Please excuse this shameless plug for my brother’s new venture, Social Minds. Back in 1997, Edmund went to work in Japan for a year. He stayed, got married, and has gained a wealth of experience in distance learning and educational technologies. Now he’s taking that experience into virtual worlds, including Second Life.
As his shiny new website says:
- Social Minds provides educational opportunities using cutting-edge distance-learning tools.
- We offer classes based in a 3-D Virtual World, currently centered on Second Life.
- We are focussed on combining the motivational energy of conventional classes with the power and reach of distance learning.
- We are actively involved with the Sloodle Project, and host a free trial Sloodle site.
There’s also an engagingly-written blog (“Vote for me! I’ve got an office! With tables and chairs!”) and the offer of a limited number of free places on the experimental Second-Life-based introductory Japanese course.
It’s refreshing to see how virtual worlds could start to enhance existing real-world activities, such as education. Obviously I’m biased, but I reckon Edmund has the rare combination of skills and experience to make this a reality.
Matt Edgar writes here 
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