An extra one.
I've been thinking about the teen grid quite a bit.
My guess is that numbers of regular teen users will continue to fall and numbers of schools trying to use will continue to grow slowly, in part thanks to the problem of mixing 17 and 18 year olds.
This will lead to the closing of the Teen Grid in its current form. Educators will be able to designate certain sims as "teen" in a new setting which will offer a variety of (hopefully moderately easy to arrange elements). There will be a special "student edition" of RegAPI to let school-children be registered and bound to their home continent/island (this technology already exists because teachers are bound to their islands on the teen grid, although currently this can't be accessed directly by users but it should be doable). LL will add an ability to permit the educators to create an access list for adults that they vouch for - which already exists too, you can hide your island and allow only a few people or a group access.
These two tools will allow teachers to classes of 17 and 18 (and older) year old students in one place, and will help increase the uptake of the new format "teen grid" by educators.
People will bitch and moan but, like it or not, schools ARE in a privileged position here: they already have staff who are vetted for contact with children and approved and they do teach classes across that divide every day in legal and usually safe circumstances. Linden Lab would be changing the onus so that the school takes responsibility for the contact being suitable, they are merely providing the tools (or highlighting them) to create the ability of the school to do this.
Following the success of this process some corporate and legislative process will be looked into to create a smaller teen continent on the main grid but I expect this will not be successful in the next year, although maybe by the end of 2011.
