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June 05, 2007, 06:56 AM ET
A Virtual World for Education
Many college professors are turning to Second Life, the popular virtual-reality world, to provide distant students with a colorful, three-dimensional environment for learning. Aaron E. Walsh, an adjunct faculty member at Boston College's Woods College of Advancing Studies, also sees a need for online worlds that are dedicated to education and devoid of sexually-oriented material that many complain is too prevalent in Second Life.
He hopes that like-minded colleagues will flock to his software project, Immersive Education. On Thursday he is to announce that more than 250 colleges will collaborate to develop standards and best practices for the venture, which promotes virtual environments only for education. The project may make use of Second Life's software, which is now open source.
In an interview with Terra Nova, Mr. Walsh talked about some of the challenges and benefits of using virtual reality for education. He added, though, that he worries about the growing number of students becoming addicted to virtual worlds, an affliction he called "immersive illness.""Although this is an issue today, we're somewhat protected by the limitations of today's personal computers and game consoles. They just aren't powerful enough…yet," he told the interviewer. "But in another decade or more, it'll be a different story altogether." --Andrea L. Foster
Categories: Virtual-Worlds
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