In what is being billed as a 'world first', new school buildings funded by the UKs 'Building Schools For The Future' initiative have been created first in the virtual world of Second Life in order that staff, students and other stakeholders ca explore and give feedback. The work has been carried out by theMiddlesborough City Learning Center which in itself looks like an amazing IT resource for Middlesborough schools. New buildings for the Acklam Grange School, which hosts the MCLC facility, have been built in Second Life and transferred to the Teen Grid so that pupils can explore them.

From a great video on the Project A page of their wiki, it seems that the MCLC have created some kind of technology for converting the building plans into a set primitive objects inside a controlling object (rezzer) which then instructs them all to move themselves into their correct positions. I've contacted the creators in the hope that they'll tell me more about how the data is fed into SL.

Sadly, despite having such a wonderful ICT resources and futuristic ideas, the old problems don't go away. The most recent news on the Acklam Grange school website is from 2007.

Well finally, my summary and thoughts on Forterra's 'Recipe For Success...' paper. The paper, a recommended read for anyone interested in enterprise uses of VW, was produced by Forterra after their work with the MASIE Center, a New York think-tank for corporate learning. The focus of the work was to have a second look at virtual worlds for enterprise learning, after spending some time in Second Life during the hype cycle of 2006.   more »