Here’s something I like the look of. Andrea sent me a note recently in response to my thoughts about LMSs. She recommended I take a look at Croquet , a combination of open source computer software and network architecture that supports deep collaboration and resource sharing among large numbers of users.

I had a good look around the site – there’s plenty of information about the product, including these gems from their introductory section:

• Croquet is a computer software architecture built from the ground up with a focus on deep collaboration between large numbers of users.
• Croquet makes it possible to change and author virtual worlds in collaboration with others inside them while they are operating.
• Croquet users, with appropriate sharing privileges, may visit and work inside any other Croquet-based world on the network.
• Croquet users have the ability to create and modify a personal information space and create fully dynamic connections to any other Croquet spaces and network-deliverable information resources (such as the WWW).
• Croquet utilizes a software environment where anything can be created or represented; where everything can be modified; where development and user environments are one in the same.

The product is designed to with interoperability in mind – running on Windows, MacOS or Linux etc.

From my small poke around it looks like this product meets most of the expectations I’d have of a future online learning environment – keep up the good work!