The Immersive Education Initiative is a non-profit international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that

are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Thousands of faculty, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, which is growing at the rate of over 100 new members every month. Initiative members have early access to the Education Grid, where they can conduct classes and meetings within a growing collection of virtual worlds. Initiative members can also use the Education Grid to build custom virtual learning worlds, simulations, and learning games. Immersive Education and the Media Grid were recently recognized with a prestigious national award by Computerworld for being innovative, promising technologies which hold the potential to significantly affect society in the near future. The Immersive Education Initiative is a merit-based, not-for-profit initiative of the Media Grid international standards group. Membership is free (no fee) and open to the public but restricted to organizations and individuals that have experience using

virtual worlds,