Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
I was part of a panel in Second Life on Monday, and what struck me was how it took place in a virtual lecture hall, and one by one, we all went up to the podium, showed some slides, and lectured to an audience of avatars seated in virtual chairs. We know how to bore you in a classroom, and now we know how to bore you online. I agree with this post by Matt Rhodes that "Second Life isn't the future of life online." It is a land of early adopters who love the technology, but are mostly using it as an analogue of what they would do in Real Life. Matt points to a company called RocketOn that "turns the entire web into a virtual world where your avatar travels with you." Perhaps we are starting to break the mold of old approaches using the newest technologies. Bertrand Russell said that "people like to die by the latest method." He could have been talking about Second Life. -GW Matt Rhodes, Business and Games: the Blog, July 2, 2008. [Link] [Tags: Second Life] [Previous][Next]
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Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
The experiences you describe of "boring" replication are not a function of the potential of Second Life, but what people so far have used it for, much the same way people can blame powerpoint software for bad presentations. Its like blaming the technology of the circuitry in my television for the crappy shows on the screen.
Its easy to take potshots at Second Life -- the post by Matt Rose is based on a lot of data? supposition like "I think..."
Our organization has run 4 conferences in Second Life (ones people paid to attend) where the sessions were most certainly not sitting and screen watching, but where we had role play, active learning, content creation, 3D demonstrations, even out of control mashup dancing.
People are behind it all. [Comment]
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Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
The Dr Esperanza Roman-Mendoza (http://elearningxxi.blogspot.com/) and myself have established Connectivitas, a working group to study the impact of Connectivism on the culture of countries or Spanish-speaking communities. We are using and testing different platforms 2.0. We are also creating a site in Second Life to test new methodologies for learning.
The project is open to all and would be an honor to be able to count also with you.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pNOkyks9LHuYx79XdoXFGZg&inv=md.capdet @ gmail.com
Sincerely,
Dolores Capdet
http://dolorscapdet.blogspot.com/ [Comment]
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Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
I completely agree with Alan and you can reference the conversation on the SLED list re "horseless carriage syndrome" too. SL is a platform for creativity in education, including giving students the lead if you so choose. If you want to recreate page-turning, well, that's possible too.
And, dear me, we're supposed to get excited about RocketOn in closed alpha. What about weblins, ExitReality, YooWalk, etc? My excitement quota is running low already. Sheesh. [Comment]
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Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
So, let me see - you attend a panel where they choose to replicate something from real life and that constitutes a fault with the platform?
Have you visited, for example, Dante's Inferno in Second Life. I'd love to see you replicate the travel, the lakes of boiling blood, the burning sands and the like in a real life classroom. Does it work to teach the class? Absolutely, it empowers students to see the parallels between Inferno and Linden Hills in very strong terms.
I'm guessing since you've got an .ca domain you don't have a plethora of old abbeys, castles and the like, perhaps you should try visiting Tintern Abbey in SL - far cheaper for you than heading over to the real one.
If science is more your thing, perhaps a visit to Second Nature to see molecules big enough to climb on, or Drexel where you can see the molecules reforming as the reaction progresses, you can do this on a huge scale and co-operatively - things you can do IRL if you have a lot of time, money and specialist software or you can do in SL with a bit of co-operation between two professors who might never have met without Second Life to facilitate it.
If you'd rather life sciences, go visit Genome. Parts of it function rather like a museum, but the pooping llamas leave an impression, as does the giant cell, and the ability to rapidly replicate years of Mendel's work in a way that is far more engaging than any web-based simulation I've ever seen are all strong positives for the platform.
Second Life can replicate real life if you don't have the imagination to use it in other ways. It can do a million other things too, many of them things that time, money, travel, health and safety and other issues will just stop you doing in any real life classroom. [Comment]
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Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
I think that we are making the mistake of thinking that Virtual Worlds are something new when they are not. The enabling technologies may be new-ish but the underlying principles are much older and actually quite well understood. The trick is to look for these principles under their former name, simulation.
Why do we simulate reality? With simulation we can do things like telescope time and overcome a host of obstacles that would be show stoppers in reality.
My first use of simulation as a teaching device was in connection with Jerome Bruner's Man - A Course of Study project in the 60s. We used cardboard and 16mm single concept film loops. There were no computers.
The other connection is with gaming which can also be looked at as a form of simulation that humans have engaged in in since the beginning of time using even more primitive materials -- sometimes just imagination itself.
So meet the new stuff, just like the old stuff. VR is just a new tactic in an age old strategy. Let's retrace our scholarship on simulation and see how it may apply in cyberspace as it has for so long applied in real space. [Comment]
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Re: Proving the Potential of Virtual Worlds
I'm one of the many SL users who find that FL causes glitches in the RL.
Perhaps thats what keeps me logged out of anything in SL that waves the educational moniker. Rows. Seats. Keynote speakers.Handouts.
And yet, as CogDog suggests it's perhaps that you've missed some important meetings which have explored the Architectures for Participation - http://flickr.com/photos/mobology/sets/72157603378974547/
What fascinates me is the continuance of rhetoric that posits SL as separate to RL.....one and the same in my state of mind.
Have we been successful in bridging the divide and will our actions and inactions serve the generations (of machines) to come ? It's the humanization and the semiotic of digitization that are most at stake here.
Luckily, most of the educational organizations I contract to negate it's existence so for many the realm of avatarian self will be no more than a bad comic sitting on the plane seat next to them.
In memory of Matt Rhodes.
ps. Limitlessness Infinity
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