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.
