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Second Life at Berks

Penn State Berks has recently purchased an island, but this island is not a vacation spot or destination for spring break. The college now owns a dedicated amount of virtual space, or "island," in Second Life.

Second Life is a program developed by Linden Labs in which users create customized avatars for social interaction in a virtual world. The servers at Linden Labs host vast landscapes for users to appear and interact in when they log on. In addition to creating an avatar, users are allowed to purchase land and use 3-D modeling tools to create objects, houses, and designs to upload into the game. The Second Life program has some basic 3-D modeling and animation tools. In addition, users may create their own designs with outside programs and upload them into Second Life, making all designs in Second Life user-created.

Unlike most similar programs, Second Life users maintain the rights to the images they create and upload. Users are permitted to trade, sell, or purchase objects and land that they own using an in-program currency called the Linden dollar, which can be exchanged for or purchased by US dollars. Some users have been known to make significant supplemental incomes by trading their land and creations in Second Life.

The Penn State Berks island is a spot of dedicated space that is paid for by the user and actually appears as a private island, physically removed from the main land of the Second Life users. Rules for owning land and objects vary from the main server, as private island rules are governed entirely by the user who administrates for the island.

The island will be open to visitation from any Second Life user, though the means by which they can change the landscape will be limited. Dr. Michael Bartolacci, associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State Berks is the current administrator of the island. He hopes to turn the island into a virtual version of the Berks campus as a tool for learning, research, and community development. Because of the user-created style of Second Life, the island must be built to resemble the virtual Berks campus that is envisioned in the campus master plan, a process in which Bartolacci hopes to involve students.