Using Virtual Worlds and Sloodle to Develop Educative Applications

Education is one of the most interesting applications of virtual worlds, as they can create opportunities to offer educative contents with the advantages of online courses, with the feel of “presence” that this immersive environments can provide. While most of social networking resources are mainly focused on sharing contents using a traditional web interface, virtual worlds facilitate the creation of social networks that enhance the perception and communication among its users through the use of additional modalities. In this paper we analyze the main resources provided by the Second Life virtual world and Sloodle to develop educational environments and describe their application in a educative project at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.