By this time tomorrow I shall be airborne, over the horizon and headed north to the frozen wastes... I'm back working in Sweden for a few days. In some ways it will be nice to get away for a short while, because my house is currently in uproar, downroar and sideroar (as Spike Milligan once said...!) Let me explain - for the past 3 weeks, we have foolishly let the builders into our home to demolish a wall, convert our garage into a study, and generally spread a thin layer of fine dust over everything, including the children. While my poor wife remains at home to cope with all this, I'm swanning off suavely to Sweden (she will appreciate the alliteration if not the sentiments...)
But the building work got me thinking - it takes a while for tradesmen to make good something as lacklustre as an old concrete walled garage. By the time I get home on Sunday night, they will have plastered the walls (the builders, not the children), and then it's over to us to paint and carpet the room, and make it homely. It also takes a long time to establish new technologies in the classroom or learning setting. The recent Horizon Report attempts to set the scene for the wide adoption of new technologies into teaching. One of their predictions is that time-to-adoption of virtual worlds will be 2-3 years. I'm not so sure now...
Recently several new innovations have humanised Second Life further. Sloodle, a mashup between Second life and Moodle, and most recently, 'Voice in SL' have been launched to the consternation of some and the delight of many others. Time will tell whether such new bolt-ons will attract serious educators in greater numbers to set up operation in SL, but I have a suspicion that 2-3 years is now a conservative estimate for widespread adoption of virtual worlds in education.
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