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Chronicle of Higher Education on Second Life

The Chronicle of Higher Education has summaries of the ways five people in higher education are using Second Life in instruction.

Campuses created by many colleges in Second Life mirror their real campuses. But Phillip D. Long, associate director of the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, envisions the virtual campus as a student-led laboratory.

Only about one-quarter of MIT'S island resembles the university's actual campus. The rest is dedicated to student projects. Mr. Long designed the space, and the New Media Consortium did the construction.

MIT "wants to do this in strong collaboration with students," he says. "And we don't want to get ahead of them or project whatever idealized notions we might have, as people who work here, onto what we think the cultural practices and interaction styles of our students might be."

In one part of the island, speakers can mount a dais and address a crowd through a megaphone. When a speaker talks, listeners move to the right or left of a line that divides the platform, depending on whether they agree or disagree.

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