My attendance this week at Virtual Worlds 2008 has been quite virtually opening my eyes to new worlds. A basic and pervasive concept among the many virtual worlds that have sprung up as 3D on the Net works better and better is this: virtual worlds are a place where I can reflect me. Kids love doing that and the virtual worlds give them lots of ways to express themselves.
Targeting girls, the uber-growing virtual world, BarbieGirls.com, is founded on this principle, which is not much different than the traditional plastic and fabric Barbie doll of the pre-digital age. At Virtual World folks talk of the avatar age. An avatar is a representation of me that mirrors from the digital world to us flesh and blood folks on the other side of the screen.
The illustration for this post is from a “PG-13″ virtual world: There.com. When I saw this one, I itched to have teaching experts grab some sectors and build virtual environments for learning. Actually, this is beginning to happen in virtual worlds, including There.com, and I would predict confidently that ideas to learn will be mirrored in this way as a major aspect of future education.
The illustration to this post shows some of the options in creating one’s There.com avatar. As we move some of the billions of dollars we still spend annually on printing educational materials on paper, education will surely benefit from the work now being done to develop virtual worlds for fun and commerce.
How about, for example, being able to study some famous women in history by creating their avatars? Would Cleopatra have dark mascara like Ashley does in the illustration? Probably so, since ancient Egyptians wore dark stuff around their eyes to ward off insects. Studying Cleopatra would get interesting for biology students when it was time to select her asp.
