Here are some screen shots of the Pet Park virtual world. Pet Park is a constructionist learning environment. This means that we believe kids will have more powerful learning experiences when they are working on projects of their own choosing, especially projects of a design nature that they can share with others. By letting kids work on projects that genuinely interest them, they will become much more involved in their learning, and become more inquisitive in their search for the knowledge they need to achieve their project goals. Pet Park is an experiment in providing a similar kind of learning experience but within a graphical environment.
MUDs are great for encouraging people learn from each other.
Pet Park is meant to be a community learning environment, not a stand-alone program. We hope to see kids talking to each other online, showing off their pets to each other, and helping each other program their pets. These kinds of interactions help to motivate kids to learn collaboratively, building social skills as well as group problem solving skills. There's nothing the matter with text. We're hoping that projects like Pet Park will pave the way to richer graphical multi-user spaces.