If you talk to educators in Second Life, you often hear three things mentioned as clear benefits of Second Life, whatever your discipline:

• Immersion
• Visualisation
• Collaboration

In a lovely example of the second and third of these, and adding to the first Andrew Lang (Professor of Maths, Oral Roberts University), Jean-Claude Bradley (Professor of Chemistry) and his team (Drexel University) have worked together to make a 3D representation of a molecule which animates and runs through the first steps in an imine synthesis, part of making a proto-type anti-malarial drug.

As Jean-Claude comments in his blog this adds a whole new dimension in teaching these reactions - students and teachers can walk around the molecule and see the bonds break and reform, a big change to looking at figures in a textbook. See if for yourself at Drexel Island.

This is a good article on NASA's continuing involvement in SL, and what it plans to accomplish in the future. NASA clearly hopes to revitalize interest in the flagging space program by inviting collaboration and discussion with people whose heads are mostly filled with space. Wait, that came out wrong.

The article goes on to mention ways in which having a virtual environment to play in may be beneficial, including building accurate models of spacecraft to invite examination, and streaming realtime data of launches into SL. It'd be pretty exciting to be able to watch robot feeds of buggy exploration of new moons as they occur, and shout advice to the little 'bot as it trundles over new terrain. Regardless, opening NASA up to the public is a wise and long-overdue move, and this can only benefit the embattled organization in the long run.

(Via thespacereview.com)

Now that I've got a machine powerful enough to handle them, I'm going to be trying out some established MMOs to see how they compare with SL (if they do). While looking over A Tale in the Desert (ATITD), Brace Coral and Trep Cosmo (who are active players of that world) have been providing me with some information on how the game is played, and it's intriguing.

Perhaps the main component of ATITD is its cooperative leaning. While one can certainly progress up to a point by playing solo, the game really rewards groups of players cooperating to complete a given task.

With the possible exception of providing advice to builders and scripters, SL doesn't really have a cooperative component on this level. Certainly there aren't any built-in tools to aid in any sort of collaborative creation, IM notwithstanding. Once you begin to build an object, no one else can help or interfere. Creating the appearance of your avatar is also a solo project. I'd like to add this to my growing wishlist of features: some collaborative tools, please, for seasoned residents to use in helping newbies with building, scripting, and appearance ... or just to invent new ways to communicate.