Tyler’s Weblog

A while back I found out about this virtual world where people can create their own characters and walk through a world, earn money, buy virtual stuff… the only thing is, this one is for children. Whyville.net is a place where children go to do all the things that adults do on sites like Second Life. As sad as I think online worlds such as Second Life are, Whyville is probably the coolest site I have ever been to. I signed up out of curiousity (I lied about my age and said I was… 12… which makes me sounds creepy but anyways…) This site offers kids the chance to learn at different worlds. The food they buy for their characters affects it’s health, there is even a beach which was created by Penguin Books in order to introduce kids to their kid-friendly version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” This beach suffered a hurricane and kids spent their time online learning about the affects of global warming and even spent time rebuilding this online beach. Virgin Records sponsored an online concert of Stacie Orrico. The lessons this site is teaching people are incredible! I am actually learning stuff… is that sad or exciting? Scion is offering online car loans for these kids in order to teach them about loans and credit. I know plenty of college students and even adults that could learn from that. The site is now offering virtual flu shots in order to teach them about diseases and disease prevention. And the thing is… this site is growing like crazy. The site now has over 2 million registered users. I would definitely suggest people check this out… you’d be surprised at what you can learn. I was!