Education in Virtual Worlds

3D VHS Metropolis Grid

Part 2

This time I visited Metropolis Grid, I landed on a snowy place, but it changes every season, so if you visit now, it will be full of Easter decoration and it will be green. The area is called "World of Seasons". There I found a cabin in the snow with lovely furniture, a good place to practice vocabulary and to make films with students.

 

Then I saw a shop where you can click and get recipes for biscuits and cakes if you click on the packages lays just next to the Xmas market and the train track. There are interactive animals across the sim, like dolphins and penguins.

 To my surprise I found a beach with Caribbean touch and surf boards at the back of the snowy mountains. I fell into the water by trying to fly into the next island and found a city in there. Once on the surface I just started walking in another direction when I finished admiring the under water world, where avatars can also learn all about firestorm climbing into a hole.

I went into a cave, which is an exhibition place, this time it was full of things from different countries. It is an exhibition about culture showing clothes, food and some produce from countries around the world. A museum to touch for avatars, so to speak.

It also exhibits the religions and in the middle of the room is a globe you can enter, on the inside you can read the names of the countries. The globe is a very nice tool to teach geography to children. It turns out that I was in the "Felsengrotte" a cave inside a rock cliff.

 I continued my tour and  started walking and teleporting to other platforms /classrooms. It wasn't long before I discovered a games platform were there were several boxes containing games to train avatar skills, like driving and language skills. People can rez the games and play for hours, another place to take students to and make an adventure out of a lesson.

 My next teleport was to the sailing part of the sim and later on I went paragliding around the huge island. Form the air I could see the park with a typical German beer garden a puzzle and many buildings, passing the golf course, the ridding area, the swimming area, the quiz area and the event area called "Pumpwerk". Figuring out that it would take me days to explore it all, I settled for the building Pumpwerk.

 Pumpwerk is the name of a gathering place on the sim, there avatars can listen to llive music every Wednesday and play instruments and dance on a stage outside. I shall go back when the sim is full of avatars.

 What a sim! I kept thinking about all the films I can make with students in there. There is still more to come in part 3 and I am really wondering if I will be able to stop there or if I shall write part 4.