The Affordances of Second Life for Education - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 101

by first name at the top of the Friends list; offline
Friends are alphabetized below.
Any avatar that has been added to your
“Friends” list will appear on the Friends tab on
the Communicate panel, and can be IM'd by
clicking their name and the IM/Call button. This
works even if the Friend's avatar is in an entirely
different part of the world. (Indeed, the whole
concept of “distance” sort of melts away in vir-
tual worlds such as SL.) If you send an IM to a
Friend who is offline, it will be stored until next
time they log in. (There is a limit on how many
offline IMs will be stored, so it is necessary to log
in periodically to “clear” IMs to avoid reaching
the “cap.”) A setting in Preferences allows “of-
fline IMs” to be sent to the user's email address,
allowing communication even with people who
are not logged into SL. Interestingly, if a person
“replies” to an offline IM email message, it will
go back into the world to the person who sent the
message, although this two-way communication
link expires in a day or so.
You can also send an IM to multiple friends at
once, which creates a temporary “Friends Con-
ference,” that allows for a private small group
discussion. This is particularly effective for small
groups in a classroom situation. This is done by
selecting multiple users at once from the Friends
list (holding down the Control key while clicking),
and then pressing the IM/Call button. You can also
initiate a conference IM by creating a folder of
Calling Cards—which are added to your Inven-
tory when a Friendship offer is accepted—and
then right-clicking the folder and choosing Instant
Message All Users or Instant Message Online
Users. Anything that is typed by anyone in the
Friends conference is seen by all of the others in
the conference. One difficulty with the Friends
conference is that if anyone accidentally “leaves”
the conference by closing the IM window, it may
be necessary to start the whole conference over
again in order to add them back in.
If you wish to have a more robust, ongoing
conversation among a group of users, the best way

to do that is to form a group. Groups can be formed
by any user for any purpose, and can either be
public (anyone can join) or private (joining by in-
vitation of the “owner” only). Groups must include
at least two members; any group that dwindles to
only one member will be automatically deleted
by the system. Public groups can optionally be
listed in the SL Search function (so that anyone
can find them). It might make sense for a class
of students to form at least one large group for
class announcements and whole-group discussion
and a number of smaller groups for small-group
discussions and collaboration. Groups can even
be created at a moment's notice (if desired). There
is a limit of 25 groups per avatar, so it does not
make sense to create groups willy-nilly, and it
also makes sense for any user to leave any group
in which he or she no longer has an interest. To
communicate with a Group via IM, you click the
group name on the Groups tab of the Commu-
nicate panel, and then click the IM/Call button.
After a few seconds, an IM window opens, and
any member of the Group who is online is added
to that IM conversation. Note that group IMs are
not stored for members who are offline. (Group
Announcements are stored, however; these are
sent from the Group Info panel by those with
permission to do so.)
A relatively newer form of communication in
Second Life is Voice. Voice can be used in any
situation that text can be used, that is, in open
chat, IMs, or Group conversations. To use Voice,
you will need a headset with a microphone. The
SL implementation of Voice is amazing, because
in a chat situation, information about the relative
location of each speaker is communicated through
volume and “placement” of a given voice in the
auditory field, using technology that is similar to
“surround sound” technologies used in movies. In
addition, when chatting in Voice, a graphic appears
above the head of the person speaking, showing
how loudly they are speaking (the “wave” graphic
pulses with the spoken word, and turns red when
their voice overpowers their microphone or sys-