Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds

[Neptun Everett]

After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds
Chronicle of Higher Education (02/14/10) Young, Jeff

Education through virtual worlds is still appealing to some educators, but their interest has waned due to the limitations of commercial environments such as Second Life. Undaunted, some colleges are constructing their own virtual worlds where they can assert more control. For example, Duke University researchers are leading Open Cobalt, a project to build an education-friendly virtual world system that operates with data stored on people's own computers. Another open source initiative is OpenSimulator, a clone of Second Life. Any institution with a spare server and some additional staff time can use the OpenSimulator software and reshape the virtual environment as it sees fit, or it can rent system access from a company that has established servers with the software. Project founder and Boston College professor Aaron E. Walsh says more than 2,000 educators have set up accounts on the OpenSimulator's Education Grid virtual world.
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