A wiki on Virtual Worlds

Good Morning !

I am working for the Federation of American Scientist, and am working on a wiki project : http://vworld.fas.org. The idea is to create an up-to-date database of educative virtual worlds, with three main goals in mind :

(1) The most important is to allow teacher to learn about the multiple educational virtual worlds currently available, and how they can be used to strengthen their existing curriculum. It is also a place for them to share their knowledge about the virtual worlds they use, how they use it and if they would advise other teachers to do so. To this end we try to provide customised search tools tailored to the needs of teachers and educators.

(2) We would like to grow the wiki into a place for developers to inform the teachers about their products, explain how they can be used in plain English, and get feedbacks from educational professionals.

(3) Finally, this wiki is also a tool to advocate the use of new technologies in Education, and prove to the congress and government agencies that these technologies are efficient, and educators are ready to use them.

I know that many educative virtual worlds are growing on Second Life, I entered some of them. If you know some of these islands, if you use or created them, I would love you to check the website and share your knowledge.
If you have some feedbacks on how I can improve this wiki, make it more intuitive, i would be happy to hear them.

The url : http://vworld.fas.org

So what is your definition of a "Virtual World"?

good question !

The definition we use is voluntarily open :

A "virtual world" is an on-line environment that generally includes these characteristics:

1. Avatar-based: Users represent themselves in a unique, virtual individual that roughly approximates the functions of a human.
2. Multi-user: Many users can be in the same online venue simultaneously.
3. Immediate: Interaction with other users and the world takes place in real time. However, there may be slight delays from network latency (lag) or from other users.
4. Interactive: Users can act on their environment to some degree, instead of being mere observers.
5. Persistent The virtual world, as well as objects and characters within, exist independent of the users logged in.

On http://vworld.fas.org, we deliberately leave the question without a too accurate answer. Our goal is not to define what a virtual world is, but to create a tool that can be used efficiently by teachers.