SL and FL, a Question for the Thinkers

I work in adult education in the areas of what lower income people need in order to earn a better living, get a better job, etc. SL is a place where self directed, self motivated, creative, entrepreneurial, people can make money doing fun things, if they want.

I am exploring questions such as:

“How effective is SL for developing job skills?”

“Can the skills needed to make a living in online environments be taught?” “If yes or yes with reservations, what would the teaching process look like?”

What will “In World” (not just SL but any virtual world) employment look like in 5 years? 10?

I attended on Thinker’s discussion about creativity in SL and was wondering is there might be interest in this subject?

Thank you,
Exel

This sounds like an excellent topic. You'll probably interest people who like attending Thinkers meetings, and others too. You could pull in people who hope to earn a living in SL as well as people who have strong opinions that it cannot be done at this time.

One thing: businesspeople like to give the *appearance* of success, and a virtual world makes it easy and low cost to do this! Clubs are an excellent example. People speak of the 'top clubs' (highest traffic stats) as if they are moneymaking operations. These clubs may be huge businesses (for SL), but this thread has a more realistic discussion by those in the business.

If you're talking about Real World computer skill for the workplace then the answer is partially.

SL can teach things such as a better understanding of english (in some SL environments anyway ), typing skills, logical thinking, spacial organization, math, social skills, and time management.

SL can not teach people to use word, excel, outlook, etc so forth. So, SL might help some general skills, but not specific office oriented computer skills.

The other problem with using SL as a tool to teach people with low incomes computer related work skills, is that SL requires a relatively high end computer system to run well, which either you would have to provide (or your sponser/company), or they would have to purchase (probably not the best use of a small income).

It could be a good idea, but some logistics and a training framework would have to be laid out before I'd consider it a viable solution.

I targetted skills that are needed in todays workplace because I honestly don't think the necessary skills will have changed much in a few years. 3d environments might become more common place but their interfaces will get more intuitive also. Specific job types may use spacial skills, 3d modeling, math, or script/coding but that's true now as well, and sl gives only a very small push to these skills.

Traxx,



Thanks for the link and the pointers. It is true that it "looks" like a large number of people are making money but it is hard to tell what the books really look like. I will see about the possibility of this being a discussion subject.

Rikard,

We already have a lot of RL computer skill building classes. I was thinking more along the lines of your list "logical thinking, spacial organization, math, social skills, and time management". Knowing Word or Excel is one step but knowing something about what it is like for the owner of a small business is altogether different. We are looking for ways to give people some experience in trying to create and market, not so they can make a living at it but so they understand a little about businesses which is something they don't get in most training environments.

We would be supplying the computer labs for the students to use so the logistics aren't so much of a problem. There is also an interest in identifying those that might have unidentified talents and have an environment where these might come out and where the student could explore them.

Thanks for your input.