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Excellent Ning-based resource for teacher and student cross-collaboration. Its aim is to promote the use of virtual worlds as educators. Blog, video, photo, and SLURL meeting locations make this a great one-stop shop for ideas on incorporating second life into the curriculum.

This 4 minute and 24 second video serves as a nice introduction to what learning in SL can look like. It would help to persuade those skeptics who aren't sure a virtual world education can be challenging. The short video shows many different SL environments and what class could look like in them.

I found this YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGMH_1VnnaY) about a virtual museum exhibit created by teens. It showcases "Kristallnacht," or "The Night of Broken Glass" from the holocaust. Teens from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. worked with teens from New York and museum staff via Skype, SL, & phone (sound familiar, COMETEERs?) to discuss issues, storyboard, and even create a design document (future COMETEERs!) to create the exhibit in SL. Interestingly, it seems that the build was done by an SL company called "Digital Refinery," "...an all teen in-world development company," headed by a 15 year old CEO. Teens visiting the site are placed in the role of an investigative reporter in order to find out what people did during Kristallnacht. They can click on cutouts of people to get information and learn about the choices that ordinary people faced during this event. Visitors also observe the environment; broken storefront windows, a before & after Kristallnacht replica of a synagogue, and just general destruction of the Jewish community. When they are done, they reflect, discuss and write about what they have seen & learned, and post notecards to share their experiences. I love that this is all built by teens, but that they also had to work with adults in RL to learn how to cooperate and communicate intelligently. I am big on making history interactive, otherwise it just seems boring to many kids. SL holds so much potential for this sort of activity; time for textbook companies to look into this instead of making ridiculously expensive, environmentally unfriendly textbooks that bore kids to tears. Ok, I know I'm dreaming, after all, if the textbooks weren't expensive, those companies would go out of business. Hmm.

GREAT 3D instructional design principles: affordances open layout customizeable interactive consistent ... many principles that parallel good website design

video IBM: Inclusive Leadership training via Second Life Demonstrates some of the 3D Instructional Design strategies mentioned in http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2010/12/ibms-principles-of-virtual-design/

PBS video promo of Deep Down Virtual Mine in Second Life.  Good overview of real problem tied to SL experience

Best practices and lessons learned in building Second Life Operating Room simulation. KUMC

University of Kansas Medical Center asynchronous simulations. Interesting case study.

students working within the 3D virtual reality environment tended to improve spatial skills, including kinesthetic and logical abilities.