I enjoyed a breakfast seminar at CORE this morning in which we heard from two of the e-Fellows, sharing what they’re doing with the use of games in education. Gavin Hewitt shared a fascinating project he’s been working on in developing an educational game based around the ANZACs, and Jonathan Parsons showed us what he is doing with creating virtual environments in which students can share their work and ideas – using an example of a virtual marae.

Jonathan’s presentation ingited discussion about the potential of immersive online environments as places where learners could interact with each other, share their achievements and generally participate in a social context similar to Bebo or Facebook, but in an immersive environment resembling that of Second Life.

Then tonight I read an announcement about Grockit – described by its developers as a Massively Multi-Player Online Learning (MMOL) environment. The product isn’t built yet – but according to TechCrunch, the developers have raised over $2M and are looking for developers to join them in this initiative. (A JD for the developers is available on the Grockit site.) Now that’s some serious development funding – it will be interesting to see how this product develops!