The future of education will be shaped by innovative online communication tools that will change both the context and the nature of the relationships that influence education. In this article, Nancy Evans, Thalia M. Mulvihill, and Nancy J. Brooks explore the educational possibilities of Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual online environment. The authors posit that a multiuser virtual enviroment such as Second Life offers a valuable medium for enhancing and enriching online education because it meets human needs for belonging, esteem, and self-actualization; complements users' motivations for engaging with technology; and aids in building relationships and personal connections in an online environment, thereby offering transformative learning and teaching opportunities.

One way of better understanding Net-Generation learners is to examine the texts they create on online social networking, blogging, and image sites as well as in virtual worlds. Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley explore the nature of Net-Generation texts as a reflection of the cognitive differences between this generation's students and their older instructors, discuss the unique challenges this group of learners may present for instructors who do not share their technological immersion, and suggest the means by which such challenges may be overcome. To accommodate the needs of the Net Generation, Mabrito and Medley suggest that faculty must reconsider traditional pedagogy and integrate more innovative ways of instruction for this significantly different population of students.