Case is hosting a summit on Collaborative Technology in Higher Education, CollabTech, which I’ll be reporting on throughout the day.

First up is a panel discussion using next generation technologies like  SecondLife to augment learning by  bridging geography.  Not too sure how I feel about that.  The whole environment feels kind of cartoonish.  I think that extra layer of “unreality” provides a sense of disconnect, especially in comparison with video chat.  I demoed Adobe Connect in one of my classes this semester, and it was fantastic.  Totally Flash based, so there’s really no extra software needed.  Allows video and audio chat, screen sharing, shared whiteboard, private chats.  I don’t feel like SecondLife, in it’s current version, allows the same kind of connection as a virtual “world”.

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