I spent a very enjoyable afternoon on the Dublin City University campus yesterday training Marketing students in Second Life.

This was my fourth time delivering a virtual world training session at DCU and I was once again delighted with the enthusiasm of the group.

We spent much of first two hours touring the wonderful Dublin Virtually Live, one of the most impressive destinations in all of Second Life. This is a a great location to learn avatar navigation and camera control. Students love flying around the Spire on O’Connell street and then landing for a chat in St. Stephen’s Green.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. On we travelled to a Sandbox Island where the group learned basic building skills, how to edit their avatar appearance and use gestures to convey emotion.

For the last half hour students chose their own locations to explore and a few spent it examining in detail the workings of a virtual clothes store where they quickly appreciated the advantages inherent in a 3D space for retail marketing, over the ‘flatness’ of the world wide web.