More thoughts for the future in Second Life and beyond
by Eloise Pasteur 
Dec 28th 2007 at 12:01PM
Filed under: News items, Opinion, Second Life, Education
It being the end of the year, people are prognosticating like mad. Analysts for Second Life and virtual worlds are no exception. This time it's Gartner again, but with a "future of education" slant. There is also a "future of virtual world economics" post, which highlights the future of education in virtual worlds, so next year will be the year of the virtual teacher. (With my teaching in Second Life hat on, I might argue it's the year of the Johnny-come-lately virtual teacher, there is a lot of education already happening in Second Life.)In summary, the pieces on Virtual Worlds News suggest:
- Education will be big next year
- Second Life, World of Warcraft and Habbo Hotel (amongst others) will continue to grow
- The usage by children/tweens will be a big growth area
- Ease of use and induction
- Spreading platforms that can access virtual worlds
- Interoperability
- Globalisation
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Heleno Nishi said on 6:33AM 1-03-2008
I think your summary of the challenges is great. Someone posted a comment on my blog the other day saying they didn't see what would suddenly cause the masses to adopt virtual worlds, without any big changes planned to things like induction and ease of use. James Wagner Au made some good comments on this about the plateauing of SL, and I think its a challenge for both Linden and residents in the year ahead.
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