Hi, Ana. Thanks for taking the time to lead this discussion. You raise a number of important questions about the technical problems and promises of using technologies like Second Life in higher ed.

Your question of embodiment is an important one, especially if we consider questions of empathy: What do current technologies (video games and otherwise) do to our sense of empathy? Something like Second Life can allow students to and researchers to at least approximate the embodied experience of a different identity. In my rhetoric classes, I often have students role play the authors that we're reading. If we read three essays written by three different authors, I have three students lead a "panel discussion" in which they answer questions in the persona of the authors. One question I might ask is: How is this exercise different from participation in second life? If this exact exercise took place in a virtual space, what would happen? Again, the question of embodiment returns: I can role-play all I want, but I'm still (for the most part) the same body I was before I started role-playing. In second-life, there's a different kind of ventriloquism happening because the avatar does not have to match the human body controlling it.

Still, an exercise like the role-playing one I have used might be a good primer for both students and for those funding projects in Second Life. For students, a role-playing game that takes place F2F gets them thinking about issues of embodiment...those issues could be re-visited if the role-playing game is moved to SL. For those who make funding decisions, a study of F2F role-playing vs. SL role-playing could convince skeptics that something like SL is worth exploring and is more than just a new gadget.

James J. Brown, Jr.

University of Texas-Austin

I'm guessing there are many HASTACers out there who aren't very familiar with Second Life. I'll admit to being one of those. (Which raises the interesting corollary question: If we have heard all the buzz, why haven't we checked it out? For me, it's the same reason I generally avoid video games and have added the "Leechblock" application to my Firefox browser to limit my time on political blogs, Facebook, and other black holes of disappearing productivity - I fear my own propensity to addiction and procrastination. Although I recognize that I address this fear at the expense of many potential lost opportunities.)

 

In any case, for the uninitiated like myself, I wanted to draw attention to the link embedded directly beneath the Seesmic video in the Sprout widget above. It will take you to YouTube where there are a plethora of videos aimed at introducing you not only to Second Life, but in particular, advocating for what Second Life has to offer for pedagogy. Here's the link again: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=education+second+life&search....

 

I also want to pass on links to a few helpful websites that talk about the possibilities of Second Life for education. (These all fall in the SL Cheerleader camp, and I invite those of you who are cheer-less about SL to provide some alternate resources for our readers to investigate!)

 

http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/ - The Second Life in Education Wiki

http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/education - Second Life Grid, a website from Linden Labs aimed at facilitating education programs in SL
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mpepper/slbib - An annotated bibliography of SL educational online resources from Mark Pepper at Purdue

 

I know there are many more websites/videos/etc. out there that might be helpful to anyone interested in taking part in this conversation. Please feel free to share! As someone just climbing up on this fence, not sure which side of it I want to stand on (or if I even want to choose a side) I look forward to learning! (And oh I have so much to learn...)

To expand on one of the critical points that Ana raises regarding innovative uses of Second Life, the synthetic world is still, at times, immensely unstable. Last semester, I employed the world in a freshman writing course on "Literary Networks." Quickly, I found that lags and crashes posed challenges to pedagogical applications of the space.

 

Nevertheless, even in its failures, Second Life proved valuable. After all, networks and innovative technologies rarely work precisely as they "should." New media theorists Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, for instance, argue that networks are far from synonymous with connectivity. In fact, disconnectivity and disruption are just as central to the operation of interconnected structures. Similarly, Paul Virilio understands crashes and accidents (both disasters and diagnostics of the human condition) programmed into all new technologies.

 

So, for me, the very glitches of the synthetic environment represent an occasion to discuss something that is not merely an irritation-inducing by-product of technology, but essential to its operation. While this is a point about technology, it is also one about pedagogy. Experimenting with non-traditional media has value not merely because it represents a type of unilateral progress (humanities 2.0), but because the inherently volatile process of such experimentation can teach students how, more productively, to fail. To put this point more positively, real insight can come from approaching the methods and media of a classroom in a self-reflexive mode: not merely for teachers but also for students.

 

I think it's also generative to inquire about the change in public perception regarding Second Life. Even with relatively new technologies and spaces, this type of historical approach helps even a "failed" experiment succeed. For example, when I had my students meet in Second Life, I also assigned essays both from the moment of the world's popularity starting in mid-2005, when articles about it were being published in every popular publication, and from the more recent period of the space's decline. Of course, plenty of users still frequent Second Life, but compared to its population peak, it has, in certain corners, grown into a ghost town. Certainly, the millions of regular visitors and entrepeneurs who once spent long periods inside the place have, in many cases, moved on to other digital spaces. So it is useful, I think, to ask what makes a synthetic world popular and captures our imagination, and what makes that change over time. In other senses as well, to study the history of an online world is a thought-provoking classroom exercise.

 

Patrick Jagoda (Duke University)

I want to post more on this subject later today, but I do want to encourage those who have not visited Second Life to take at least a brief journey there, preferably with the guidance of a native.

Just this week Linden Lab added the ability for a newcomer to sign up for Second Life and teleport directly to a particular location (bypassing the sometimes stressful Orientation areas). If you are given a link to use (a SLURL) by a resident, your Home in Second Life will automatically be set to that spot rather than a generic Help Island. You can be "in-world" with a friend to help you in 10 minutes.

I would be happy to give anyone a tour of interesting art, education, science, etc. places. Wash U has a small plot on the Islands of Jokaydia (http://www.jokaydia.com). There are four contiguous island sims populated with educators from around the world (contrast that with Princeton's twelve sims).

I advise you not to go to Jokaydia without contacting me to meet you (dorland@wustl.edu), because you will be given only a few instructions on how to move around. But if you are really adventurous and can't wait, fly on!

This is a SLURL to our Wash U plot on Jokaydia III:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jokaydia%20III/38/26/21

If you use the orange sign-up button in the upper right, you will be prompted to choose a name, an initial avatar, and to download the software. After responding to a confirmatory email, all you do is go back to the SLURL page and click "teleport now" to start up the program. Enter your avatar username and your password, and you will land in the middle of our plot (at the coordinates in the SLURL) and just to the west of the Jokaydia Conference Center! Click on Map at the bottom of the window to see where you are relative to the rest of Jokaydia.

if you watch a few tutorials from Torley Linden (www.torley.com) it won't take long to get the basics down. From that point, as with any powerful environment, how much you learn is up you, depending on time, interest, and goals.
You can read about some of the fantastic builds to visit in the "Not Possible in Real Life" blog at http:www.npirl.com.

Many have pointed out that coming to conclusions about SL without personal experience or understanding is like assuming that you can judge the nature and value of any foreign culture as an "outsider" looking in.

Just as with any travel, there are technical difficulties (RL; late and missed connections) and language problems (SL: learning the interface). It takes patience and some tolerance for frustration, but so does learning anything complex.

No one can begin to understand Second Life without getting to know some residents from the many different cultures and with many different goals or reasons for being there. I highly recommend it.

Liz Dorland
Departments of Biology and Chemistry
Washington University in St. Louis
dorland@wustl.edu

Hi Liz and all (and no I'm not making a point of replying to every single post but what you all have been writing is just too exciting to pass on:))

Liz, your comment made me think of one anecdote - and I am sure many will follow this week because it is really the best way to talk about SL to those that may not have experienced it.

I was reminded of Alan Craig's comment when we visited the CAVE at NCSA. He said - referring to the Head-Mounted Display he made us wear to explore the space - he said something like this those academics that say embodiment is not essential to VR never tried the CAVE with one of these".

I thought that he was so right. I might have agreed with those academics but only until Alan made us crouch and dodge low ceilings in the CAVE- there were 4 of us experiencing the CAVE and other than Alan:) the other 3 of us had to stop before falling flat on the floor. And that would have been embarrassing as we were just standing in a room ,in a 3 wall cave (not even the most sophisticated type of CAVEs that can fully surround you).

Now... according to Alan, SL is not really immersive as you are still seeing yourself exploring this space, A little higher in the SL learning curve you can change the 3rd person to a 1st person point of view. However I can just hear Alan say - still... that is not immersion... Any thoughts out there on this?...

My team and I have been working tirelessly to push for innovation in Second Life (and virtual worlds in general) for four years now.

And after all this time it just pains me to hear this sort of sentiment. Because the number one force working against us so far is usually the client.

Every time we are approached by an educational (or any) initiative, the same sequence plays out:

Lead: Can I make a classroom, with seats and desks and a blackboard?

WF: Yes, but that is a waste of the medium. Let's talk about how to use this /new/ medium in /new/ ways for your application.

Lead: Hmm. Ok, I'll get back to you.

This falls on deaf ears, and one or two months later I find they've done just that: Built a replica classroom, complete with back rows for neglected students and every other weakness inherent in the antique "classroom" model. And it does nothing.

And that's fine - but later they lament that the platform itself does nothing.

I'm sorry, but this is a lot like being a radio advertiser around the advent of television - and claiming that TV sucks for radio ads. Why yes - yes it would. Because television is not radio. It is a different medium, with completely new capabilities. To use it effectively, one must get off one's rear and do some actual re-thinking.

I'm really sorry if some of this comes off as harsh. But for years now, myself and a handful of others have been warning that this "replication" model leads nowhere. But new adopters have indulged their own knee-jerk reactions - and been indulged by complacent developers - to the detriment of the technology, themselves and - worst of all - the audience (who are students in this case).

It isn't the usability, or frame rate, or learning curve - motivated users have shown that they are willing to overcome these obstacles in order to use the things they want to. (Have you ever tried to use MySpace? Horrendous.)

Oh and please don't reply saying that users need a "familiar model". That is utter nonsense. They were attracted to the medium for the same reason you first were - it's brand new. They do not need or even want a familiar model - they want something different. Why do you think they came? If you listen to them, you'll hear it from the horse's mouth.

One final word on this: You may as well refer to this as "virtual worlds", because that's really what you're talking about. The verdicts derived from these (even ill conceived) early forays will be applied to *all* platforms. Likewise, the way in which they are being utterly misused is not specific to any platform. Google Lively, Forterra and every other platform will seem just as pointless until people are willing to expend some effort on Actually New Thinking.

I apologize in advance to any one I just ticked off.

Gary Arthur Douglas II

CEO | The Wishfarmers LLC

 

People. Art. Innovation.

While I wholeheartedly agree with Gary's critique of Second Life educational applications that fail to adjust to the novel properties of virtual worlds, I also suspect that most contributors to this list don't simply treat synthetic spaces as exact replicas of their face-to-face classrooms. Is that a correct assumption?

 

Regardless, this post serves as a great challenge for us to think of alternative ways of teaching (in) online worlds. So, do you all have any promising ideas for pedagogical approaches that might be more appropriate to Second Life as a medium? Have any of you worked with students in other Massively Multiplayer Online worlds, such as World of Warcraft? Have any of you collaborated with teachers at other schools or universities, experimenting with cross-institutional online classrooms? If you had the right resources what sort of teaching materials and tools would you want developed? How does the content of what you want to teach relate to the medium of an online world? How does your discipline (we're coming from many different places here) make Second Life an enabling or disenabling environment?

 

These are just some initial questions. But I think that even those of us who have never used Second Life in the classroom might have ideas. This is, after all, a rare opportunity to experiment with thought and practice. Instead of reproducing already-existing models, this discussion forum is a great place to throw around ideas, however flawed, and perhaps reach some unexpected places together. I'm enjoying the conversation so far and there are some great application ideas (e.g., Jim and Ana's discussion about role-playing). But we're also playing it safe. And if I've learned anything from all that hacker-infested cyberpunk literature and techno-fiction I've read, it's that virtual worlds are about anything but safety. :)

 

Patrick Jagoda (Duke University)

Howard,

 

I'm really interested in your observation that some students became bewildered and confused during a class you taught featuring Second Life. 

Last year, I took a Human Information Interaction class at UNC-Chapel Hill, and many students had a similar experience. I shared the feeling, but was also curious about Second Life. My main hang-up was that being in SL for longer than 10 minutes made me feel motion-sick.

Our course included meeting in-world, and then through our laptops in class, we found everyone's avatars on UNC's SL campus. From there we met in smaller groups of avatars. Class requirements were to do a machinima, or movie of a scene in Second Life, and then build a prim as a final project. For lack of a better word, there was a mutiny, and the class requirements were altered so that students could entirely opt out of the Second Life experience.

Second Life was so strange for most people, yet we took very little to no time to discuss the strangeness of the experience. We also tried to have discussions about class readings in Second Life, and the chat format was ineffective, given the time it took for people to type, the difficulty in following multi-person conversation threads, and lag time or crashing -- which happened enough to make the experience feel very disorienting and sometimes absurd.

My classmates were mostly information & library science students, who weren't told in advance that this required course was going to feature Second Life prominently, and I agree that buy-in is a major part of having a successful experience.

Overall, I thought it was a fascinating, if not odd class, but I agree with your comment that Second Life is not for everyone, and it doesn't necessarily improve or even replace other class formats.

But I do wonder if there are other models or iterations of virtual worlds that hold more promise. In situations where it might be too dangerous, too expensive, or downright impossible, I think metaverses hold intriguing promise.

HASTAC/MacArthur's Digital Media & Learning winners - Gamesforchange.org, VirtualPeace.org and RezEd.org are all working, in their own ways, to explore the potential of virtual worlds, and each organization seems to be breaking new ground - either by improving on ways to educate with Second Life, or by creating their own metaverses, as VirtualPeace does.

 

Hi Everybody,

This is a great discussion! Dare I say, as much as I like SL, I think SL will fade out like Pong. I believe that it is a fad that will not take off in most public schools for many reasons. I believe it will take off more in Higher Ed than K-12.

Looking towards the future...

Ana,

I too am very interested in CAVE Technology. I think it holds so much potential for education especially for children with disabilities. I'm very interested in neurocyberkinetics. I believe in the future the arts, medicine, technology, and education will eclipse. With Moore's Law, I believe that typical schools and institutions will sort of implode, so to speak due to external pressures from technological advances. Hence, the greater need for the Humanities to help understand all of this change.

Also, I wonder sometimes about the singularity as Kurzweil predicts.

 

Mechelle

High School Teacher and FSU Art Therapy/Art Ed Grad Student

 

 

 

Hyejin Yang

Hi, all~

I am Hyejin. It is the first time to leave some message on the discussion board. Since the topic was quite interesting to attract my interest, I could not help but participating on the discussion. However, I might more focus on using Second Life for language Let me introduce myself briefly. I am a graduate student who studies ‘Teaching English as a Second Language’ in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Moreover, my academic interests are also Computer assisted language learning (CALL) and Computer mediated Communication CMC).

In fact, in second language learning and teaching, the use of technology gets popular and increased. Besides, I took the CMC course in last semester and I could have chance to use Second Life for language learning and teaching and discuss how to use it for the language classroom. Besides, my colleagues presented ‘Second Life’ in CALICO conference.

Therefore, here I would like to briefly bring out some points about SL.

Advantages of SL for Language learning and teaching

1] The authentic language 

Learners can be exposed to more authentic vocabulary and expressions by interacting in the target language. I have heard that there are different regions in SL where different languages are used such as English, Spanish, Chinese or Japanese. In fact, if the users want to set up the specific language regions, they could build them up in SL in handy.

2] Easy to access

If learners prefer to learn language in more natural environment, SL could be a good place to acquire language. Once they click on the website, it is quite easy to access to the virtual space.

3] Fun to use and learn language

 Even though ‘Educational’ purpose is the most significant features, the learners can be more motivated by using fun task in Second Life. The avatars really look like real human beings and even we can choose the specific appearance, styles, etc. Those various characteristics in SL can also be the strengths for language education.

I think Second Life is still new to most people and I also believe it has lots of potentials to be used especially for educational purpose. However, it also has some limitations.

1] Time conflicts

Since Second Life is used all over the world, the users would confront with time conflicts. In other words, if a student in Asia tries to meet English native speakers in SL, s/he would need to access to SL in the late night to meet them because of time conflicts.

2] Unsuitable regions in SL for Educational purpose

This idea was brought up by my colleagues. Some users in SL try to meet others for dating and it turned out to be true. The expressions and words used in SL might not be unsuitable for language learners.

So far, I put some comments about Second Life for language classrooms in brief. I have just written down some points which come up with mind spontaneously in the library before staring my homework. If you do not understand or have some questions, please email me and put some comments as well. I might access to this forum again and revise or add more points later. I will expect how the discussion goes on.

The link below is a funny video clip of addicted SL users. One professor in UIUC showed to the students during the class before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flkgNn50k14t

 

Hyejin Yang

MATESL in the department of linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

hjyang1112@gmail.com

Actually, Patrick has reminded me to acknowledge the few out there who have actually "responded to the challenge" as he nicely puts it. And it is certainly a challenge - as it should be.

It's sad I'd fail to do so, because they already have it hard enough. Because it may take a little more effort to understand, and may not fit into a 6-word headline or 20-second sound bite. And that makes it harder to get funded and, later, to get any coverage.

And lets face it this is where entertainment and education overlap: If it doesn't get enough attention, it's likely to be called a flop - regardless of whether it improves learning or innovates in any way.

We all make a big hoopla about pushing the envelope, but innovation is scary and no one wants to take the risk - not the foundations, bosses, or media. But you can't have your cake and eat it to - every time we dumb it down, we wash away more of those new opportunities Patrick points out. We shouldn't be surprised later when we find it just as uninspiring and ineffective as the antiquated models we've replicated.

As to the hackers and cyber-people: Those books were fiction, but I get the reference - it is true the medium could use more de-mystifying. ;)

Gary Arthur Douglas II

CEO | The Wishfarmers LLC |

People. Art. Innovation.

Ana, Thank you for initiating this.

Global Kids, where I direct the Online Leadership Program (http://olp.globalkids.org), where, for the past almost three years, we have developed a wide variety of educational initiatives in Second Life. This past February we received one of the grants from HASTAC to produce RezEd,org, the new hub for learning and virtual worlds (just hit 1,000 members last week), which has a wide array of information about virtual worlds for learning but, currently, is primarily made up of Second Life educators.

I thought folks in this discussion would find some of our resources of use;

 

http://RezEd.org - the Hub for learning and virtual worlds - podcasts, best practices, discussions and more.

 

RezEd's best practice collection: http://www.rezed.org/forum/topic/listForCategory?categoryId=2047896%3ACa...

 

RezEd's podcast collection: http://www.rezed.org/page

Global Kids report for MacArthur on:

virtual worlds and learning: http://www.rezed.org/forum/topic/show?id=2047896%3ATopic%3A423

virtual worlds and non-profits: http://www.rezed.org/forum/topic/show?id=2047896%3ATopic%3A323 Here is a link to about 80 or so videos on YouTube from our programs in Second Life, ranging from dance parties with Henry Jenkins, social entrepreneurs projects in a teen jail, a summer science program linking teens across the country with paleontologists in the field in Tanzania, and a high school freshman level science class. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=holymeatballs+secondlife&sea...

I will see if this system lets me embed a few below:

 

At nearly 10,000 views, teen machinima on child soldiers:

I Dig Tanzania:

Mark Kingdon, Linden CEO, on education in SL:

Henry Jenkins/Harry Potter Fandom Dance Party in Second Life:

I am trying to respond to the video - when it asks for my user name and password I enter it and hit the button but nothing happens. Might it not be Mac friendly? Barry

This is just a fantastic forum---I'm so glad it is going both for the affordances of Second Life and other virtual worlds AND for the deep structure of pedagogy. I'm not an SL'er . . . .but I've gone through worlds with others who have build avatars and I've been the one who had all the fun (I guess this is why I'm so empathic toward the "lurkers" who read my blogs but don't comment . . . riding along on the avatar someone else has carefully created and then asking all these questions about "can we do this?" and "can we do that?" is a bit like being a professional lurker). In any case, I agree that building a classroom and listening to a lecture in SL seems like, well, building a classroom building in the real world and listening to a lecture. Some times, if you have an absolutely spellbinding lecturer, it's not bad . . . but there are other ways to communicate, other formats to learn with, and other kinds of pedagogy, some of it face-to-face and some of it not. SL can overcome space---that isn't trivial. It can allow one's imagination to expand to different forms of interaction. If Croquet reaches the next stage, it will do this even more vividly and interactively . . . and I hope we aren't all using it for building classrooms. I really like Mechelle's point about disabled kids and the affordances of virtual environments for those who may have physical limitations but boundless imagination. Exciting potential there. Anyway, thanks for a great conversation. I really enjoyed this and love the image of television makes crappy radio (although one of my fav bands is TV on the Radio . . . "Wolf Like Me" is the song that gets me revv'd when I need one too and sometimes it is useful, in the history of technology, to think cross-technologies to envision exactly what it is that a new technology does well and then what it does not. Thanks for that.)

I recently returned from the second west coast conference on virtual worlds and what was very clear is that there was a dearth of academics, particularly those in the humanities present; and the emphasis on education was minimal. Most of the issues raised by Anaventura were under discussion and all developers and participants in these VW's have similar issues across applications. The lawyers have published numerous tracts on these issues, anthropologists and sociologists have and are currently studying these cultures, not just in Second Life but in the plethora of other VW's that are being used. Interestingly, there is more to virtual life than SL or Croquet (in fact Duke, where the developers of Croquet currently reside, has chosen a different platform for their business school). Interoperability is everyone's concern. The issue of Linden Labs owning SL is an excellent issue of more than a pragmatic nature yet no serious philosopher has addressed this issue (think Plato) but the lawyers have. What is clear, though, from the recent Pew study is that these worlds are, in Christensen's metaphor, a disruptive technology, particularly in the education arena given the number of kids, tweens, teens who inhabit these worlds. Education, particularly post secondary education, as Annaventure so clearly points out is a lagging indicator. Gary hit the nail on the head. Education is evaluating VW's against brick space experiences. The entire pro/con argument is basically a critical analysis carried out by mapping bricks into clicks. It assumes that the brick space institutions are the model for education futures and that regardless of the virtual space development, it must be measured against brick space; and that this latter is a stable, time-tested, educational model into the future. What VW's are is the equivalent to a "new world", and it's influence will be felt by extant brick space institutions forcing them to change. Like railroad unions that refused to get rid of the brakeman in the caboose, those that inhabit the current models will be forced to change. We are seeing this happen and VW's are, perhaps, the iceberg that will sink the Titanic, along with factors such as adjuncts, rising costs, course sharing, institutional consolidation and a host of other factors. the fact that Anaventura cites issues with her "teaching a class" points clearly to the need to step outside conventional models when engaging with the VW's Seeing VW's as a stand alone problem to be defined outside of the larger context is carrying Enlightenment's false hope in the ability to use reductionist scientific analysis. There are many factors facing education in general and post secondary education in particular. VW's are a mirror as well as representing an untapped potential. We just have to stop mapping bricks into clicks in practice as well as in analysis.