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At George Washington University in Washington State, a graduate-level course in instructional design was created by David Cillay, an assistant dean for distance education, as reported on TMC.net. The course was taught completely in Second Life, with the students, using their avatars, communicating with Cillay and one another through the course’s island (learning space) in Second Life. Cillay was impressed with the level of text and voice interaction between the students, even if they were only avatars onscreen. The students discussed what ‘instructional design means’ and took field trips to other SL locales such as a nuclear power plant.

Across the pond, City College Norwich in the UK is forging ahead with its own island. The location will give users a virtual tour of the campus and access to training and job vacancies. The school also hopes, down the line, to develop an educational presence. “Second Life has fantastic potential for learning,” said Dick Palmer, the principal, “which we will be starting to use more fully next year. For example, our new diploma students will come from lots of different areas, but Second Life will allow students to get together in an informal learning zone. We are excited to be embarking upon such an innovative initiative.”

After the experiment with virtual education at GWU, Cillay offered three recommendations to those thinking of entering the virtual education realm: - Temper your expectations. “There’s a tremendous wow factor for people just discovering ‘Second Life,’ ” he said. Students need some time to adjust and learn how to move and operate in that world. - “Understand what your expectations are,” Cillay said. Rather than expect huge gains in a classroom environment, consider it a first step in educational experimentation. - Give yourself and the students time to explore. “Do some research ahead of time, so you know the environment and find out what other educators are doing there,” said Cillay.

Virtual worlds, as digital learning objects appear to provide a space for constructivist learning at its best, facilitating more student engagement than the simple discussion boards comprising most online courses.

that students will become as motivated by virtual worlds as they are by video games.

I’ve been using FriendFeed for awhile and if you subscribe to my feed you’ll see just about everything that I do online. My feed includes all the articles I bookmark with delicious. When I write a new blog post it automatically shares it on my feed. Every time I tweet on Twitter and when I update my status on Facebook, they’re included here. When I add a video to my favorites on YouTube it is shared here as well. Currently there are 58 different sites that you can link to your FriendFeed, so it’s like the one stop shopping place for everything online!

FriendFeed also has a search function where someone without even registering on the site, can easily search all FriendFeed updates.

Facebook has been in the news quite a bit this week which they started off with the announcement that they have acquired the social-identity aggregator, FriendFeed.