The Avatar Goes To Class

While law schools debate the use and misuse of computers in the classrooms (see Computers in Class from the Law Career Blog for the arguments on both sides and links to more commentary and discussions), some law students send their avatars to class and let them IM / text chat all they want.  This educational milestone became possible due to the CyberOne:  Law in the Court of Public Opinion course, offered by Harvard Law School and partially taught in a 3D virtual environment called Second Life.   The course materials are freely available to the public at the CyberOne website.  (Try to solve The Riddle of Three Hats, which was one of their assignments, you don’t need to be in Second Life for that.) I’ve been reading about the developments at the video vidi visum: virtual blog, and it’s been quiet fascinating.  For those interested in the use of Second Life in education, E-Content has some additional links to the resources on the topic.   All this makes me wonder what law schools will be like ten years from now.  What do you think?