I’ve gathered some ideas, perhaps promising practices in managing students in a virtual world.  These ideas have come from educators who instruct in a virtual setting.  Naming of avatars is a great way to manage your students and keep track of what they do as well as ensuring you have the correct students in your virtual setting.

• Having students use their first names and the last name of the school identifies the student and put them in the school “family” .  A teacher on RG uses this method and she can easily spot who is around and what they are doing.  She can also identify any intruders.
• Another teacher of RG reports using Student1, Student2, and a last name associated with the school or geographic location of the school. This method works well for when you have to reuse avatars for different students.
• A variation of  the above method would be to use a group tag.  So the student could have use an avatar names Student 1 or a first and last name they select but then use a group tag that identifies the school.
• Another strategy used in the virtual setting has been to make t-shirts identifying the school and/or the student.  The Tshirt could display the first name of the student, thus identifying the student even though the avatar name is “Student One” or it could display the name of the school.