52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge 38

52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge 38

"Week 38: Investigate Second Life: a 3D virtual world community. Check out the presentation What is Second Life? This learning tool has all the appearances of a video game, but there actually are vibrant genealogy social communities and discussions within the network. Genealogy Wise maintains a group of Second Life genealogists and a calendar of upcoming discussions. You do not have to join Second Life for this challenge. The goal is just to give genealogists exposure to this type of genealogy learning tool."  52 Weeks To Better Genealogy by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts that are a bit more challenging and are geared towards those new to the field of genealogy and family history as well as those who want to brush up on some skills which might be a bit rusty. Please include an attribution link if you participate.

Since it was the second time that day that Second Life had been mentioned to me, I decided to accept this challenge and explore Second Life.   I went to Second Life and watched the tutorials.  It looked pretty easy and seemed like it might be fun to participate.  I did join and looked around some more.  I created an avatar, and played with it, changing physical characteristics and clothes.  I learned how to make it walk and gesture,
teleport and fly.  Kind of neat but very time consuming.   I went back a second time and looked for the grenealogy groups said to be on Second Life.  I think I found 16 groups after lots of searching.  They were difficult to find and some of them are closed to membership.  I never did find the forums or message boards.

I think I will be giving Second Life a miss.  I am fairly experienced both in genealogy and computer usage, and I found it to have a high learning curve.  It might be fun as a source of pure entertainment and I do like the ability to travel and learn in a virtual world, but as a genealogy tool , I think not.  Thanks for the challenge Amy and Thomas.