land and leave fly mode.
F or HomeKey Enter/Leave flying mode. if you leave fly mode when still airborne, you will fall to earth.
Ctrl-R Toggles Run-Mode on and off. Has no effect on flight.

Camera. You can look in different directions and zoom in and out by pressing Alt key and moving your mouse. When you start moving your avatar, the camera focuses back on it.

Teleport. You can go to different places by teleporting yourself there. To do this, click on “Map” button on the menu at the bottom of the screen. You can teleport to anywhere on the map by double-clicking on the location you want to be at. You can also search for locations by typing in the name of the location in the Search text box.

Building Objects

Objects are built on land. Some (most) land owners don’t let others to build on their land. This means you either should have a patch of your own land to build things on, or go to a public area (like Sandbox Island) to build objects. Start building by right-clicking on the land and selecting “Create”. Everything you make will be owned by you. And if it is not made on public land, you can also sell it. The system allows you to code the objects using a scripting language.

Education Opportunities

Second life has many advantages:

Cosmopolitan experience - meet people from all over the world!
Invite speakers from distant locations with no travel costs!
Favorable publicity
Marketing opportunities – promoting your college – information sessions
Collaborative projects – create objects together
Information sessions for different organizations
Out-of-class help online

What Can You Do?

Audio. You can also stream audio.

Voice. Built in voice chat ability.

Video. Stream video to your land.

Slide shows. Upload slide shows.

Hand-outs and Hand-ins. Use simple scripts to distribute and collect documents.

Simulations. Create simulations of experiments.

Potential Problems

Second Life is for people of 18 years or older. There is Teen SL world, but it is completely separate from the main SL grid.
Second Life demands a lot of resources, especially bandwidth-wise. Things like streaming video or audio could be impossible for some students. Check out the system requirements page: http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php
Second Life doesn’t support any file format other than simple text files. That is, if you want students to turn in something other than a plain text document, it must be done in the real world.
Second Life is usually updated on Wednesdays, with the grid unavailable for half of a day.
Finally, people not accustomed to this environment may have a big learning curve. A couple of weeks of extensive walk-through’s and tutorials should be planned ahead of actual use of the SL world for instruction.