Professor Austin Tate / Ai Austin

It’s evident from responses in so far to the latest snapshot survey that a fair proportion of UK academics who are “into” Second Life are also having a good rummage around other virtual worlds.

One of these is Professor Austin Tate, who researches out of Edinburgh University. To the question of what virtual worlds he is using, Austin responded: 

Second Life (mostly), Opensim, Twinity, Lively by Google and a range of others for testing. My own interests are for collaboration, task support, emergency response research, training.

He’s intrigued by other virtual worlds:

Opensim already in use, and could be used for behind the firewall systems, and where we need much more real estate for training and simulation related exercises.

Austin maintains a jump page of links to various resources and places in virtual worlds that, if you’re an educator exploring these worlds, is worth having a look through.

Austin can also be found on Twitter.