Another post from Atlanta.

Earliler this week, while making my way from Calgary to Georgia, I happened across an article in the Circuits section of the New York Times.

Now Playing: Reality Without the Downside reports on the work being done on "virtual worlds" at there.com:

At There.com, users can enter a virtual world as avatars, meeting to chat one on one or for group discussions around themes like movies.

Definition: Avatar: 3. A temporary manifestation or aspect of a continuing entity dictionary.com

Regular readers of this blog will know that I've been very interested in the collaborative and educational potential of "avatar-based" online interaction, from the first time I saw Adobe Atmosphere in action.

See the Tuesday March 19, 2002 post in the archive of this blog for more on my avatar-based experiences.

Today I had a chance to visit -- as an avatar -- with a colleague from an M.Ed. course (CTL 1799) at OISE/UT in the worlds of activeworlds.com.

Today's technical difficulties notwithstanding -- we got seperated (i.e., into different "worlds" and my colleague's computer crashed) I'm really intrigued by the opportunities this medium presents for learning.

I'm especially interested in the "social" aspects of this type of learning and how it complements other types of online collaborative communcation. As always, watch this space for details.