Using Second Life in education

In case you haven't heard of it, Second Life is a virtual online world in which you can create a character to do pretty much anything you see fit. Some teachers and school are using this venue as a virtual classroom of sorts to engage today's students.

As a middle school math teacher, I'm not sold on ways I could productively use it in my classroom, but I guess some higher education and possibly high school teachers could incorporate it into their educational "bag of tricks."

While I have never been on Second Life before, I have some serious concerns about using this sort of online forum for learning. My main concern from a middle school teacher's prospective is ensuring the safety of my students. Unless there are ways to limit communication with only a selected set of users, I don't see how this is a feasible tool to use with minors. Based on my experience with online gaming, inappropriate comments are the norm, not the exception. Also, I have concerns about the efficiency of learning using this site. While I could see it being a fun way to practice vocabulary by setting up a scavenger hunt for your students, I wonder how much time would be wasted creating/tweaking avatars, exploring areas unrelated to the educational goals, and communicating with other users about off-topic things.

Here's a video on using Second Life to enhance education:

I think this video contains some interesting ideas, but in this age of emphasizing standardized testing scores I wonder how many secondary teachers will have time to spend on setting up and policing their students in this virtual world.