The Virtual University
November 24, 2007
One day Professor Jeremy Kemp entered his classroom and found himself next to a student dressed as a gigantic monarch butterfly.
But Kemp was not startled in the least that one of his students had sprouted wings. Since he started teaching at the virtual campus of San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science, students have also appeared as robots and giant bowls of Jell-O.
“I am looking at representations that they create, and that’s just as valid as real life,” said Kemp, assistant director of the virtual campus, which opened in May. “I have a sense of being there and being with the person.”
San Jose State is one of a skyrocketing number of colleges and universities across the country to make the leap into the virtual frontier using Second Life, the Internet-based world created by Linden Lab of San Francisco. [Story via San Jose Mercury News]
Virtual intelligence. Yes, we need it bad. What good is it if we have a group of guys and gals sharing information only among themselves over there at Langley or Ft. Meade or wherever when there’s a group of five or six terrorists lobbing mortar fire at the White House from Roosevelt Island? All politics is local. All intelligence is local too.