Suffern Middle School in Second Life

Edutainment?

THE NET GENERATION COMES OF AGE…

“THE ARGUMENT IS SIMPLE…

…To prepare people for life in an information society, they need to be taught with the technology of an information society.” -Tilfen, 1995

INTRODUCTION:

My latest passion for advancing the use of technology in education is the advocacy of virtual world platforms, specifically Teen Second Life. Second Life has an Adult, (or main grid) and a Teen Grid. Here’s the scoop from Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life:

What is Teen Second Life?

Teen Second Life is an international gathering place for teens 13-17 to make friends and to play, learn and create. In Second Life, teens can create and customize a digital self called an “avatar,” fly through an ever-changing 3D landscape, chat and socialize with other teens from all over the world, and build anything from skyscrapers to virtual vehicles. It’s more than a videogame and much more than an Internet chat program – it’s a boundless world of surprise and adventure that encourages teens to work together and use their imaginations.

Only teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are allowed in (there is a separate version of Second Life for adults) so other than Linden Lab’s staff, Linden Liaisons, who are there to make Teen Second Life a safe and pleasant place to be, teens will interact with other teens their own age. Occasionally we may bring in teachers for special educational projects as well. When that happens we will always let residents know who they are and what type of project they’re working on.

I have posted the following presentation which opened up the possibilities for me and, in the weeks to come, I will be posting pertinent articles and excerpts that support this technology for learning and teaching. My vision is to have a private island on the teen grid that will only be accessible to our students and teachers. On this island the students can demonstrate learning, work in cooperative groups, build their technology skills while the existing curriculum is addressed in a new environment.

Teachers will not necessarily have to learn the skills within the platform (but I bet they will want to once they see it!) Please feel free to email me with any questions or curriculum connections you might have. I am seeing many curriculum uses for this type of platform, and I know you will be able to come up with many more! For starters, after a culture study, think about creating a new culture based upon what you have learned, from the architecture right down to the music and the food! Why not have students create a virtual tour or museum? Make movies and show them in teh theater you design! Think about retelling a book or writing and performing one! Think about geometry and spacial relationships. Think about full value scenarios being played out in a non-threatening environment. How about career building or economics? The list is infinite as is the potential. In the following weeks, I will be addressing specific aspects of games and education, the Net Geners learning preferences, and I will delve more deeply into the educational possibilities of this virtual platform. In the mean time, why not go and explore for yourself? Go to www.secondlife.com and get a free membership. Use my Second Life avatar name, Maggie Marat, as your referral and once you are in world and I will take you on a tour!

Second Life: The Educational Possibilities of a Massively Multiplayer Virtual World (MMVW)

David M. Antonacci and Nellie Modaress

Kansas Technology Leadership Conference, December 7, 2005 (Topeka, Kansas)

“Today we are looking at the educational possibilities of Massively Multiplayer Virtual Worlds (MMVW). We’ll look specifically at Second Life, a MMVW created by each user and simultaneously played by hundreds of people around the world. I’ll start by briefly examining educational games in general, and then focus on Second Life, explaining and demonstrating some of its technical capabilities and how it can be used for teaching and learning.

My goals are to increase your awareness of current developments in computer games and simulations and to help you begin considering the educational possibilities of these emerging technologies, But most importantly, I want to encourage you explore virtual worlds, like Second Life, so you will be prepared to teach with this technology as it continues to mature.

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING

The EDUCAUSE National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) is focused on learning transformation within higher education through the strategic use of information technology. The NLII has identified games and simulations as an emerging key theme affecting teaching and learning.

“Virtually all students have had experience with games. Games represent active, immersive learning environments where users integrate information to solve a problem. Learning in this manner incorporates discovery, analysis, interpretation, and performance as well as physical and mental activity. An increasing number of colleges and universities are exploring the use of games to enhance learning. The NLII’s interest in games and simulations is to gain a fresh view of cognition and learning by looking at games as the intersection of play, pedagogy, and technology.” (http://www.educause.edu/Games/1008)

CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING

As the NLII statement highlights, you cannot be passive in a game or simulation. Students engaged in educational games and simulations are interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. This approach to learning is much more consistent with constructivist learning, where knowledge is constructed by the learners as they are actively problem solving in an authentic context, than with traditional instruction. And, we will use a constructivist perspective as we examine the educational possibilities of virtual worlds.

From: Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L., & Wilson, B. G. (1999). Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.

3. Highly Social Experiences

In constructivist learning, collaboration is important, as knowledge is socially constructed. One common misconception of gaming is a lone player, secluded in front of his or her computer. This is not the reality with modern computer games. Most games have a community of players who interact socially to discuss strategies, share experiences, and provide encouragement via websites, discussion boards, blogs, and wikis. Involvement in these gaming communities, sometimes called meta-gaming, can greatly improve a player’s game performance and enjoyment.

Multiplayer games provide additional social experience within the game itself. In multiplayer games, several people can play the game at the same time using networking and Internet technologies. You can play the game with others, against others, or both. With massively multiplayer games, hundreds or even thousands of people can be playing at the same time.

This significantly changes the nature of a computer game. You are no longer playing in an a priori world, constrained and biased by the game developer. The actions of other people make the game open-ended and add complexity and unpredictability.

Several massively multiplayer games have evolved to provide even more user interaction and influence. In Second Life, users can create their own world. They can create complex objects, such as a house or motorcycle, by combining simpler objects, such as a cube or sphere—called primitives or prims.

Additionally, objects can be programmed for action using a scripting language, with more than 200 commands. In Second Life, the door on your house can open when you touch it, and you can sit on and race the motorcycle you designed and built.

Second Life goes beyond a game, where players make moves and receive outcomes. It is a virtual world, created by and inhabited by its users.

Demonstration of Changing Avatar Appearance

Given that background, let’s turn our attention to Second Life. In many virtual games, your avatar is your physical representation in the game world. And, your avatar can be customized to look as you would like him, her, or it to look.

(This demonstration shows how the physical attributes of an avatar, such as hair length or color, can be changed. Also, it shows how the avatar’s clothing can be customized with clothing created by the user or purchased from other users.)

Demonstration of Movement

Your avatar can move around in Second Life. You can walk using the keyboard arrow keys: forward, backward, left, and right. You also can fly, which is faster than walking. And, to quickly get to distant locations, events, and people, you can directly teleport, just like on Star Trek.

What might your students with physical disabilities do in Second Life, which would be difficult or impossible for them to do in real life? What would they learn about themselves and others if they could interact in a world where no one looked down on them because they were in a wheelchair and no one assumed they were mentally handicapped because they had physical challenges?

Visioning Mechanism

Although we could continue to show you many interesting technical capabilities of Second Life, we are primarily interested in teaching and learning using these virtual worlds. To assist you with this, we developed a framework for organizing these possibilities, which you can use to identify learning activities in your content area and connect those activities to potential applications of virtual worlds.

Basically, both Second Life and real life consist of people and objects, and these two things can interact in three possible combinations: person-person, person-object, and object-object. A lot of what we teach can be categorized into these combinations.

Person-Person Interaction Demonstration: Patient Exam Role-Play

For example, doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals often interact with patients, and students in these professions need practice applying patient-encounter strategies. Role-playing is a common learning activity for this.

To demonstrate how Second Life can be used for role playing, we’ve created our own Second Life medical clinic. Although this demonstration could be used in a number of ways, such as to illustrate effective strategies, we will be presenting it as a role-play scenario, where each student takes the part of the doctor, nurse, patient, or patient spouse. With this approach, students can see patient encounters from different perspectives, which would be difficult or impossible to do in real life. After the role play, students would discuss and reflect on their experience and its application to future patient encounters. Let’s watch…

(In this demonstration, please note the use of chat for communication, animations for gestures, medical clothing and equipment for a realistic setting, and wound texture applied to the patient’s leg. Also, note that the actors during this demonstration were located in England, Holland, Seattle, and Kansas City, but they were all virtually present in the clinic exam room.)

In addition to medical education, many other fields require person-person interaction and would have similar educational applications for Second Life. In your field, do you teach students how to interact with other people? Would your students learn anything if they designed, built, and inhabited a medieval village?

Person-Object Demonstration: Making a Park

People also learn how to interact with objects, which includes designing and building objects. We teach people how to operate a piece of equipment or use an instrument. We teach people how to build homes, make jewelry, and create sculpture. Second Life can provide a virtual world where your students can apply concepts and principles, providing a realistic problem context.

In this demonstration, our student is given the problem of designing and building a park on donated land. To solve this problem, she must apply course content from her urban planning class. After creating her park, she can describe what she did and explain her reasoning behind her decisions. The instructor and other students can walk through her park, evaluating it and offering suggestions for improvements.

(In this demonstration, our student creates a sidewalk from a thin rectangular prim with a concrete or brick texture. Then, adds a bench, tree, and flowers from her inventory. Finally, she sits on the bench.)

Does anyone here teach courses where your students design and build things, such as engineering, architecture, interior design, fashion, art, etc? If so, you might be able to use a virtual world to present a problem scenario and then have your students create their virtual solutions.

Additionally, Second Life has an internal economy, which may provide an opportunity for your business students to run a real business, selling products or services to real people, not to a hard-coded computer simulation. Several radio stations exist in Second Life as well, possibly offering real radio broadcasting and programming experience to your students.

Object-Object Demonstration: Orbiting Satellite

People learn how objects interact with other objects. For example, we teach students how mountains are formed when two tectonic plates collide, how hazardous chemicals get into our water supply, and how a car is built in an assembly line.

You can use Second Life to illustrate and explain physical and procedural processes. By creating objects and scripting them to interact with each other, you can simulate many processes. You also could have your students interact with your simulated process, changing variables and observing the results, to better understand the relationships among the objects. Or better yet, have your students use Second Life to create the simulation themselves.

(In this demonstration, note how satellite orbiting can be demonstrated and explained. With a more complex simulation, the velocity of the satellite projectile could be changed, so the satellite crashes into the planet or escapes from its gravitational field. Also, note how lighting in Second Life provides us with an opportunity to better understand lunar phases.)

While virtual worlds have many possibilities for teaching and learning, these possibilities can be organized into three activities often taught in our courses: person-person, person-object, and object-object interactions. Once you identify a course topic falling into one of these interaction combinations, you may have a topic which could be taught using a virtual world.

Sources: Posted with the gracious permission of

David M. Antonacci and Nellie Modaress

http://www2.kumc.edu/netlearning/SLEDUCAUSESW2005/SLPresentationOutline.htm

Second Life for Education

MMORPG

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

Monday, March 13, 2006