Second Life - important aspects for me

This entry relates to my own personal experiences and research in SL since Dec 06.


The benefits of the community

The idea of Communities of Practice (Wenger) is well known now to educators. I'm an advocate of Second Life's ability to nurture learning communities in the same way that other communities flourish in-world. A well-formed educational community can allow learners to:

• Personalise their environment to suit their interests.
  
• Students can actively build and create their learning environment
• They can be more engaged through social interaction and personalisation
• A sense of ownership and belonging from this direct involvement in the community.
  
• Develop higher-level social skills desirable to employers
• Learners might also have an increased sense of trust, confidence, satisfaction and personal development through the use of a community. (Wenger)

However, communities involve work and involvement from the members and continued contributions to maintain interest. Any community that does not involve this will not prosper. In addition, it is likely that members may 'wander off' as they get involved with other activities for a while, but the return as they realise they miss their old friends.

Voice versus Chat and Language learning

... The intelligent use of voice and chat in identified contexts is desirable:

We did a presentation in February 2007 on the use of SL for language learning, particularly in relation to independent learning. In a discussion with the British Council, 2 things became apparent:

1. That learning preferences were extremely evident, this person was unhappy at the lack of voice and ambient noise. He placed a lot of emphasis on sound and voice in his needs for language learners.
   
2. That chat-based interaction for languages allows accessibility for those with lower-level skills and less ability in speaking. It allows for creativity in language use, translators, widgets outside of SL such as dictionaries and verb engines and to take time in reading the conversation if it is conducted in IM. From personal experience as a learner of Italian, I found that my confidence and abilities increased, and that my verbal skills increased in conjunction with this. My greatly increased skills in language use through text directly translated to my ability to use spoken languages. An encounter with a learner of English as a Second Language confirmed this view, as she related a similar tale of how her English improved and will now use voice on occasion.
   

SL classroom

Horizon report

Web 2.0 related technologies

These are already here, and being used to some extent in institutions. The main issue will be to do with how to consider authoring and IP in a collective work. In terms of academia, this availability before publication can mean that publishers will not be interested in formal publication of available/non exclusive content.

I'd agree that the old academic focus on strict disciplines can be out of step with the modern world. Interconnection and intertextuality is common in the Humanities, particularly after Postmodernism. Assessment doesn't seem less easy with new technologies, just different. Maybe this is an area where an educational technologist can help the teacher employ the inherent abilities of technologies, or perhaps it needs no more than to rethink how assessment takes place. There may have to be negotiation to ensure that these forms of assessment are seen as acceptable and equivalent, and not to forego entirely old forms of assessment. These old forms also teach valuable skills.

Features that are important:

• sharing which creates a resources for future communities
  
• collaboration and community building
  
• shared wisdom
  
• inspiration/self evaluation for students through comparing work
• customisable interfaces using pageflakes/igoogle etc - death of the VLE?
• use of different media to communicate
• can tailor to suit learning styles
• move away from chalk and talk as sole method of teaching
• to build communities before the students arrive
  

Virtual worlds and MMPG

New art forms offers interesting new ways to create
Cost of developing MMPG
Games I've encountered - Archaeological excavation and Roman life and customs
Communities need to be maintained and kept interested.
Good multimedia design is needed to create an engaging environment. Both in terms of educational design and graphic design.

Technologies and age groups???

In our informal research:

• Older - Second Life. We found SL was seen as sad with French students. However, the tutors were fascinated. I wonder whether that tutors have more developed social skills?
• Younger - MySpace/Facebook, social websites. Younger people seem more focussed on sharing and comparing content, ideas, interests. Finding those that are like minded.
  
• All - Instant messaging, VoiceOverIP
  

Continuing issues

• Funding for developing MMPG and any other new technology
• Increasing teacher awarenesss and helping adoption
• Teacher support for new technology adoption
• Sustainability - people, services, maintenance
• Access to equipment in universities (Often poor quality)
• Access to services/websites in universities (e.g. Second Life)