Interesting PDF on the use of Second Life as courseware:

My "case in point" will begin with a brief discussion of how I have used Second Life in my own classes. Although I am a faculty member in the Computing Sciences department, I teach a 300-level GST "General Studies" course that is designed for students from all majors to meet their general education requirements. My course ("Imagining Technology") focuses on the future of technology, and it has a different theme each year (hacking, virtual communities, artificial intelligence, etc). Second Life helps me meet my course goals in a variety of ways, which I have included in my handout below.

Thus, the following handout includes my ideas for "101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom" based on my personal experience using the software, as well as my readings and ideas for how other disciplines might be able to make use of the software. These ideas are grouped and outlined in an easy-to-read format for the participants to refer to later, and include listings of sample assignments, essay topics, discussion topics, and in-world activities that I have developed for use by my students.

The first is a slightly older [2002] specification of metadata for art, VRA Core, geared towards collections like museums. I don't know how widespread it is, or if it has been superceded by some other standard. Here's a list of members' sites that includes the NGA. VRA's mission:

The Visual Resources Association is a multi-disciplinary organization dedicated to furthering research and education in the field of image management within the educational, cultural heritage, and commercial environments. The Association is committed to providing leadership in the visual resources field, developing and advocating standards, and offering educational tools and opportunities for the benefit of the community at large. The VRA implements these goals through publication programs and educational activities.

The second, Artequakt, is a project that aims to build a tool that can generate an artist's biography from unstructured text found on the web by mapping the found text to ontologies. Here's a short movie outling the project. [Thanks, Mills.]

Okay, I'll come clean. If you followed those links you'll see that I've substituted the name Audrey Marnay (who happens to be my favourite model) for "stick-thin catwalk models", "skinny models", "unhealthily thin girls" and "waif-like models". And I've substituted the fictional FBI (facial beauty index) for BMI (body mass index).