Media Grid Announces Timeline for Cross-Platform Education World

In three to five years, Media Grid hopes to have established a cross-platform, immersive virtual world for education.  "The future is not a single platform. Multiple platforms can provide similar experiences, consistent from platform to platform," said director of the Media Grid and the Immersive Education Initiative Aaron Walsh. Walsh spoke at a Second Life event in advance of the “Boston Digital Media Summit: Enabling the Age of Immersive Education” to be held this weekend.

Walsh pointed to Second Life, Croquet, and Sun Microsystem's Wonderland as education platforms that meet the initiative's open source requirements that allow development without licensing fees. Walsh wants to plug them all in to the Education Grid where information and pre-constructed environments would be tagged with metadata to allow educators quick and easy access to virtual worlds instruction.

The main goal, it seems, is to create standards across the participating platforms allowing students to work across them all instead of having to leave one environment for another based on differing needs.

[via SLNN]