I have been reading a lot about Second Life in the press. I finally took the plunge, created an account/avatar and have been looking around for the past couple of weeks. I haven't been able to sit-in, i.e., lurk in one of the established educational sites, but it is obvious that this is a very rich environment and has potential to serve as an online environment.

Although not available in the states yet, I can see these handy dandy devices in classrooms. Although videos are arguably one of the most abused and mis-used technologies in our classrooms, as we move to instructional gaming technologies, it will be necessary to individualize that experience. In other words, classrooms will need these devices much as headphones have been needed for individual listening experiences over the past several decades.

Here's an interesting idea for the desktop being applied at Florida State University that was developed by Stardock Design. I don't think it is necessarily worth $19.95 , but if they have alum interested in the purchase, go for it. RSS feeds, podcasting, vlogs and blogs with content about your institution's sports, student organizations and other affinity groups would be of equal, if not greater value. Plus, who wants to bother with downloads and then upgrades as required by new versions of the OS, Vista for instance, due out in January.

Hopefully, we'll see more video content of this quality in the future.