MOO fan, though I hate milk

Lame title, I realize, sorry. My brain has shut down for spring break, haha.

I found the MOO to be a pretty awesome tool. I have a feeling there's just one other person who agrees with me. However, I was a computer nerd starting around age 11, have built my own computer once, and own four gaming systems. (wii, 360, n64, sega genesis). I was at the opening night of Halo 3. The first thing I do when getting back from class is turn on my computer (a macbook pro). I chat with my parents and significant other online more than I talk to them on the phone. (both live several hours away). I have to say I "compose my world" through text messages and instant messages and typing on MS Word that I do using any other medium.

I had a blast using the MOO in class. I found the hum of people typing invigorating. The constant change of the messages in front of me kept me very interested and my mind exploding with thoughts and ideas. It's easy to say that the future generation who those of us might be teaching might be the same way. They're so used to the instantanousness (a word?) of email and text messaging, who's to say that this same principal couldn't be enacted in a classroom?

However, I do foresee a possible society that's portrayed in Farhenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury if, by chance, books and rhetoric do not keep up with technology. Maybe this is a very far fetched thought, but what if? If books and paper don't turn into digitalized mediums, will they be lost forever? On the other hand, stealing an image from The Matrix, what if one day we can just "plug in" and have thousands of books inserted into our minds?

So, that was a random disgression.

I do think that with further tweaking, a system like the MOO could be very useful. Many of the complaints I heard were that people couldn't keep up, it gave no way for the teacher to have control, no way to force proper grammer, and conversations could easily diagress. There are easy fixes to all of these with a few changes in the way the MOO might be programmed. For instance, an instructor could have the ability to turn off all comments untill the lesson was over, be able to turn off the commenting capabilities for individual students in case of topic digression, and easily write in a grammar/spell check program like what's in MS Word. While I do think that the teacher/student interaction is VERY important, I think written interaction could have a helpful place. As long as a dialogue between student and teacher is open, does it matter if it's spoken or written?