Daniel Reader wants to cut down a forest of pine trees and dump industrial sludge onto a flourishing ecosystem to illustrate lessons for his introduction to environmental sciences class.

Fortunately, Reader will be using the virtual world Second Life as a teaching tool for his class, so his destructive lessons won’t actually harm the land on the Hill.

Linden Lab, the founding company, described the program as a 3-D world created by its residents.

Campuses worldwide have adopted Second Life as an educational tool.

In August, Western joined them with the purchase of a 64,000 square-meter island called the WKU Learning Space.

Reader said he recognized the program’s potential as an educational tool moments after he set foot on its virtual landscape.

“It’s like having the world’s best Lego set or having sudden infinite skill with modeling clay,” he said.

Along with the ill-fated forest and the toxic dump, Reader built an orange grove, an estuary and a coastal shelf showing how sea life decreases at greater depths.

“I could show you where it says that in the textbook, I could give you a PowerPoint presentation, but if you walk down that slope, you’re in it, and you can see how the changes happen,” Reader said.

For Sally Kuhlenschmidt, Second Life provides a welcome upgrade in the technology of virtual teaching.

She taught one of Western’s first online classes in 1997, an e-mail based class about how to teach online.

A psychology professor and the director of the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching, she said Second Life gives students and teachers an immersive learning experience.

And she would know; she has been a student in the virtual world herself.

Kuhlenschmidt took a class called introduction to Second Life for educators in the program last year.

Outside a mosque in Second Life Morocco, she and her classmates debated a question of respect.

“Was this a real mosque? Should we walk into it with our heads uncovered?” she wondered.

“Our avatar heads,” she clarified, laughing. “You see, it got very complicated very quickly.”

She also visited a virtual refugee camp in Darfur with information about the country’s recent history.

“It was very powerful to kind of live that, rather than just simply to read a chapter in a book,” she said.

Second Life is open to any user, educational and otherwise. While informational exhibits abound, users may turn the cyber-corner from Darfur and find themselves in a nightclub pulsing with programed music, a recreation of a Roman chapel or a strip club.

Second Life users create avatars when they enter the program, which is free to download and use. Avatars serve as a virtual representation, one Linden Labs claims is customizable “from the tip of your nose to the tint of your skin.”

Kuhlenschmidt said her identification with her avatar makes the virtual experiences more realistic.

Reader said this connection separates the program from using PowerPoints and videos in class.

“There is a character that they have identified with that is present in the environment, so in essence, it’s 3-D,” he said.

In Timothy Mullin’s Second Life home, a bold, colorful Persian carpet covers the virtual floor.

A number of small rugs of similar patterns line the floor of his office in the Kentucky Museum.

Mullin is the department head of the Library of Special Collections.

He said Second Life makes many things more accessible than they are in real life.

“I’ve never ridden on a hot-air balloon, and I don’t think I would really want to do that in real life because I don’t like heights,” he said. “But in Second Life, that was OK.”

Mullin sees a lot of potential for the museum on Western’s island.

Students and museum visitors could pick up and examine pieces from their collection of Shaker furniture. Their avatars could take Civil War clothing out of its case, try it on and dance a reel.

“It gives you the opportunity to be more interactive,” Mullin said.

The shelves and filing cabinets of Associate History Professor Andrew McMichael’s office are lined with potted plants. On his desk, a fish aquarium lets out soft neon light and the bubbling hum of the filter.

The Second Life meeting place he created for his online graduate class is also surrounded by plants, palm trees this time, with a pond full of fish nearby.

He said he wanted the environment to be casual, with a spring break feel.

“We’re still meeting online, but we’re sort of meeting face to face,” he said.

McMichael plans to have a history class recreate an early 20th century New York tenement house.

“It’ll give students a chance to study history in a new way,” said the professor who previously assigned his students the computer game Civilization 4 as homework.

McMichael said Western’s developing island may also attract people to its campus.

“People who’ve never heard of Western before will come to the island and say, ‘I heard about this tenement house, I want to see it,’ or, ‘I heard about this estuary the biology department is creating,’” he said.

Vice President of Information Technology Richard Kirchmeyer decided to fund the island’s $700 initiation fee and the $1,700 annual upkeep fee from the main IT budget.

After deciding to go ahead with the project, Kirchmeyer kept his eye out for virtual property for months before deciding on Western’s current island.

“It has great educational potential, especially for faculty that want to do some imaginative things with it,” he said.

Reach Eileen Ryan at features@chherald.com.