voyeurism

advancing the debate: virtual environments and fictive worlds

it's 5:30 am as i write this, so please pardon me if i sound incoherent.

it's just that i woke up with the following thoughts burning in my head and i want to get them down.

educators who have spent some time thinking about (and talking about) virtual worlds with stakeholders who are less au fait with what they are, face the problem of being pooh-poohed.

this happens for two main reasons, and both are equally important, so the order of precedence in which i present them here is no indicator of the weight i place on them.

first, people who are not familiar with virtual environments / epistemic games / virtual worlds, are unable (from a cognitive and affective perspective) to vicariously appreciate and understand just how powerful the affordances of some of the better environments / games / worlds are for learning, precisely because these affordances leverage upon the learners' projective identity in the game (Gee, 2007).

in other words, the very reason why well-designed virtual enviornments / epistemic games / virtual words are so effective in learning, works against helping those not familiar with them, come to an understanding of this reason.

(in simple English, you can't understand until you play; when you play, then you will understand. you can't understand by not playing (ie, you can't understand by just observing or talking about it in abstract terms)

the second reason why it is difficult for educators who 'get' such environments / games / worlds to explain them to those who only have a casual interest in them, is because of the connotations associated with the word that is most often used to describe them, namely, the word 'virtual'.

you don't have to be a rocket-scientist to guess the reception one gets when the word 'virtual' is used in what is purportedly a serious discussion.

...

:-)

so, where does that leave the educator who wants to help others understand?

although there is an argument to be made for simplifying language, i think - in this case - what we should try to achieve is a more concise terminology, so i would like to suggest we consider using the term 'fictive world' instead of 'virtual world'.

first up, i would like to make the distinction between 'virtual environment' and (the commonly-used term) 'virtual world' (assuming we understand that 'environments' and 'worlds' sometimes do (and sometimes do not) possess game-like qualities). for the purposes of this blog post at least, i see a 'virtual world' as being different and distinct from a 'virtual environment' in that a 'world' has a culture(s), a backstory, and an economy. thus, for example, World of Warcraft and Second Life are virtual worlds (note, one is a game, while the other is not), whereas Project Wonderland is not a virtual world, being instead a virtual environment.

having got that out of the way, i would like to make a case for using 'fictive world' in lieu of 'virtual world'. i believe the word 'fictive' - despite being familiar to an even smaller proportion of people than the term 'virtual world' - can, with due diligence on our part, help our cause in the medium- to long-term.

'fictive' is different from 'virtual', in that while 'virtual' is juxtaposed with 'real' (and we all know that in order for a stakeholder to buy in to any proposed educational initiative, the learning processes and outcomes must be REAL), 'fictive' on the other hand, does not have as clear an opposite number. the opposite of 'fictive' is not 'factual'. 'factual' is the opposite of 'fictional'. but i am not here talking about 'fictional', i am talking about 'fictive'. 'fictive' is different from either 'virtual' or 'fictional' in that 'fictive' foregrounds much more explicitly an active, constructive, role played by the protagonist (in this case, the learner). yes, 'fictive' carries with it all the helpful baggage of co-construction, socially distributed cognition and social constructivism. 'virtual' decidedly does not.

'virtual' does not, because the word describes a state; contrast this with 'fictive', which describes an ongoing-series of deliberate actions.

now, presuming i haven't yet lost you, if you can see the merit in my case for the term 'fictive world', why don't i go the whole hog and propose the term 'fictive environment', instead of 'virtual environment'? i don't, because - by the terms of distinction that i outlined earlier between a 'world' and an 'environment', the term 'virtual environment' is actually more accurate to describe what we commonly have in mind, than 'fictive environment'. you see, i think of a virtual environment as a (3D?) collaborative space - a space which i instantiate and / or enter when i want to do something with, or engage with, others who are not necessarily co-located. it doesn't matter to me (as the hypothetical example of a 'typical' user of such spaces) whether the space is ad hoc, or persistent (persistence, on the other hand, is a necessary (but not sufficient) attribute of a 'world'). thus, because of this potential ad hoc nature of such environments (when used in learning), they are more accurately described as 'virtual environments' (called up on-demand) rather than 'fictive environments' (in which persistence matters).

persistence is an inherent part of fictive worlds because the word 'fictive' implies a narrative, or - more precisely and powerfully - the co-construction of many narratives (Bakhtin's heteroglossia).

the final point that i would like to make in this post is that by making the distinction between 'virtual environments' and 'fictive worlds', we may perhaps have a clearer understanding of the affordances and disaffordances (for learning) between the two. 'virtual environments' are good as meeting spaces, and for the simulation of training activities. 'fictive worlds' - if you have closely followed my argument thus far - are great when the learning processes and goals foreground extensive and authentic social collaboration and co- (and re-) construction (beyond just 'getting the job done').

thank you for reading this far :-)

Technorati Tags: avatar, behaviourism, cognition, constructivism, education, games, learning, Second Life, TLLM

Co-presence + Dimensionality = Identity-formation

I’ve been talking about the pedagogical affordances of Second Life to fellow educators for two years now, and I’ve had the time and opportunity to refine what I say and how I say it. There are certain concerns that educators generally tend to have about virtual environments and virtual worlds, and in my experience I’ve found it prudent to address these upfront and at the beginning of each talk. One of the things I always include in this section of such talks would be that operating in Second Life takes a lot of self-discipline, and a close eye has to be kept (either by the learner, and / or on behalf of the learner) on the amount of time spent in-world.

[update: i would like to extend a very warm welcome to all visitors who have been directed here by Hamlet Au's very kind mention on 15 May, in New World Notes :-) ]

I have put the way that Second Life can potentially be a time-sink, to the fact that it is not easy to multi-task while in-world. That is to say, people at their computers – but not in virtual worlds – can multi-task fairly easily – we’ve all seen adolescents juggle multiple IM conversations while simultaneously browsing the web and updating their MySpace page. But once you enter a virtual world such as Second Life or World of Warcraft, it has been my argument that such multi-tasking activity, and ability, is somewhat reduced, and it’s not just because the virtual world looks nicest when run in full-screen mode.

No, it’s because the virtual world is persistent – that is, it continues to change and evolve even when the resident / the learner / the player, isn’t paying direct attention to it, or to the activities of his or her avatar. This persistence makes it very difficult to want to multi-task, even though the ability to – strictly speaking – has been only slightly diminished.

So far, this argument has been easy to understand and has contented my audiences, and has contented me. But today I had a further insight, and I would like to share it with you.

Important though persistence is, in considerations of designing learning environments around new media, it does not help much to explain why well-designed interventions within virtual worlds can result in deep and meaningful learning.

I would argue that virtual worlds are such potentially powerful learning environments because they help shape and form identities.

Before I proceed, I would like to flag two things to note. First, I make the distinction between virtual worlds, and virtual environments. I see the latter as being different from virtual worlds in that they do not have significant histories (backstories), cultures nor economies. Thus, for example, Warcraft, Second Life, and EVE Online can all be contrasted against, say, Sun’s Wonderland Project. Wonderland may be very good for certain things, but it is being designed less to be a virtual world and much more to be a collaborative space. Second, when I said earlier that virtual worlds shape identities, I take ‘identities’ to refer to the entire spectrum of possible projective identities, ranging from those closely akin to the learner’s own identity in Real Life, to more fantastical identities that he or she may choose to adopt.

Identity formation through virtual worlds is critical to anyone with an interest in education, because identity works through embodiment to result in deep learning, as Gee and others have noted.

Note that I specifically said “identity formation through virtual worlds”. I would argue that embodiment alone may not necessarily result in deep learning; this is why some 3D games with an educational focus may not necessarily result in the enaction of lasting change. The learners (in this case, the players) need deeper emotional investments in the characters, and it is my argument that such investments are made as identities develop over time.

Generally, the virtual worlds industry realizes this, and that is why there are ongoing efforts to investigate the possibility of identity-portability across various virtual worlds. However, true to historical precedent, I fear that the education industry is slower on the uptake.

What is it about virtual worlds, then, that builds identity? I would argue that there are two necessary contributors, namely co-presence and dimensionality. By co-presence I refer to the ability to know that others are online within the same ‘space’ (loosely defined) as one presently is, and by dimensionality I refer to ‘spaces’ which have an explicit (depiction of the) third-dimension (as opposed to webpages or IM windows).

Co-presence alone does not help a great deal in identity-shaping. To a large extent, the roots of online co-presence date back to the roots of the internet, and its lineage can be traced through IRC and IM. Despite this long history, there has not been much reporting of how such technologies have been effectively used in education and learning with respect to the formation of identities. This could be due to the afore-mentioned characteristic that an operator’s involvement in such technological clients can be potentially fleeting, not least because of the ease of multi-tasking which these clients afford.

More recently, the Weblin service has enabled people browsing the web to actually see who else might be concurrently browsing the same site. This is definitely co-presence transposed to the web, but this is still more a social tool and does not purport to be one which shapes identities.

Likewise, dimensionality alone does not help a great deal in identity-shaping. Contrived though this scenario might be, the person behind a lone avatar operating intermittently in an isolated region in Second Life would struggle to understand what others in general – and educators in particular – find so compelling about Second Life as a learning environment (as an aside – the scenario isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem, as it does describe the activity of some people (educators included) who just come in-world to dip their toes in the water).

So, neither co-presence alone, nor dimensionality alone, would result in the shaping of identity. It is when – as so many educators have already discovered for themselves (and never vicariously) – the two come together, in a virtual world such as Second Life or Warcraft – that the ‘magic’ happens. The magic happens because the learner is not only aware that he or she is not alone in the neighbourhood (co-presence), but is also able to see – and therefore react to – what others are doing around him or her (dimensionality).

It is through these actions, reactions and responses to others in a concurrent, timely manner that identities are rapidly shaped, with consequent implications to the meaningfulness of the learning activity.

[update: 13 May: have a look at Hamlet Au's take on the new Blerp web-service]

Technorati Tags: avatar, cognition, constructivism, education, games, learning, place, Second Life, TLLM, ubuntu, Web 2.0

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Pedagogy, Education and Innovation in 3-D Virtual Worlds

the one-hundred-and-seventieth episode of ventriloquy introduces a special issue of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, which has as its theme 'Pedagogy, Education and Innovation in 3-D Virtual Worlds'.

this issue has been co-edited with my friends and fellow educators - Leslie Jarmon and B Stephen Carpenter II. it features a think-piece contributed by Professor James P Gee, entitled 'Games, Learning and 21st Century Survival Skills'.

please do join me in this 1.7 MB download, as i invite you to peruse the issue for yourself. for your convenience, the issue is available as a 10 MB PDF, and as a Calameo document below.

if you'd like to just download the papers individually, you can do so from the listing of the issues contents:

- Introduction
- Gee, Games, Learning and 21st Century Survival Skills
- Taylor, Can We Move Beyond Visual Metaphors? Virtual World Provocations and Second Life
- O'Connell, Grantham, Workman, Wong, Leveraging Game-playing Skills, Expectations and Behaviours of Digital Natives to Improve Visual Analytic Tools
- Jarmon, An Ecology of Embodied Interaction: Pedagogy and homo virtualis
- Stephen Carpenter, Virtual Worlds as Educational Experience: Living and Learning in Interesting Times
- Lim, The Six Learnings of Second Life: A Framework for Designing Curricular Interventions In-world
- Campbell, Learning in a Different Life: Pre-service Education Students Using an Online Virtual World
- Chodos, Naeimi, Stroulia, An Integrated Framework for Simulation-based Training on Video in a Virtual World
- Esteves, Fonseca, Morgado, Martins, Using Second Life for Problem Based Learning in Computer Science Programming
- Gerstein, Beyond the Game: Quest Atlantis as an Online Learning Experience for Gifted Elementary Students
- Herold, Virtual Education: Teaching Media Studies in Second Life
- Hudson, Degast-Kennedy, Canadian Border Simulation at Loyalist College
- Lee, Using Second Life to Teach Operations Management
- Mon, Questions and Answers in a Virtual World: Educators and Librarians as Information Providers in Second Life
- Pereira, Martins, Morgado, Fonseca, A Virtual Environment Study in Entrepreneurship Education of Young Children
- dos Santos, Second Life Physics: Virtual, Real or Surreal?
- Schwartz, Second Life and Classical Music Education: Developing Iconography that Encourages Human Interaction
- Walker, 3D Virtual Learning in Counselor Education: Using Second Life in Counselor Skill Development
- Zielke, Roome, Krueger, A Composite Adult Learning Model for Virtual World Residents with Disabilities: A Case Study of the Virtual Ability Second Life Island
- Lang, Kobilnyk, Visualising Atomic Orbitals Using Second Life
- Roush, Nie, Wheeler, Between Snapshots and Avatars: Using Visual Methodologies for Fieldwork in Second Life
- Lopes, Pires, Cardoso, Santos, Peixinho, Sequeira, Morgado, Paredes, Camerino, Use of a Virtual World System in Sports Coach Education for Reproducing Team Handball Movements

Technorati Tags: assessment, avatar, cognition, constructivism, education, games, JVWR, learning, media, multiliteracies, podcast, Second Life, semiotics, Singapore, Six Learnings, TLLM, VWBPE2009, Web 2.0

what's wrong with this picture?

the one hundred and sixty-eighth episode of ventriloquy presents a critique of two recent explorations into the educational affordances of New Media, from either side of the Atlantic.

from 3D glasses to Facebook, from social constructivism to anatomy - it's all in this 2 MB download :-)

Additional reading:
- William Stewart's 16 January 2009 entry ('Settle down avatars; classes are under way') TES Connect
- 4 February 2009 video (Children taught in Second Life) BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat
- Michael Blanding's article (Thanks for the add. Now help me with my homework.) Ed Vol 52, No 2

Technorati Tags: education, learning, podcast, Second Life, Singapore, Web 2.0

Study Trip on IDM and Informal Learning Environments - the podcast and video

the one hundred and sixty-second episode of ventriloquy brings you my main learning points from the recent Study Trip to America :-)

in this 71.7 MB download, i bring you video footage of large mammalian fauna which i took while in California.

in addition, the YouTube video below is a Google Earth fly-through of the hotels we stayed at, and the sites we visited. to learn more about each site, please refer to this map :-)

Additional reading:
- Creative Class®

Technorati Tags: education, games, geography, learning, maps, navigation, podcast, Singapore

Study Trip on IDM and Informal Learning Environments - the map

long overdue, i know, but better late than never :-)

here's the map of the places we stayed at, and visited, during our Study Trip :-)

View Larger Map

Technorati Tags: education, games, geography, learning, maps, navigation

Study Trip on IDM and Informal Learning Environments - Day Four (Project New Media Literacies)

today was the fourth day of our study trip to America.

i was tasked to be the note-taker for the second half of the day, so here are my preliminary notes :-)

we visited Erin Reilly at Project New Media Literacies (Project NML).

Erin is the Research Director at Project NML, and we were joined by Kelly Leahy (Project Manager), Anna van Someren (Creative Manager), Katie Clinton (Content Analyst) and Jenna McWilliams (Curriculum Specialist).

the team is presently transitioning from the foundational planning phase of the interventions to the implementation phase, with an aim to making tools available to the wider educational fraternity in the first half of 2009.

using their White Paper (Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century) as an organisational framework, the team that hosted us represented each of the three main tools that they are presently developing.

after a brief introduction to the characteristics of participatory culture, an outline of three core problems / research questions, and an overview of core social skills and cultural competencies (including visualisation) associated with NML (which you can read from the White Paper), Anna took us through the first of these tools - the Learning Library. more than just a repository of learning materials online, a major goal of the Library is to support children in their co-construction of their own learning through exemplars, exercises, expressions (which are jointly created and shared) and engagement in ethical debates.

Anna gave an example of how this could be done, using the theme of Creative Commons ("Standing on the Shoulders of Giants"). for that particular module, the NML skill was 'appropriation', learners would then be taken through a video-based exemplar, be presented with exercises through which the skill could be explained and practised, and finally be presented with opportunities to express their understandings of the skill ("Your Turn"), during which ethical issues could be surfaced and discussed.

Jenna then talked about the Ethics Casebook. she briefly mentioned one example - "the Meaning of Bling", which encourages learners to think about the evolution of signs, signifiers and symbols, and how these are used in social networking.

the discussion then moved to how NML skills might be learned through classroom projects. Examples were the Teacher's Strategy Guide: Reading in a Participatory Culture, Weaving the Thread (social mapping; social studies and mathematics), and Civic Engagement (history and civics education).

Katie talked a bit more on her work on the Strategy Guide. using the example of Ricardo Pitts-Wiley's theatre adaptation of Moby Dick, she talked about how traditional literary terms (such as 'allusion') might be used as a foot-in-the-door to help teachers (during, say, a two-day workshop) navigate between the familiar and less familiar (the latter being the relevance of NML to traditional subject domains).

this latter discussion of the Strategy Guide helped us consolidate our learning points from this visit. speaking personally, it helped remind me of how fundamental literacies (such as print literacies) are being redistributed across the much more expansive curriculum defined by the NML landscape.

Technorati Tags: education, games, learning

Study Trip on IDM and Informal Learning Environments - Day One (Institute of Play)

today was the first day of our study trip to America.

i was tasked to be the note-taker for the first half of the day, so here are my preliminary notes :-)

we visited Katie Salen and Robert Torres at the Institute of Play.

we began by being given the context that large high schools in the New York districts were re-organised and re-constituted since 2003 as approximately 150 smaller schools, operating independently of each other, but within the respective original sites and infrastructure. in some cases, these sites had been so large that they were able to support five or six smaller schools within them.

on our part, we shared a brief history of educational reform in Singapore, thereby contextualising the recent Third Masterplan for ICT in Education.

from this introduction, both parties had a better appreciation of the areas of commonality between the issues faced by teachers in Singapore and America - these include high-stakes assessment and a (still) heavy curricular workload.

this enabled us to have a short discussion on the nature of assessment in informal learning contexts, such as those typified by the new media space. Katie and Robert shared how - in GameStar Mechanic - assessment was embedded within gameplay itself. such designs had been informed by the theoretical positions of people such as Barbara Rogoff and Jim Gee, with their calls to move away from standardised tests, and towards understandings of assessment through investigating the creative outputs and dispositions as afforded by the deep involvement and immersive contexts that characterise much of new media.

this led quite naturally to a discussion of the conversations between curriculum developers and game designers (i have elaborated on this in my paper on the Six Learnings framework). we agreed that one of the challenges facing these two parties was to engage each other on an equal footing, and thereby move towards designing, investigating and understanding assessment in a game-like way. this might take the form of earning certifications within the learner's trajectory through the curricular unit, as well as without (say, through ways outside of the formal bounds of curricular time and space). such certifications might then be part of a learner's individual portfolio. the rigour of such certifications would likely be in place because of the high standards of self-governance that emergent online communities typically hold themselves to.

in this way, the school would be reconceptualised from the centre of the learner's universe, to but one of the spaces in that universe.

Katie and Robert suggested some ways to structure such a curriculum for learning in a game-like way. instead of the vertical silos of traditional subject domains, one might look in terms of broad themes such as 'systems', 'the way things work', and 'codeworlds'. indeed, systems thinking might be postulated as one key with which to unlock 21st century literacies. as learners think in a systemic way, they necessarily have an appreciation of interrelatedness, energies, and flow. they would find greater relevance in the creative process and its related artifacts, as these would have clear applications beyond the traditional curriculum.

in their program, Katie and Robert conduct professional development for teachers through a summer institute. teachers are given opportunities to talk about fostering collaborative dispositions, and learn about the principles and architecture of game design. in particular, the potential of virtual worlds as platforms upon which to dialogue, practice, and learn about such principles was highlighted.

through their participation in such professional development programs, both teachers and educational researchers have been presented with opportunities to observe for themselves the importance - and different affordances - of game design, and game play. Katie expressed it as understanding the importance of observing how learners use the 'edit' and 'play' modes in the games they work on, as well as (say) what is revealed by the differential uses by the learner of 'save' and 'save as'.

this brought us nicely back to the question of assessment of learning. one suggested methodology was the use of think-alouds during the creative process. assumptions which needed to be questioned in this regard, included the binary distinctions between work and play, formal and informal learning, and the issue of whether adult-figures are best placed in the conduct and interpretation of evaluative exercises.

at this point, the interesting issue of attitudinal differences with respect to the use of games in learning was raised. Mimi Ito's work was cited, and of particular note was that in contrast to home-backgrounds in middle and upper-middle income families, parents from working class backgrounds felt more strongly that computers should be used for work, as a way of augmenting productivity (narrowly defined) and that - in general - they should not be "messed around" with.

by way of conclusion, a key take-away is that learning interventions should not be about the game itself (ie, not about learning through gameplay). rather, a far more deep and productive developmental trajectory would be thinking carefully about learning in game-like ways, and - if properly understood - this would involve much more than simply the tacking on of an optional co-curricular after-school program for interested students. such an approach would betray a fundamental lack of understanding of the good work and philosophy of the Institute of Play. instead, curriculum needs to be re-thought from the ground up to continually incorporate systems thinking, metacognition, cooperative learning, and peer critique. only then can the learner's experience be considered to approach learning in game-like ways.

Technorati Tags: education, games, learning

coming to America #2

the one-hundred-and-sixty-first episode of ventriloquy presents me with an opportunity to share news of a Study Trip to the United States that my colleagues and i will be undertaking.

the trip is jointly organised by the Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Education, Singapore, and members of the Educational Technology Division at Singapore's Ministry of Education.

please do join me in this 3.3 MB download :-)

Additional reading:
- the Institute of Play
- Global Kids Digital Media Initiative
- Games for Change
- Always with You
- Fab Lab
- Ohmwork: networking homebrew science
- the Goodplay Project
- New Media Literacies at the MIT
- TERC
- WGBH
- 5D: future of immersive design
- Network Culture Project
- the Digital Youth Research Project
- Carlmont High School
- Linden Lab
- the Center for New Media
- Black Cloud Project

Technorati Tags: education, games, learning, podcast, Singapore

EcoRangers® is granted its patent :-)

the one-hundred-and-fifty-seventh episode of ventriloquy tells the story of EcoRangers® - the multi-player handheld game that is jointly developed by Jason Wang and myself.

today, more than four years after EcoRangers® made its debut, Jason and i received the wonderful news that we have finally been granted our patent!

it's P-No. 124317, granted by the Registry of Patents, Singapore, in accordance with Section 35 of the Patents Act.

please join me in this 3.4 MB download, and please feel free to browse the story here.

to God be the glory!

Technorati Tags: EcoRangers, education, games, learning, podcast, Singapore, TLLM