Stephen Downes' presentation at Eduserv was indeed interesting, and probably would have been suited as the first of the day rather than the last - primarily, I suspect, because it would have given the other speakers a slightly darker background to 'work with'. Myself and Mark Hepworth spoke to him outside the Congress Centre afterwards, and it was easy to feel some sympathy for him - the contrarian speaker who put a chill on proceedings and was effectively treated then by the panel moderator as a pariah.

His main points - that Linden can't carry on as it is (in regard to maintaining its network/servers), and that the 6 million users mask the realities of actual use, were well made - as was the point that parts of SL are virtual ghosttowns.

Yesterday, I attended a SL session at Coventry University (Sigma - Maths support), and we were shown the University of Hertfordshire's new campus. Beautiful design, but nobody there. Walls, sliding doors, vast open indoor spaces, but empty. During the session, placing resources was dicussed in detail - lecture handouts et al.

I can't help feeling that the educational future of SL is participative, action-based and without RL physical boundaries to contend with. And hopefully not as a place to pick up lecture handouts.