For the last several weeks students have been building their own virtual worlds using Activeworlds proprietary software (activeworlds.com) hosted and programmed by Scicentr.org (www.scicentr.org). Scicentr’s virtual world outreach programming has for the last several years produced the best results with middle school students. The students in Real Place, Virtual Space are younger. Although they are *able* to learn virtual world building skills, they aren’t yet as engaged as older students with the virtual world as a medium for communication and instruction. Their excitement about the dialogic nature of the blog hints at what’s possible for their world (named WestV), but for now, they are still learning to build fences and signs. One student, e.h., will be completing a house during the last meeting today. Yesterday, he was interested enough in what he’s been doing to introduce a new student to the WestV world, and explain to him that all that was needed to complete his house was to reposition the roof, two angled panels he’d left waiting on the grass.

The graphic nature of the virtual world engaged e.h., the student who arguably created the most imaginative avatar (the headless man) . On the other hand, he literally talked his way out of posting a dialogue with a commentator on the blog, using a past lesson on internet safety: “I don’t trust this guy.” On the other hand, another student Victor, a fast typist and writer but a student difficult to engage with our previous assignments - he designed no avatar and did not complete an Internet collage - took to writing a response without too much cajoling. Victor was excited about writing, but not about the world building.

Victor is an avid game-player, and it was an event every afternoon to get him to switch gears, finish his game, and begin our work on other aspects of comptuer arts. He made an interesting comment about virtual worlds: there are no”secret places”. Lukas, the students’ virtual world instructor, descibes that many of these young students found the virtual world “lonely”. In the virtual world, exactly what you do is exactly what happens. There are no surprises, and *some* younger students find it much more exciting to play games. Victor is one of them. But e.h. is not.

Computer technologies engage different students in different ways, and we must let this be “ok” as we consider what computer literacy means. Every job has the perfect tool, and you don’t throw away your hammer because you just bought a great saw. Students will approach and engage with computing based on who they are, what they like, and how they like to learn. Within the context of the current standards movement and the emphasis on subjects’ ever-increasing “content”, hopefully computing will not become itself, just another standard content. Hopefully, we can continue to find the ways and means of allowing student exploration of multiple arts and literacies that computers and new media afford.