Educators look at Second Life

For those of you following the development of 'Second Life' (an online community where people are represented with cartoon-like avatars) there is an interesting article in the Technology section of CNN. Some educators are starting to use it help create a sense of community for distance learners.

From a Stanford colleague who attended Internet Librarian:

According to those who attended Internet Librarian one of the vendors that sells services to libraries has paid for an "island" for such purposes for a year. There is a reference desk and others are building "libraries" there. From the snapshots I've seen they're pretty specialized (like speculative fiction). OCLC has also given some limited access of some kind as well...

...there's also a blog about this at http://infoisland.org... from The San Jose State Spartan Daily, Nov 6, 2006, article by Ryan Berg: “Ken Haycock, director of the San Jose State University school of library and information sciences, said the school has just recently purchased its own island on Second Life, which the school will use to build learning resources that people can access in the virtual world.”