its the difference between viewing getting on SL as an act of “digital literacy” vs using what there is there as social communicative (and community) environment to develop understandings of concepts we develop IRL and can engage in at the interface.

So while digital skills and literacies have to happen (like you have to learn the Japanese language and meaning-making within a community of Japanese living their everyday life – to see how concepts you are learning in class play out in a Japanese contexts for instance -but you are not going there TO learn the grammar and the alphabet – neither do you expect that that is what will be presented to you when you get there or at the airport on a billboard…well you know what I mean – I’ll clean up that articulation sometime…)

what is important is what can be LEARNED through engaging secondlife…