Second Life

The state of North Carolina has gotten involved with a virtual learning grant that has allowed for the following:
http://ncvirtual.ning.com/
Basically, and island within Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com) has been created and is available for the use of schools in either classroom learning, professional development, meeting, or any other use. The maintainers have even created a building where educators can customize their own office space, I have placed my office in a corner spot on the sixth floor, would have preferred a lower floor but those were mostly filled already.
Second Life provides for a very powerful environment in which we can facilitate virtual learning, basically take distance learning to a whole new level. This is something that I had started looking into at work last fall, but no one seemed interested and I just kind of quit. It turns out that people were interested just did not know what I was doing and so a few days ago this information was dropped on my desk with a "let's discuss" which I though was just wonderful and really exciting. It is my understanding that the original goal was to roll out a class for this Spring semester but that just is not doable, however we are going to hit a leadership development thing going on during the spring (around February) as a proof of concept and then hopefully roll out a full course through the environment come next fall.
Anyway, been very busy with all of this Second Life stuff this week. So here is my office and if you happen to be a Second Lifer, look me up in-world: Jere Silverweb