• http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/

Rome Reborn 1.0 resides at the crossroads of history, archeology, technology and imagination. You can visit the project's website or read a short report on its unveiling from CNET News.com where you will learn that the simulation "shows almost the entire city within the 13-mile-long Aurelian Walls in 320 A.D., when Rome was the multicultural capital of the Western world." One of the more provocative tidbits from the project site is the fact that the creators are hoping to incorporate the work of other scholars who would "contribute their work as bricks in the larger edifice." If that dream of collaboration is realized, the virtual city would double as a spatialization of particular scholarly projects and as a metaphor for the scholarly endeavor at large. At the same time, as you view the video clips on the project site, you may be reminded of Second Life and find yourself wishing to move about in Rome Reborn as a toga-clad avatar. The pedagogical (and other) possibilities are staggering.