NUS has a Second Life Campus!

I've just read on the tomorrow.sg site that NUS (National University of Singapore) students had set up a virtual campus in Second Life! It is not that big a deal since there are many other universities (e.g. Ohio, Princeton...etc) who already experiment with such a concept sometime back. The idea of using virtual worlds as educational tool has also been covered by many others.

Heh, but it's still worthwhile to go in and take a look right? I went in, and well the campus looked quite empty except for a NUS team member (I took a pic of his avatar, see below). The objects are quite well done up, and hopefully there will be more activities inside the NUS island soon.

According to the Campus Observer, the NUS campus was launched only fairly recently. So perhaps in a couple of weeks time there will be more folks in the virtual campus. It will be interesting to participate in the virtual world market place and the dance floor once the students start coming in. I wonder if there will be a parallel Union Bash in Second Life as the real one proceeds?

Here's the place where I first teleported to:

Here's a view of the University Hall, and I got into the Tan Chin Tuan wing for a closer look of the area:

There are nice posters on the wall detailing the NUS life.

Maybe I should log on during school hours, and hopefully I can sneak into one of the lectures? Will visit the place again, especially when it's fully completed in June 2008. I saw this dancer in one of the areas inside the island, and he passed me a website, with more details about the NUS Second Life project. It seems he is the Chief Administrator of the NUS Second Life. The website has news highlights, blog highlights, and calendar of events.

There are also other interactive objects at the NUS Island, including this bot who gives away tokens. For a moment I thought they will give away Linden Dollars, lolz.

Went to this colourful area which I suspect is the dance floor? Oh well, I will explore more of the area the next time.

Afternote:
They did more publicity and here's one of the posters found around the NUS campus.