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

ludo ergo sum

i took this picture of my mother interacting with my niece through Lego, while sitting on this lovely rug.

thirty-six years separate my niece and i.

nevertheless, it occurred to me that there's not a whole lot of difference between the way she's learning through play, and mine :-)

Technorati Tags: cognition, constructivism, education, games, geography, interface, landmarks, learning, maps, place, Second Life, TLLM, Vygotsky

mourning has broken

last night, i resumed work on the Raymaker VII - the yacht that my recently-deceased friend Hessel and i had been working on.

i was joined by Ludvaig Lindman, who (among other things) had helped me with the volcano simulation Pulau-Pulau Bompa not too long ago.

Ludvaig was keen to show me his latest creation - the Lindman Weather Palm (more about this in a subsequent blog post, i'm sure). anyway, i needed Ludvaig's help on a rotation script for one of the customised features on the yacht, and in the end, he ended up building the part from scratch.

what started off as an impromptu five-minute conversation evolved into an extended session into the wee hours of the morning, in which we both were able to help each other in our own respective creative diversions; what's more, we did so (almost instinctively) with a keen eye to both detail and aesthetics, as can be inferred from this picture.

the screenshot succinctly depicts what Ludvaig and i did last night, and captures much of the essence of one of the primary learning affordances of SL - the ability to collaborate from non-co-located RL spaces, on builds which are limited only by our collective imaginations (Ludvaig and i are just visible hovering near the vessel's targa, near the radomes).

it's something Hessel understood very well. i'm sure he would have been proud.

:-)

[update: Maximilian Milosz has just delivered the Dora II, which i blogged about in yesterday's post. thank you, Max :-) ]

the Dora II berthed at the Raymaker Field Studies Centre at Hatteras Island

Technorati Tags: constructivism, education, geography, learning, Second Life

presentation on Second Life to the Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group, National Institute of Education

the one-hundred-and-twenty-second episode of ventriloquy is a recording of a talk on Second Life i gave today to my colleagues at the Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group, here at the National Institute of Education in Singapore.

please do join me in this episode, which is 74 minutes in duration and a 18.3 MB download.

(as an aside, i was very happy today to secure one of the Captain's Suites aboard the SS Galaxy. i first wrote about the Galaxy back in June. since then, the nearest equivalent to it in Real Life must be the 220 metre Four Seasons Ocean Residences, which will visit Singapore in 2012 :-) )

Show notes:
- Assumptions for the talk
- The story of Veritas Raymaker's birth
- Months and years
- The tour
- The death of distance?
- The rediscovery of the z-axis
- Types of learning environments

artist's impression of the Four Seasons Ocean Residences

Additional reading:
- Jazon's 13 August blog entry (SS Galaxy Review: the Cruise Ship of Second Life) 2nd Sex

Technorati Tags: avatar, cognition, constructivism, DLAC-II, education, geeavatarcontest, geography, globalization, holodeck, interface, landmarks, learning, LionCity, navigation, place, podcast, Second Life, Singapore, SoP V, SS Galaxy, TLLM

State of Play V - Conference Day 1

i had a terrific day today.

it was a long day (from 9 am to 9 pm), but i don't feel tired at all.

today was the first day of State of Play V. this year, the conference theme is 'building the global metaverse'.

we had some great panel discussions, which i was unable to blog in detail. there were just too many ideas flowing back and forth. that's not at all surprising considering the panelists represented Anshe Chung Studios, Electric Sheep, Millions of Us, and Inside This World, among others. it's going to take a few days for everything to gel into place.

needless to say, with a theme such as 'building the global metaverse', the conversations were dominated by Second Life, and World of Warcraft (WoW). in fact, practically the whole afternoon's discussions (on 'Education, Kids and Teens in Virtual Worlds' and 'Connecting East and West') were on WoW. WoW also made its presence felt into the evening's 'fireside chat' (sans fire), between John Seely Brown (JSB) and Doug Thomas (who has the most amazing (by which i mean, seemingly information-overloaded) WoW dashboard, by the way).

JSB and Doug having their (fireside) chat in the company of a wooden giraffe at the Forest Lodge, Singapore Zoo

i think that, to me, was the biggest surprise, because of my lack of familiarity with WoW. all i knew about WoW - prior to today - was what i learned from watching the development team of Space Station Leonis (playing during their break times, of course :-) ).

concepts which came up today included rules, laws, and the panoptic nature of virtual worlds. JSB also drew our attention to the temptation to bandy around the word 'fun' too readily, without stopping to deconstruct it (say, in terms of acknowledgment, a sense of belonging, and the ability for self-expression). he also cautioned that we should be careful not to overhype New Media, and instead to articulate clearly its affordances to the general public, lest New Media be hijacked by vested interest groups and misarticulated for society-at-large. he also made a distinction between (say) Singapore's drive to teach creative thinking in schools, back in the late '80s and early '90s, and the importance of allowing space for learners' imaginations instead. his argument was that powerful imaginations would transcend artificial constructs of 'teaching for transfer', because he was trying to make the case that imagination is pre-cognitive, rather than metacognitive. such pre-cognitive imagination was more akin to a blending of knowledge in action among domains (climaxing in Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow"), rather than an explicit transfer across boundaries. in fact, he was arguing for a shift away from a focus on just cognition, and towards a recognition of the social and affective manifestations of learning. this was what he sees as the 'gaming disposition'.

what a day!

Technorati Tags: assessment, avatar, cognition, constructivism, education, expert, games, learning, media, multiliteracies, Second Life, SoP V, TLLM

Professor Janet H Murray's talk on 'Mind, Media and Learning'

the one-hundred-and-eleventh episode of ventriloquy is a recording of a talk by Professor Janet H Murray, who is the Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media at the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

her talk was entitled 'Mind, media and learning: the next generation of educational applications of interactivity'. it was delivered to an audience of my colleagues, here at the Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

the 41-minute episode is 13.1 MB in size, and records her thoughts on a variety of related issues, from cognition, social construction, culture and language, to the continued evolution of these in interactive and immersive environments such as Second Life, and (eventually) Spore.

by way of happy coincidence, Prof Murray is a huge Star Trek fan :-)

Show notes:
- Professor Murray's homepage
- Professor Merlin Donald (wikipedia entry)
- Michael Tomasello (wikipedia entry)
- Ludwig Wittgenstein on defining 'games' (wikipedia entry)

Technorati Tags: avatar, cognition, constructivism, education, games, gender, holodeck, learning, media, memory, multiliteracies, place, podcast, Second Life, semiotics, Singapore, Star Trek, Vygotsky

no place like home

the one-hundred-and-ninth episode of ventriloquy explores multiculturalism in Second Life.

the impetus for this, is the Lion City sim - a place which anyone with an interest in Singapore can visit to get a taste of the urban landscape of the tiny city-state which is my Real Life home.

i discuss just what constitutes 'home', laud the growing diversity of accents and voices that we encounter in our Second Life adventures, and elaborate on how i feel about the relative importance of realism with regards believability in learning environments.

please do join me in this 5.7 MB download :-)

Show notes:
- Imzadi (Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki)
- Gwyneth Llewelyn's 20 March 2005 blog entry (the internationalization of Second Life) Gwyn's Home
- Wagner James Au's 23 August 2006 blog entry (a brother-HUD of man) New World Notes
- origin of Singapura (thinkquest.org)
- Ivan Chew's 24 February blog entry (Setting up the Second Life "Singapore island" sim: Interview with Alvin) Rambling Librarian: Incidental Thoughts of a Singapore Liblogarian
- Peranakan Corner, Hyperborea
- Fort Malaya, Tovadok II
- The Truman Show (wikipedia entry)

Technorati Tags: cognition, constructivism, education, geography, globalization, holodeck, landmarks, learning, LionCity, place, podcast, Second Life, semiotics, Singapore, Space Station Leonis, Star Trek, TLLM

resident alien

the one-hundred-and-eighth episode of ventriloquy is a report on the first-ever live cross-Grid interaction between Teen Second Life and the Main Grid.

the occasion was a visit to Global Kids Island on Teen Second Life, by Professor James Paul Gee. Professor Gee was visiting as an 'alien', and was therefore trying out avatars specially designed for him, by some of the residents of Teen Second Life. he then went on to discuss issues of identity, social activism, and the links between Real Life and Second Life, as well as the links between Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games such as World of Warcraft, and Second Life.

i present you my reflections on being a participant in this event, in this 4.5 MB download.

i've also found myself a desk over at SLolar Central - i'm on the second floor (in Singaporean nomenclature) or the mezzanine level (in American nomenclature). do please drop by if you have the time and pay us a visit :-)

finally, do check out this exceedingly thoughtful piece by Extropia DaSilva. it was written last July, and preludes so effectively my post from four days' ago on the minor metaphysical disaster i experienced when my carefully-constructed world in Second Life literally came crashing down on me.

well, i've now managed to rebuild and reposition everything, and i've also added taken the precaution of supplementing my skybox's antigravity system with some good old-fashioned assistance, courtesy of Metamorph Motivators by Michelle Morphett (RL: Michelle Nephew).

and here's an earlier pic of Bouncing Box and me, in the process of building our first iteration of the pool. i add it here, because it is of relevance to a comment i make in this podcast episode, in relation to something which Jim Gee said, about how motivating Second Life can be, because of the degree of collaboration and real-time creation it potentially fosters.

as Extropia asks, what is 'real' anyway?

it's a pertinent question, especially to anyone with the most passing interest in serious games.

in the design of new media learning environments, is it more important to be real, or to be believable?

:-)

Show notes:
- 31 May blog entry (James Paul Gee arrives on Global Kids Island) Global Kids Digital Media Initiative
- Flickr photoset (James Paul Gee Avatar Contest)
- Buddy Sprocket's 31 May snapshot (james paul gee on teen grid... seen from main grid)
- New Media Consortium 2007 Summer Conference (with details on Real Life - Second Life sessions)
- Extropia DaSilva's The Metaverse Reloaded (reproduced as Gwyneth Llewelyn's 16 October 2006 blog entry in Gwyn's Home)

Featured wardrobe:
- body shape: Lemon 2:39, by Aemilia Case, Lemon, at Imogen
- skin: Aitui [Premier Skin] Island, Clean Shaven, 2, by Jesseaitui Petion, Renown by Aitui, at Aitui
- hair: David - Midnight, by Calico Ingmann, Calico Creations, at Calico Kitty

Technorati Tags: assessment, avatar, cognition, constructivism, Donut Bench, education, expert, games, geeavatarcontest, learning, multiliteracies, NMC2007, podcast, quantum classroom®, Second Life, Singapore, SLolar Central