Anyone with high speed internet anywhere on Earth can attend class, train or teach in these classrooms. Colleagues and perhaps their students or trainees from far away can visit your virtual space with almost no carbon footprint. Wouldn't that be great for international relations or languages? Create virtual field trips and experiences. The possibilities are endless.
You can see, hear, speak and experience in three dimensions using a free avatar from Second Life.com. Scale and movement mean something here. When you drive a car somewhere it's more likely you'll remember how you got there than a passenger sitting next to you. They didn't get the same "muscle memory" from steering the car that you did. Your in-world movements and the trigonometry of the immersive space is an important part of a holistic memory that contributes to more complete recall.
You can easily build in hundreds of links, videos and sounds by dropping a free script into a virtual object you created using the included digital tools. You then type in the proper url. and your object is then linked when touched. The game generation (Digital Natives) understand learning this way. Build in rewards and secrets to be discovered. Make learning fun and make failing more about learning to redo their attempt another way. Don't we say experience is the best teacher?
Many of these 14 virtual classrooms are not meant to be definitive. They are meant to be an imagination booster. When you build about your favorite subject as I did in the VDL project then you can go deep. I hope you can see the possibilities here and become as excited as I am.
When you select a link to secondlife you will be routed to their website to receive your free avatar and a free download of the viewer. The viewer is a small software package you install on your computer that allows you to experience the virtual space in real time. Almost all the real computation is done on the server this viewer connects to when you type in your password. It feels clumsy for a short while but soon you can fly. Did I mention your avatar can fly? Enjoy!
note:You can learn this easily. I've been teaching 41 yrs and I'm 65 years old. Three years ago I didn't know what a virtual world space was. Last winter (2010) I won first place in a worldwide hyper grid (virtual world) building challenge sponsored by the US military. Welcome to making your imagination exist somewhere where other people can visit.
Nothing can stop prospective students now from taking a class anywhere from across the globe. Online teaching and learning has reinforced the concept of virtual classroom.
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