Virtual Worlds Forum

The Japanese Cabinet Office is getting into the virtual worlds space, albeit through Second Life rather than its own world. Its plan is to open a Disaster Prevention Museum, showing its plans to cope with earthquakes, storms and floods.

Here's another intriguing example of the potential for distance learning and virtual worlds. Drexel Online has been allowing some of its distance-learning students to defend their masters' thesis within Second Life (as a Brit, I'm not entirely sure what defending your thesis means, but from the information supplied by Drexel I assume it's like the oral examination part after you've submitted it).

MMOLG is a new acronym on me, but apparently it stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Learning Game. At least, that's according to Grockit, a US-based firm that's just raised $8 million in Series B funding to make one. It doesn't have a name yet, and details are sketchy, but apparently the idea is to create a space "where people can connect to learn from each other", and it's due to launch this Autumn. So far, the company has taken a total of $10.7 million in funding, after ditching its original business model of online exam prep classes. Is students teaching students the future for e-learning? We should find out when Grockit reveals more details... (via TechCrunch)

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded more than $2 million in grants to 12 research teams examining the use of games and virtual worlds for public health initiatives.

The University of Worcester's Colin Price has come up with a new form of presentations that (I hope) someone uses at this year's Virtual Worlds Forum! It involves embedding PowerPoint presentations into first-person-shooter game Unreal Tournament.

There are a number of guitar tutorial sites that have launched in the last year, and they're all based around video lessons. However, a new site called iPerform 3D is taking the Web 3D route. They start by filming the teachers playing, but use motion capture to then turn that into a virtual 3D guitarist.

IBM is well-known for its work with corporate-focused virtual worlds, but the company has a fun side too. Its IBM Research division has just announced PowerUp, an MMO with a green theme, which will be the official game of America's largest Earth Day celebration.

More new technology for navigating virtual worlds now, albeit not something you'd be able to install in your living room. It's called CyberCarpet, and it's an omni-directional treadmill that's being used to allow people to walk naturally around virtual cities, with the initial application involving virtual Pompeii and Rome.

The Alice Project is an intriguing academic project at Carnegie Mellon University, which aims to teach teenage girls to program within a 3D environment. It's the brainchild of professor Randy Pausch, and offers an accessible route into learning Java and C++.

Manchester Business School is the latest academic institution to announced plans for a virtual presence in Second Life. The school has taken on new media agency Corporation Pop to create an island for it, following their work on the SL presence of musician Richard Hawley.

The success of The Apprentice has popularised the business world, but arguably not among young people. However, Deloitte & Touche has teamed up with BrandGames to try to achieve what Donald Trump and Alan Sugar couldn't - and enthuse high-school students about the world of business. How? With a new virtual world.

US firm Handipoints has launched a new virtual community that will offer kids "positive reinforcement and teaches the value of savings and work". Hopefully there's some fun involved, too, otherwise it'll be far too worthy for the tastes of today's tweens. The service includes a dedicated virtual world component, HandiLand, which the company admits is "similar to Club Penguin and Webkinz", albeit with a cartoon cat as your avatar.

I wrote several stories about green or eco-focused virtual worlds / MMOs last week, but there's plenty going on in the sector, as NGOs and governments wake up to the potential of this technology. The latest is a game coming out of the EU-funded MATISSE project (it stands for 'Methods and tools for integrated sustainability assessment', if you're wondering).

The latest academic institution to get the virtual worlds bug is the University of Leicester in the UK, which is launching an experimental research island within Second Life, investigating how learning and teaching within virtual worlds works.