Virtual Environments as an Education Tool for Digital Natives

Abstract

The paper focuses on the development of an educational concept of virtual environments for Digital Natives. The project, a collaboration between NBU Sofia (Bulgaria) and WSU Sydney (Australia), concentrated on the development of a didactic solution for attracting the so called Digital Natives into a virtual environment where they could develop their own learning scenarios accessing knowledge within a Second Life environment or comparable interface. The goal of the project was to provide an engaging and participatory virtual environment which could encourage students to become more intimately involved in the learning process around ancient and in some cases extinct Balkan languages. The results provided visual immediacy within a learning environment and allowed the WSU computing students to sharpen their professional IT skills working for NBU as a client.