virtual worlds

This is the first of a series of short posts highlighting colleges in Second Life. Each college or university featured in Grid Works will be an institution of higher learning teaching some level of engineering-related curriculum in the "real world." The first college for today's post is Ashworth College located in Norcross, Ga. This school offers online or correspondence courses in many fields including the following:

Innovative companies are beginning to realize that virtual worlds like Second Life offer the opportunity to create 3-D representations of their products at a minimal cost. These digital models can then be used to demonstrate ideas and concepts and showcase capabilities and appearance of products to existing and future customers.

Professional societies have been building communities long before Web 2.0 emerged on the scene, and incorporating new technologies like virtual worlds is only one more tool to help these groups better serve their membership.