– By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

It’s akin to sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture, it’s just that the classroom exists in the virtual world. Call it a sort of surreal experience, but that’s what the online community Second Life is offering. The portal allows members to live life in a virtual world, with its own currency, rules and societies. If you belong, you can buy your own land, build your dream home, and socialize with neighbors, just like you would in the real world. The only difference is that you’re reduced to an animated figure that has to either fly or be teleported around the world.

But this other world is becoming a sort of launching pad for some forms of online education. Over 60 educational institutions are contemplating how this site can be used to further the cause of education. Rebecca Nesson conducts a course that is jointly offered by the Harvard Law School and the Harvard Extension School in Second Life; she says it’s just like a regular campus, with members interacting just as college kids would.

Will this virtual community foster the growth of online education? Mechthild Schmidt, a professor at NYU-McGhee, a division of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, says that it does hold a lot of potential. But since the development of the site rests solely on the shoulders of its members, Marc Prensky, a leading expert on education and learning, feels that the outcome depends on the creation of structures within the world.

Interested in a second life anyone? Give it a try here.