Anyone who is just starting their teaching career should be interested in item #4 on the World Future Society’s list of Forecasts for the Next 25 Years.
Schools based on classrooms and a human teacher will dwindle over the next 25 years. Why sit in a classroom when you can visit virtual worlds and experience your subjects? An “avatar,” a personalized interactive guide, will answer all of your questions and help you pose new ones.
I’m not ready to buy that prediction. Or the one cited by David Warlick which says that 80% of “active Internet users will have a “second life” by 2011”.
However, after looking at some of the virtual worlds projects at the Innovate 2007 conference earlier this week, I can see a lot of educational potential in this concept.
So, now I need to dig into this and do more than just wander around the digital landscape in Second Life.
Hopefully, I can get some help from the Second Life Best Practices in Education conference coming up on May 25th. We’ll see.