Second Life...in the classroom?

From what little I've seen so far of second life, I have serious doubts about its potential uses in the classroom.

I understand that it could potentially provide interactive situations for students to practice the language they are learning, but the hurdles and time required to set up those situations seem disproportionate to the perceived benefits.

It takes a long time to learn how to move around and communicate in second life. I think that the amount of class time that would have to be dedicated to learning how to maneuver in this virtual world would take away from the over-all learning time in the classroom. Unless all of the instructions for moving around in second life were in the target language, it would be hard to limit students' access to English instructions given by second life. I think it would be very challenging to hold students accountable for their movements in this virtual world and especially challenging to track their conversations.

Exploring teen second life would have been interesting for our class, because it seems like it might have a few more behavior limitations for its avatars. At least, I think I hope it does -- I'm not sure that it would be appropriate for my students to be able to walk around with their shirts off in a class activity, even if it was only in the virtual classroom.

So, although real-time interaction with others does seem to be important for language learning, I think that second life presents too many options and too little accountability for me to include it in my classroom. At least until a whole lot more research has been done on it!