It seems like pre-history, but it was only eight or nine years ago that my colleague Jeff McLaughlin and I developed the Painted Porch MAUD, a multi-user learning learning environment based on a MUD (or, as most educators would say, a MOO, though a MOO really is quite different technically). I mention this because one of my pride and joys in the Painted Porch was a simulation of Plato's Cave - Jeff and I were philosophy instructors, after all. So it brings back fond memories to read this article which introduces the topic of simulations in education via the metaphor of Plato's Cave. And while, as the author observes, Plato spent a great deal of time trying to convince people to leave the cave of illusions, researchers today are developing increasingly realistic simulations with an eye to persuading all of us to spend more time in the virtual world. Hey, I'm OK with that. But I would not have made a very good Platonist.
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