Instructors can find such sites using search engines and encourage their students to take advantage of the self-paced guidance provided by the sites' authors. Some sites take learning a step further and allow students to perform experiments or do activities on the web. There is a site which used to be at Berkeley and is now served from Austria which allows users to control a robot arm that plants seeds, waters the earth and monitors the growth of plants in a community garden. All gardening activities are done entirely by the robot, which is controlled entirely by registered users of the site, people all over the world. The computerized simulation presents choices for fruit fly traits and then crosses the chosen flies.
Students can analyze the offspring and pose theories about genetics which are checked for accuracy.
Realtime Interaction with Others Realtime interaction can be done on the web in several ways. Many educational IRCs are aimed at K-12 groups. Programming is not necessary to use a MOO, however, and many players only describe themselves without building rooms or objects. There are several MOOs which are dedicated to educational discussions, though there are also many that are not. While MOOs are not practical for discussions that should be held in class, they are useful for facilitating conversations between students who are separated by distance and who would not otherwise have the chance to talk in realtime.