New Cyber Worlds Provide Possible Learning Landscapes

By Andrew Trotter

Arlington, Va.

Technology Page They might not show up in the school construction budget, but some pretty odd structures are being built to house students these days. Among them: tomato greenhouses floating in the sky, a 19th-century river town grappling with a mysterious epidemic, and odd meeting places that look like set diagrams from "Star Trek."

These are educational spaces of a special sort: multiple-user dimensions, or MUDs—worlds that exist only in cyberspace. And a handful of pioneering educators are using them to tickle the imaginations of teens who have grown up on video games.

Other MUDs are devised mainly for socializing and playing games. Now, partnerships of researchers and educators—with support in some cases from Internet entrepreneurs—have begun to erect them...