Educational Functional Analysis of Virtual World: A Case Study on Second Life

Does virtual world have any potential for promoting educational practice? If it does, how should we understand it from the educational perspective? This paper, instancing Second Life, first describes and analyzes some educational phenomena in virtual world; and then from the aspects of vivid interactive space, multidimensional representation of knowledge, and creativity stimulated environment, it explores the educational function of virtual world, namely deeper interaction, simulation, opening, creativity, etc. At the same time it illustrates its arguments through abundant examples and data. At last it puts forward some problems and challenges when carrying out teaching and learning in virtual world followed by the conclusions.