Education, formal education, in Second Life is going from strength to strength. There is not a complete list anywhere, probably because it is ever changing, but the Sim Teach wiki provides a good listing.
Recently reported entrants not listed here include the Edinburgh University School of Infomatics, the University of South Queensland and the Queensland Government are the first 'SLOz' official education institutes on Terra Incognita. Also from Australia we have The Australian Film and Television School in Esperance. Finally the Institue for Science and Technology in Education has regular meetings in their Sky Park.
Not everyone is convinced that Second Life is the way forward. Sun's chief gaming officer Chris Melissinos says SL is "too insecure for education", although someone in the business of developing a rival system aimed specifically at the education market might not be the most unbiased observer. Stuart Sim, CTO of Moodlerooms is much more upbeat about education in SL and however you count it several dozen educational institutions are interested enough to have bought one or more islands. Sloodle.com is a system that combines SL with Moodle, a free to use Learning Management System and seems popular with educators.
Second Life will, almost certainly, not be universally adopted by education establishments, there is too much politics in education for that too happen. Whether or not each institution adopts Second Life there is little doubt that education is changing, and some form of telepresence education with much less meatspace contact is likely to become the norm in the next few years, and Second Life is well placed to be a big part of that change.
1. Shameless plug - Sloodle 1.0 launches at Paisley University on March 22nd. See: http://tinyurl.com/ywrspv
Posted at 12:11PM on Feb 18th 2007 by Jeremy "Kabumpo" Kemp