Temasek Polytechnic – Second Life

Here’s a write-up by Ken Lam, a student in GET Senior year, on his work on Temasek Polytechnic’s presence in Second Life. – Dr. Foo CY

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This year’s Open House was a defining moment for Temasek Polytechnic’s Information Technology school. With the unveiling of Temasek Polytechnic’s virtual school in Second Life, the polytechnic hopes that this will usher in a revolutionary method of teaching that will hopefully be useful in the education of future generations of students.

The Open House officially began on Thursday, 15th January and ended on Saturday, 17th January. During this three-day period the third-floor Digital Media Solutions Centre became the base for the demonstration of the virtual TP islands. The 2 Second life development teams were assigned the duty of acting as virtual guides to the visitors from a wide variety of schools in the virtual TP. Our duties were to guide the prospective freshmen around the TP main island and IIT island on a short tour with brief introductions on the various activities available in the virtual plot.

Each group technically consist of the lecturer and two students. For your convenience, we will refer to them as Student A and B. In general, each tour proceeds as follows:

1. The lecturer in charge welcomes the visitors to the Second Life demonstration. If the lecturer is absent, Student A will handle this instead.
2. The visitors are passed to Student A, who will use his in-game avatar to show them the TP main island and its horseshoe complex. He will then go into the in-game version of the IIT school and give a walkthrough. After that, Student A will pass the visitors over to Student B.
3. Student B will give a brief tour of the IIT island and the activities available to the public. He will introduce the Youth Olympic Games Archery minigame and teach them how to play. After demonstrating once, he will offer the visitors a chance to try exploring the plot by themselves.

Our group was responsible for the tours on Saturday. Although the number of visitors was less when compared with the previous days, there were still plenty of visitors we had to attend to.  Overall, the majority of the visitors seemed to be impressed with virtual island. One particular example questioned us on our course and our experiences as GET students. In conclusion, the demonstrations were a success in inspiring interest in the IT school and its courses.