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Life is an adventure in learning.
Everyday thousands of adventurers pursue their quests here at San Diego State.
Some assume the form of philosophers, like myself; others biologists, psychologists,
or nursing students, or engineers.
It doesn’t matter. They are all questing minds in search of learning.
Imagine, if you could have a second life, a parallel adventure in learning.
Now you can.
I’ve come to Aztlan Island with the aid of Pam Jackson, one of our librarians who
specializes in film and television.
Thanks to Pam’s help, I am off on a parallel adventure of learning – just as you can
be.
I can’t go around all day dressed in my philosopher’s robes (the stairs trip me
up), but here in Second Life I can be whatever self I choose.
The blue in my avatar’s doctoral regalia reflects my interests as a philosopher. Your
Avatar awaits your own creativity.
The Hindu word avatar is derived from Sanskrit for “to cross over” referring to the descent
of a deity from heaven to earth. In English, we might say incarnation.
The metaphor of crossing over into other worlds has been employed by many cultures around
the globe including our Aztecs,
whose legendary ancestral homeland, Aztlan, gave us the name of this magical place --
Aztlan Island.
Avatars reflect our human ability to imagine other perspectives and viewpoints as well
our capacities for empathy and emulation.
We can not only imagine what we would see from a mountain top but imagine ourselves
in the skins of others —
living their challenges and opportunities:
like the poems and novels that transport us through the medium of the alphabet into the
characters and worlds of Sappho or Sitting Bull.
Think of the plays and films that invite us to empathize with an actor whose body has
represented dozens of lives.
Think of our attraction to video games with heroic figures overcoming impossible odds.
The audacity of Second Life, with some hundreds of square miles of territory, tens of thousands
of buildings,
and millions upon millions of avatars challenges our imagines and invites us into a second
learning quest.
What is this place? It’s whatever you want it to be, whatever your imagination can project.
Come jump with me into this new world as I….cut this ribbon--to symbolize…the grand opening
of SDSU’s Aztlan Island.
Second Life now hosts hundreds of colleges and university outposts.
The vast majority of these have taken the most obvious approach of representing their
First Life presence:
creating buildings that look like university buildings, adding virtual classrooms and similar
venues for sitting and listening.
We have tossed in some familiar SDSU landmarks to make you feel at home when you first arrive
(Hepner Hall, the Info Dome, Scripps Cottage).
But the point of this adventure, like all true adventures is not to feel at home; it
is to stretch and grow and discover.
I am pleased that SDSU’s Aztlan Island, developed by Suzanne Aurilio, Pam Jackson,
and SDSU Chief Information Officer Rich Pickett is not about the familiar, but about the adventure
of learning.
What they’ve done, as you’ll see when you explore the island, is to create a new
and highly flexible space for research, innovation, design, and simulation.
Aztlan Island is a place where students and faculty can document and shape the evolution
of new media.
SDSU students have already completed two doctoral dissertations on avatars in Second Life.