1. Sherwood Towne and TheU
TheU is a virtual university
project. Based on our experience with Sherwood
Forest Towne (built in AlphaWorld by multiple
avatars) we feel that we can design and manage a
larger collaborative build and habitation of a
site. We will be pulling together teams from all
over the (real) world who are ready to build and
staff different parts of theU. TheU will
concentrate its curriculum on living, learning,
communicating, creating and surviving in a
virtual world. TheU could become a tremendous
Internet community resource to help a *whole
generation* into the new medium. TheU could also
serve as a first class proving grounds to further
develop this medium for education, entertainment,
community creations and serious business
applications. TheU could ultimately move beyond
its world-focused curriculum to provide a broader
range of learning options. TheU would open its
doors to the entire world, for people of any age,
creed or race, 24 hours a day.
theU Faculties
Current faculties suggested
for theU:
- freshman world ways
101 (navigating, communicating),
- school of
architecture,
- music and sound
learning lab,
- school of world
etiquette
- digital anthropology
and archaeology departments
- worldly journalism
and creative writing schools
- school of fine arts
- school of
criminology
- safety and civics
- academy of world
mentors
- the world theatre
(performance, role playing, story
telling, avatar costuming design),
worldathletics, worldpsych (dealing with
psychological issues of life in a virtual
environment) and a business school
(serious business uses of the medium will
be explored and demonstrated)
Other areas would include:
- student commons and
social bitmixer club
- faculty club
- physical plant (the
underworld for engineering and campus
services)
- alumni association
- campus security
- sacred spaces (a
space for many religious beliefs).
UHome
TheU could be hosted inside
one server (say, an AlphaWorld community server
or in a large area in the current AlphaWorld) or
it could be spread across different servers and
technologies. It is conceivable that that the
school of architecture would be ported together
between Alphaworld technology and VRML spaces. As
more people construct their own HomeWorlds in
VRML, theU could be ported to them.
UBackground and participants
TheU would benefit from
experiences from years of working pedagogical
MUDs and MOOs operated by Consortium members such
as Reed Riner, Jim Funaro and Johanna
Silverthorne. Expert world designers make up
another part of our membership, including Steven
Hanly, Nancy and Roger Zuidema and many others.
Other groups and individuals who may be
participating include: Musitechnic of Montreal,
Mary Munro and Derrick DeKerckhove of the MCluhan
Program at the University of Toronto, Cal State
LA, Mediartech, ACM CHI, Bauer Gold and
Associates, Northern Arizona University, the
World Network of Religious Futurists and many
more are coming online all the time. We will
attempt to involve many existing virtual
university/distance learning projects.
UBacking
As we are a non-profit
community benefit organization, we will be
seeking grant funding. Any sources you could help
us identify would be appreciated. We can go quite
a distance on volunteer effort but some backing
will be required to really develop theU fully.
USteps
We would hope to start
building theU this summer and open for classes in
September or sooner. We would welcome a
brainstorming session on theU with all of you on
our LISTSERV and value your input.
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