From the illustrious mind of George Siemens and his “elearnspace” blog (and e-newsletter) — subscribe!!! — comes this tasty morsel about the blurring lines between real and virtual spaces. Implications for our field are very real:

For all my chatter about the changing nature/need of learning, I think I’ve largely ignored what is becoming one of the most interesting trends: the absolute blurring between online and physical spaces.

A Virtual World’s Real Dollars: “It’s easy to see why Second Life has captured the attention of Bezos and other investors. Second Life is a three-dimensional digital world in which players can do just about anything: Create an avatar that acts as an online alter-ego, fly around landscapes dotted with dance clubs and gardens, and socialize via text messaging with friends’ avatars. The population inside Second Life has grown eightfold from a year ago, when just 20,000 “residents,” as they’re known, called it a second home.”

George also adds this provocation about the ‘need’ for face-to-face time:

Why face-to-face still matters: - this post makes the same erroneous assumption about learning that most classroom instructors make: that we can’t duplicate the richness of physical spaces online. And I disagree. 100%. Learning online is a different type of interaction, and as such, it can be challenging to compare with F2F. I’m teaching a class now with learners from six different locations (including a group in the studio/classroom). Even if I subscribe to the metrics detailed in this article, (i.e. online learning is not as rich as F2F) many remote learners would not have the opportunity to learn the material without the medium - ie. they would have to travel, take time off of work. Some is better than none.