On advice from one of my collegues I decided to try out Active Worlds. This is a virtual reality world which can really be useful in education.
Why? It offers students a very real world with some advantages you can't find in the real world. How easy is it to drag your students off to the pyramids of Cheops or along the Chinese wall?

However: from a constructivist point of view Active Worlds offers you a far more interesting opportunity. Let students build their own almost real world. They can do this together and could even share this with students from the other side of the globe. What about letting a classroom each construct their own living environment and giving students from the other side of the world a view of their world. This might foster a little more understanding...

So for everybody that is interested: check out the educational trial version at the Active Worlds site. Sadly using the real thing starts at approximately 400 dollars a year...

And of course Peije loved it and immediately started building his own house ;-)