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A virtual café it may be, but it’s expected to foster some very real interaction.
On Wednesday afternoon, Café Fireball will be officially launched on Second Life, a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.
This world – since it was opened to the public in 2003 – has grown exponentially. According to its Web site, Second Life is currently “inhabited” by more than 3.7 million people, many of whom purchase virtual land, on which they may build their virtual paradise.
Fireball Café– created by the faculty of engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. will be “located” on the scenic shores of Second Life's Info Island II. But while the café’s creators guarantee it will be a lot fun, Fireball won’t be your typical student hangout.
The Moroccan-style structure will serve as hub for Second Life "residents" looking to chat about topics such as – hold your breath – nanotechnology or bio-medical engineering. Lucy Sheung, manager of outreach and enrolment at the university’s faculty of engineering, hopes café clients will also inquire about McMaster's engineering program.
Sheung explains why Second Life’s virtual world is the ideal location for such a venture. It’s where a lot of high-school age students interested in gaming and technology hang out, so it makes sense to have a presence there, she said.
Sheung said an earlier McMaster library project at Second Life attracted a great number of participants, as did a program awareness podcast the engineering faculty launched in 2005.
"We hope the café will keep applicants interested and informed about McMaster during the lag time between applications and going to class."
Developed by Linden Lab of San Francisco in 2003, Second Life’s virtual community actually resides on the company's vast array of servers.
A downloadable program enables users, called residents, to create avatars – animated three dimensional digital representations of themselves.
Residents interact with other residents, engage in various activities and even purchase items as they would in real life.
But they can do much more. Like Superman, Second Life residents can fly – or at least their avatars can.
McMaster University may be using Café Fireball as a recruitment tool, but other Canadian schools in Second Life such as LaSalle College in Montreal intend to offer courses in their make believe campuses.
Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ont., which launched a Second Life presence in February 13, has similar plans, according to Jay Robb the college's spokesperson.
The virtual building erected by Mohawk College currently houses an interactive gallery and offers a venue for residents to interact with each other. Robb said courses will be offered in the future.
There are around 80 to 100 post secondary educational institutions including Harvard University and the New York University in Second Life, according to Wayne MacPhail, president of W8NC Inc., a marketing and communications company in Hamilton that helped McMaster set up its virtual café
"A lot of colleges are using Second Life for distance education because it's a really good tool for reaching out internationally."
Most online courses are carried out through Web seminars that transmit slideshows, video and the instructor's voice to students’ computers.
While avatars might look like cartoon characters, the Second Life model allows students a greater degree interaction with one another and with their instructor.
Much of Second Life’s appeal, says MacPhail, is in its ‘tabula rasa’ quality. "It's a clean slate. You can do what you want to do with it."
He said Second Life is much like "a vast tract of land…lots of open space with pockets of concentrated civilization."
Activity revolves around shops, casinos, clubs, churches, libraries, schools and other establishments.
"The community is an ideal development and building environmentbecause residents can find fantastic modeling and scripting tools for various disciplines. Imagine animation students can build projects while their avatars are in a 3-D environment," he said.
He said the virtual community is also a "remarkable social networking tool", ideal for students’ inquisitive minds, as it allows users to interact with people of diverse backgrounds from around the world.
This feature, he said, would come in handy when Mohawk College integrates its journalism program with its Second Life campus.
The community will provide journalism students with a wide variety of avatars, and students would interview them as in a real-world assignment, MacPhail said.
There are around 3.8 million registered avatars in Second Life, according to Alex Yenni, spokesperson for the virtual community. Not all are active at the same time, and some users may register more than one avatar.
People can register for free, but buying a small island of about 6.5 hectares as of late last year cost approximately $1,462 plus a monthly fee of about $228. People can register with credit cards, but Linden Dollars serve as the Second Life currency of exchange.
US$1 would fetch approximately 270 Linden dollars.
McMaster was lucky, MacPhail said, because the university got for free its 512 square metre lot for the café. "I knew an island owner who was looking for a café, she gave away the land for free."
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