A 30-foot tall, animated Shawnee State logo sits in front of a huge black building on an island surrounded by water. Above the building is the Starship SSU. One floor of the starship houses a complete interactive color lab, an art gallery with actual paintings by SSU faculty and all this is on Second Life, an interactive Internet community.

Tom Stead, associate director of education for the Appalachian Ohio Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative, built the island along with three other islands in the same vicinity.

In the color lab, visitors can walk through color and actually experience color changes, shading, light values, and all aspects of color theory.

“It makes learning much easier, especially for visual learners,” Stead said. “It’s a virtual classroom.”

Every Monday, Stead and the WIRED initiative staff meet on their island in Second Life, built next to the SSU island. Members of the staff are in Athens, Columbus and Cincinnati, but with Second life, each one created an avatar and actually meet at the WIRED island.

People from around the world can gather on Second Life to have meetings, go to school, teach or participate in numerous activities.

Stead created four different islands, a meeting room that will seat 200 avatars (people) for conferences, an actual model of a wind turbine scaled to size with moveable parts, an aquarium, plant life, a ski slope, snowmobiles and many other objects of interest.

To visit the island, go to Second Life and choose an avatar, then go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/wired 4/109/192/22.

“This is Internet 2.0, a highly interactive version of the Internet,” Stead said. “This is the future.”