Similar in design to other virtual gaming environments, created by programs such as SIMS and World of Warcraft, Second Life allows users to create digital avatars as well as digital spaces in which to interact with other avatars. Davidson and Goldberg indicate that some educators have used Second Life to create online university settings that are set to remove student inhibitions. Major universities such as University of Delaware, Ohio University and University of Michigan have even generated Second Life classroom environments that can accompany their traditional, brick-and-mortar classrooms.
Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) is a global consortium of educators, educational activities and pedagogy relating to technology and the incorporation of technology. GVC not only allows teachers and students to share materials and ideas with one another, it also enables them to interact with each other in a virtual, trans-global classroom setting.
HASTAC stands for Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory. The site is a social-networking service specifically targeting educators concerned with issues relating to technology and the contemporary classroom. HASTAC allows users and contributors to post and comment on a wide variety of topics that are organized according to topic threads. The purpose of HASTAC is to rethink the ways learning can happen in the digital age by eliminating the top-down autocratic governing system that exists in most brick-and-mortar classrooms in favor of a more egalitarian, sharing community, in which ideas are explored and discussed in a "classroom" whose rules are established in the moment by the "students" in that classroom.
Popularized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Open Courseware is the direct virtual incarnation of a brick-and-mortar classroom. By digitizing course materials such as syllabi, assignments and reading materials, educational institutions that provide Open Courseware re-create traditional classrooms in a virtual space. The benefits of an Open Courseware classroom include its low price-tag (most universities supply Open Courseware for free), the freedom it provides students in terms of working through material and the relative universality of accessibility.