continuing thoughts on virtual worlds and education

I made it my goal today to create three assessment rubrics and although it took a ridiculous amount of time I actually managed. Being ahead of myself is a good thing because it allows me to pretend like I have permission to do things other than addressing the massive pile of other things not listed in this morning's to-do list that still need to get done. That being said, I move on to the topic of this post: virtual worlds. I've been thinking a lot more about 'the virtual' because the pace at which things are changing and the extent to which the virtual is being introduced in educational contexts is moving at an increasing pace. I feel like I'm behind and all of this is my attempt to catch up, so to speak.

Anyway, here are some more things I've discovered that have been adding to my thoughts:


Read here what Whyville.net has to say to teachers: http://b.whyville.net/smmk/top/whyville_for_teachers

They make some great points and I would be telling a lie if I said I'm not curious of the potential for this as a learning tool in the classroom. If anyone has used it or knows more about it than the promotional stuff then by all means, do tell. This statement from the above link (accessed 20th Sept. 2006) suggests possibilities: "We launched Whyville as a virtual city, which engages young people in constructive educational activities while promoting socially responsible behavior. It is an outgrowth of the company's extensive research and practical experience related to learner-centered, hands-on, inquiry-based education".

Obviously, if this is designed to deal with "art history, science, journalism, civics, economics, and really so, so much more" from a US perspective then it does much less for students in an Australian context (unless of course they are analysing the whole thing as a "text" from a critical perspective). Our own version is this and it is conceptually quite different:

Kahootz is claimed to be more of a set of 3D multimedia tools. Quite different indeed.

Moving on, as I work through my thoughts on using "the virtual" for educational purposes, here are the sources I'm consulting:

I begin by referring you to this Second Life Education Wiki.
I'm in the midst of working through it as I think about the above. What is the place of all of this within what we do?

www.seriousgamessummit.com is going to be happening in Washington, DC, on Oct 30-31 2006 which should be quite interesting indeed. A few highlights for me are the participation of Blackboard Inc. (maybe an LMS system with virtual worlds isn't too far away after all), Duke University, Rice University and Teachers College, Columbia University (which I almost enrolled in to get my masters a while back). Amongst the list are also Price Waterhouse Coopers, Shell Global Solutions and you get the idea. Games, as the title of this summit suggests are serious (business?). I was excited to hear that Henry Jenkins is giving the keynote (even though I'm sad I won't be there to hear it). His keynote will be based on his new book which is about how all of this stuff is a meeting point for certain groups and their interests which have never met (collaborated) before.

Here's something else you can read about the summit and Linden Labs: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060320/carless_01.shtml

For those of you that are reading this that happen to be my students from the Wednesday and Friday Curriculum and Assessment workshops dealing with the concept of space, consider this quite closely:

'The popular online gaming magazine Gamasutra has an article on a keynote for the Serious Games Summit, which deals with game development in the areas of education, government, health, military, science, and corporate training. In it, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale, in a talk named 'You Can (Not) Be Serious' offered some fascinating opinions, both on the future of virtual worlds and the way in which his own company's efforts are helping to stretch boundaries. Interesting comment on the value of VR as interface to information: "if you were trying to recall the latest three files accessed in your 'My Documents' directory, you probably can't remember them, but you can remember a list of the items in your kitchen, most likely. This is because you've been building a space in your mind three dimensionally, and storing information in it"'. (http://futuretag.net/index.php/Slgp1, Accessed 20th September 2006)

If you're thinking about making money from all this then you might want to read the Wired article from way back in early February 2006 called "Making a Living in Second Life": http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70153-0.html

Ali Andrews Virtual Environments for Online Education... blog:
http://aliandrews.blogspot.com/

If you're actually a user of secondlife then you might consider the following "Top 20 Educational Locations in Second Life":
http://simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Top_20_Educational_Locations_in_Second_Life