week 6 reflection

This week was the start of school at MPI. As a result, I spend a lot of my time helping teachers that struggle with technology to their basics set up — online syllabi, electronic grade books, network and Internet accounts, e-mail problems, etc.
I also spend time with the early adopters trying new things: social groups in nings, use of Moodle to support instruction (forums, Voicethread’s, podcasts, etc.)
In working with one of our weaker technology users today, it struck me about a quote from Heisenberg or Bohr back in the 1920’s or so (regarding understanding concepts in science):
“when we don’t understand the problem, it is impossible; when we understand it, it becomes trivial”
In so many ways, this last six weeks in our Second Life class has been an example of that. It seems that almost every class one of us will find themselves in a awkward position where our lack of understanding shows that we don’t know how to do something basic: sitting down, wearing an object, changing the texture, etc. Now, six weeks in, most things seem simple: trivial. There are still things that I don’t know and think would be valuable to understand. The magic of the Linden scripting language, and what it implies for designing is a huge topic that we did not cover in the class, other than to change values in scripts to cause hovering text, or color of text, or images that were referenced. Clearly, without a complete understanding of scripting, the real design experience of Second Life is going to be a weak effort at best — copying or adapting ideas from other people.
As an example, in our project the value of the communication board became obvious to me. I looked around to find tutorials on how to build some kind of note board that allowed posting of people’s comments. Eventually, I just purchased one from XLstreet for $1.30. At that price, it was hard to justify spending 5 to 10 hours of my time designing something that already been invented. Yet, I feel I cheated by not designing it myself. An uneasy tension between creation and adoption.

If I have time, I will try and post one more time to put some final thoughts down about this class. It has been a lot of fun and challenging and more than anything I appreciat how the structure has both tackled research AND hands-on construction. A job well done to Dr Peter Leong (SL Ikaika Miles) and his able Assistant Rebecca Meeder (SL Porfessor Swartz)

week 5 reflection

summary thoughts
article on leatchers leaving profession

current and future potential

So as we were in the last two weeks of the class, I keep coming back to how virtual worlds and in particular Second Life can be forces to support and improve education. I still am convinced, as I have been for many years, math the best parts of Second Life offer opportunities for education that may yet prove to be powerful and pervasive In the next five years.
and it’s happening, perhaps, at a moment not too soon. I read this past weekend and article from the Washington Post written by a teacher who after less than five years was leaving the profession. Her story of lack of recognition, problems with the system, evaluation that rewarded playing it safe instead of taking risks alliance with many of the stories I hear from teachers long in the profession and just at the beginning of their careers. Her story is here:
http://bit.ly/AstBI
at the same time, Robert Witt, who is the head of Hawaii Independent schools, spoke to our faculty on Friday and encouraged us to find ways to reinvent our institution, for the children, and for the sake of trying to keep education from sliding into an irrelevant institution. He shared a video from the national commission on teaching and America’s future that explored the issue of teachers leaving the profession. The video is here:

So what does this have to do with Second Life? In some ways, Second Life is not yet ready for prime time, at least not in secondary education, and yet it offers an opportunity to reinvigorate and challenge the status quo for students and teachers. Whether it is taking advantage of adolescence and support of accepting nature of social media and online virtual realities, or possibility that virtual worlds opened up in time, space, connectedness, simulation the time needs to be right pretty soon if it is to have any impact in helping education from sliding further into decline.
The opportunity for students in Second Life to link up with peers and mentors, which is part of the new paradigm of 21st-century learning opens its potential and paints a possible future where we honor more of adolescents’ native abilities, energies and potential than we do right now. I’ve been teaching for 27 years and seen the potential and sometimes the fulfillment of the promise of technologies in education. With 15 to 20 more years education in front of me, I will be there and hopefully leading the charge to see tools like Second Life support dramatically different models of school transformation.

Some things in my head this week regarding Second Life and what we’re learning both in class, and how the filtered lens that I use sees it.
Regarding class activities:
we spent one period this week looking specifically at sounds, and how they are both used as well as the skills of bringing them into Second Life. We visited a site — a garden called new Hope Sound garden
http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Hope/95/71/23
it was striking for what it brought to the sensory experience that is unique to audio. Birds chirping, bees buzzing, rain and wind these all have unique sensory experiences that give us a sense of mood and place. It strikes me that coming back from a recent trip to Kona Village resort, the thing I enjoy most about it is the sense of serenity — no motorized sounds: cars, air conditioners, radios, TVs — nothing. Permeating the resort is a sense of when, birds, and ocean — very serene.
So this experience in the garden was both powerful, and refreshing because it allowed the visitor to detach themselves, even if for just a minute, from the busyness around them.

Now tied in with that, I was reflecting on a research article that I find particularly powerful from a MacArthur foundation grant written by Mizuko Ito that is titled “living and learning with new media: summary of findings from the Digital youth Project”

this is a great read, that looks at the different ways that young learners in particular news new media. One of the profound ideas that they develop through their ethnographic study, is two ways that use use social media: friendship driven and interest driven. Although I have not read all of the article, yet, it is clear that this developed idea is important in learning institution. Essentially, learners use social media through friendships to build relationships, and may use interest driven connections to help them build new knowledge. How to Second Life into this framework?
Although many of the experiences in Second Life lineup with friendship driven activities — social events, explorations with friends, communication, It is clear that if we are going to look at Second Life as a learning platform, we need to take advantage of the interest driven nature of social networks for adolescents.

article finishes with this quote:
“Kids’ participation in networked publics suggests some new ways of thinking about the role
of public education. Rather than thinking of public education as a burden that schools must
shoulder on their own, what would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a
more distributed network of people and institutions? And rather than assuming that education
is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of education as
a process of guiding kids’ participation in public life more generally, a public life that includes
social, recreational, and civic engagement? And finally, what would it mean to enlist help in this
endeavor from an engaged and diverse set of publics that are broader than what we tradition-
ally think of as educational and civic institutions? In addition to publics that are dominated by
adult interests, these publics should include those that are relevant and accessible to kids now,
where they can find role models, recognition, friends, and collaborators who are co-participants
in the journey of growing up in a digital age. We hope that our research has stimulated discus-
sion of these questions.”
so sometimes we are thinking of Second Life as a venue that we will build old schools new. another avenue that this article suggests is thinking of these new learning environments as extensions of learning experiences that we haven’t yet fully utilized. Not sure where we go with that, but it’s a provocative thought all the same.
The article in full can be found at this address:
http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=enJLKQNlFiG&b=2108773&content_id={83F36A9D-A8DE-4496-B8F9-52C3C2416216}&notoc=1

or shortened:
http://bit.ly/vSLkE

your