Thing #10 Virtual Worlds

As I explored and worked my way through the site and various blogs, etc., two things came to mind. The first was that this was totally inappropriate for grade school children, and the site is indeed for age 13 and up. For grade school children to use this, as the suggestion goes, teachers or librarians should demo the possibilities with an LCD projector. What puts me off in the site are the Barbie doll type girls and the boyfriend / girlfriend stuff.

The other thought that comes to mind is how useful and necessary such sites as this are for the adults and young adults. Within ten to fifteen years, much of what we do will be virtual and the skills to manipulate within the virtual world will be mandatory. I recall seeing a news segment on how potential medical school students wanting to become surgeons were evaluated partly on how well they could perform on computerized games. The reason for this being that much of the instruments they would be using in surgery would require the same hand to eye to brain coordination that computerized games presently require. Today, doctors. Tomorrow, almost everyone.

In the site, I did like and see possibilities in the "Be creative" section. Our children are in love with art, and for our population, art is one of the few creative outlets available to them. The opportunity to virtually design a car, or a dress, or whatever would be attractive to them.

I also liked Virtual Land. Our children are apartment dwellers, within very small insulated communities. The opportunity for them to dream out their own lot or house is appealling.