Scripting in Second Life

I’ve never really gotten into the whole “social networking” thing, mostly because I’m not that sociable to begin with.  There are times when I go into some social environments, like World of Warcraft or Runescape, but that’s mostly to check on the platform.  After a while (usually about a month or so), I get bored with it or turned off by some of the people in there.  

Also, I’ve known about Second Life for a while, but I never really had any thoughts about using it.  After all, what was the point?  And then I heard a report on NPR some time ago about an IV League school hosting some law classes in Second Life because of the lack of real classroom space.  That got the wheels turning for me…  Distance Learning.  

Of course it’s perfect for synchronous distance learning, because everyone is represented in the world by their Avatar.  Once there, they can interact either vocally or through chat, they can all have their say.  Also, instructors are able to utilize a more direct classroom approach, because they can read everything everyone is saying.  

So, I thought I would start checking it out.  It’s a great platform and has a lot of potential, but there are some objects that are missing.  I’m not going to mention what they are, because I hope to have them scripted here soon.  But, I needed to learn how to script in Second Life.  

The scripting process is pretty straight forward, as it’s similar to Java and C, but has it’s own special objects.  That means there shouldn’t be that much of a learning curve, and I can probably recycle some code in an object.  It’s actually pretty fun to work in the environment.  I’m hoping to have some fruits of my labors soon, and it will also answer a huge problem I have had with distance learning for technical classes.  

Stay Tuned!  ^_^