I looked at Grainne Conole's timeline for a recent presentation and tweeted about the place of virtual worlds in learning as 2005. See slides on Slideshare . She has tweeted back that this will be revised but this post is to expand on the tweet.

Timelines are always more complex than appears but I think virtual worlds are a particular case. There was a lot of publicity around 2005 but I don't think there was much actual activity. Then there was a slide away from it I think. The demands of bandwidth are too much for most locations within education or most organisations. Equipment at home intended for games can work but I don't think it has been used for formal learning.

I have lost track of dates but think my interest in Twinity started about three or four years ago. Twinity appears to track the real world starting with Berlin. I have spent a lot of time in various cities but the maps have now gone. I think the data cost too much. a lot of people were mostly into music and dance moves. The coding is no longer in Berlin, it was sold to Exit Reality in San Francisco. I still look at it every so often but somehow the way I think about cities has changed. Maybe the web has caught up with Exeter or else mixing in browsing has become more natural everywhere. There must be some explanation of why virtual worlds come and go.

Recently I tried out Cloud Party. This is still in development so needs more skill than I have, but it is written for HTML 5 so there is no software to download. this makes quitye a difference I think. It may be used much more widely.

Later I will try to work out better dates and find the photos. I am still in summer drift mode. Precise dates are not really a priority. But here is a link to video from last year. Virtual worlds keep coming back.