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Teachers Without Borders

Virtual Worlds? "Outlook Good" (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 0 views

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life second sleducation virtual worlds

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 19 Sep 08 - Cached
  • bring the words “3D virtual environment” a bit closer to the mainstream. In June 2007, Second Life had nearly eight million residents. One year later, it had more than fourteen million.2 But Second Life is not the only virtual world—and not the only one involved in education. The Active Worlds program Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU) includes over eighty educational worlds (http://www.activeworlds.com/edu/). Educators are also working (individually) in There. Other virtual worlds efforts include Central Grid, Kaneva, Twinity, CyberNet Worlds, The Palace, Furcadia, and Project DarkStar. Others spring up daily, it seems. Over time, we may see a shift toward open source opportunities like Croquet and toward work-oriented virtual collaboration spaces like Sun Technology’s Project Wonderland. In addition, many virtual worlds are tied to product lines: Webkinz, Home (Sony), BarbieGirls (Mattel), and Club Penguin (Disney). Add the many additional efforts that Disney is putting forward in this field, along with other younger-market companies like MTV, and it is crystal-clear that virtual worlds are here to stay. If the number of virtual worlds is not an indication, certainly the amount of money being invested should be. According to Virtual Worlds Management, over $1 billion (U.S.) was invested in virtual companies in 2007 (http://www.virtualworldsmanagement.com/2007/index.html), and over $184 million was invested in the first quarter of 2008 (http://www.virtualworldsmanagement.com/2008/q1.html).
  • the New Media Consortium estimates that more than 1,200 educational islands were created in 2007.4
  • In July 2008, IBM and Linden Lab announced an interoperability agreement following successful tests in which avatars were teleported “from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server, marking the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another.”8
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  • Other efforts are starting to move to the forefront and should certainly be watched in the coming months. Many, especially those working on an open source platform, would like to see standards that tie other platforms together. Efforts such as the Immersive Education Initiative (http://immersiveeducation.org/), by the Media Grid (http://mediagrid.org/), are looking to bring standards to, and develop best practices for, the mildly wild frontier that is currently virtual worlds.
  • Another perceptual challenge for virtual worlds is the idea that they are all games.
  • In addition, users of Second Life, Active Worlds, and There have something that players of the highly polished, graphics-heavy, multi-user role-playing games like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings do not have: the ability to create, change, and control the environment.
  • Most of those educators using virtual worlds today realize that it is a means to an end, a tool available for teaching and learning. However, this particular tool has shown the same growth pattern and potential as the Internet. Just as once many in higher education loudly proclaimed that the Internet was of no practical use and was filled with questionable material and marketing, so too do critics today have their doubts about virtual worlds. But the web grew into a vital part of our lives, and a growing number of people believe that virtual worlds will do so the same.
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