I had deliberately left it quite late in the evening last night before venturing into Second Life (SL) as I wanted some time on my own to refamiliarise myself with the SL environment, the user interface and to ensure I had the latest update from from SL as I knew that there would be a Second Life Treasure Hunt game commencing next week. I also wanted to ensure that I had Team 2's SL contacts added to my SL contacts list.

I didn't get too far when I was approached by Dagma Kiranov (a.k.a. Iris Bosa) who had also popped up late into SL. After about 20 minutes typing messages between eachother - that strange typing motion that the avatar undertakes to inform the other user(s) that they are typing has been likened to "stroking the cat", Iris added her own metaphor by suggesting, given Wray's costume, that it looked like I was "playing the piano" - Iris asked "can I change my voice?". This struck me as an odd comment to make until I realised that she was talking about the speech feature within SL that was added several months ago. I plugged in my microphone headset and began to talk to Iris, like one does with Skype and presumably using the same kind of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology that Skype uses. It became clear what her question meant.

In Second Life, and indeed in other virtual worlds, the user invests a lot of time and effort to create their avatar and their "virtual" identity in a way that they want to be seen and perceived by other users within that shared world. One was able to further enhance that identity with the kinds of words and phrases that they used to talk to one another. In my mind's ear, I can "hear" Wray talking with a deep, rich, urbane voice, not too dissimilar to that of Christopher Lee's voice. But of course, the experience that the other user gets is not that of Wray sounding like Christopher Lee, they get Wray sounding very Kentish and not terribly deep, rich or urbane - you could almost hear the record scratch at that moment as reality breaks into the virtual world and these whole persona and identity that you have carefully created begins to unravel before your eyes.

Whilst there has been a lot of work in identity in terms of roles, gender, sexuality, demographic variables; I am not so sure whether any has been done on voice as an identity construct in terms of accent, dialect, pitch, etc. The inclusion of the speech feature within SL is a very interesting addition to the software's capabilities, but I wonder if it will have a detrimental effect on one's virtual presence and identity?

As part of the "Introduction to Digital Game-based Learning", this semester's cohort have been made up of 4 teams of 6 people who will work together as a team to either construct game-based tasks (for others to participate in) or take part in game-based tasks that have been given to us, as well as giving presentations to the other teams.

I am part of "Team 2" who consist of:

• Bill Babouris
• Myself
• Chris Hambley
• Eleisha John
• Marie Leadbetter
• Nicholas Palmer

I am very excited about the potential of group-based activities where the participants are at a distance and working remotely using a range of technologies like discussion boards, Skype and Second Life. It would be good to try a develop some kind of "good practice" guide that can be passed on to others who are also planning on this "virtual" approach to group work.

I feel as though I'm getting my places sorted out - I had something I wanted to say this morning but I felt it "belonged" to my other blog. It's interesting how they feel like different places.  But I've a little niggle; I'm asking myself if I'm being self-indulgent.  The answer is no, not really - there's plenty of space in these places, and my blogs don't displace any other things.  And people don't have to read them.  But I'll find it useful later to see how I write differently in different places.

Today's blogging may be displacement activity (like housework can be - though in my case obviously hasn't been recently).  We have a task to do in response to reading about research design approaches.  Fortunately, this relates to some of the stuff I was reading at the weekend when I was away from internet access.  However, I haven't read it all, just the stuff on ethnography and grounded theory which are probably the most likely to influence me. 

It would be interesting to try to think of different types of design in relation to the same research question and I think I'll tackle the task in this way.  I could perhaps try two research questions: a simple "obvious" one and one that I'm likely to want to consider for myself.  I'm now asking myself whether a tendency towards an interest in ethnography – combined with a resistance to "measuring" complex human things – is likely to determine the kind of research question I'm prepared to pursue.  I am conscious that I need to be more open to the range of approaches.

As a results of the "introduction to digital environments for learning" (IDEL) module and the research that I have been doing around the topic of digital literacy; I have crossed Marc Prensky's path many times over; he should also add agent provocateur to his list of roles. It started with my IDEL essay called "Bridging the Generation Gap: A Pathfinder's Tale" and this has led to presenting a talk called "The Generation Game: Exploding the myth behind the Net and Google Generations" to a number of organisations.

It's quite clear that I have issues with Prensky and the whole digital dichotomy of "natives" and "immigrants". These terms, according to Prensky, were coined by John Perry Barlow (1996, para. 12) in his "declaration of the independence of cyberspace". Prensky (2001a) and others have popularised (and added more to) these stereotypes to that they are now firmly cemented into the public domain like some kind of meme. Like Bayne and Ross (2007), I share the following sentiments which I explored in an earlier blog post:

"In the current political climate, talk of immigrants and natives inevitably evokes complexities and anxieties around migration, integration, and racial and cultural differences in Western society."

Indeed, Palfrey and Gasser (2008) want to reclaim the term "digital native" to mean something else entirely and suggests that:

“...rather than calling Digital Natives a generation – an overstatement, especially in light of the fact that only 1 billion of the 6 billion people in the world even have access to digital technologies – we prefer to think of them as a population … The vast majority of young people born in the world today are not growing up as Digital Natives.”

Prensky is rather keen on using a quote attributed to Dr Bruce D. Perry (now of Child Trauma Academy) which goes like "different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures". In earlier copies of his now infamous papers, Dr Perry went under the name of "Dr Bruce D. Berry" and it's taken 8 years and a lot of flack before Prensky finally corrects it. At the heart of Prensky's work seems to lie a lot of scaremongering rhetoric that's not backed up with any references for the reader to check his claims against, it's quite an odd thing to do considering Prensky has 3 Master level degrees behind him. It's little wonder that Bennett, Maton & Kervin (2008) chastise Prensky and others after him by suggesting that:

“...proponents arguing that education must change dramatically to cater for the needs of these digital natives have sparked an academic form of ‘moral panic’ using extreme arguments that have lacked empirical evidence.”

This was echoed earlier by McKenzie (2007), using a little more sensationalist language, who accuses Prensky of being "guilty of 'arcade scholarship'". 

However, Baroness Susan Greenfield, the eminent neuroscientist and current Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, comes to Prensky's aid by suggesting that further research would be needed to see if there might be a link with the three-fold increase of the drug Ritalin over the last 10 years and the increased exposure of young children to unsupervised and lengthy hours in front of a [computer] screen which, in turn, means their young brains would get use to rapid responses (Settle, 2008).

I do agree with Prensky on one thing and that is the need for learning professionals to be able to "speak" using both "legacy" and "future" languages through the lens of "digital literacy" so that students are better prepared and better equiped to deal with the changing nature of their digital worlds.

References

Barlow, J.P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. [online]. Available at: http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html [Accessed 26 January 2009] 

Bayne, S. and Ross, J. (2007). The "Digital Native" and "Digital Immigrant": A Dangerous Opposition. Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education. December 2007.

Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), pp. 775-786. [online]. Available at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/bjet/2008/00000039/00000005/art00002 [Accessed 26 January 2009]

McKenzie, J., (2007). Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation. From Now On, 17(2). [online]. Available at: http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html [Accessed 26 January 2008]  

Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U. (2008). Born Digital: Understand the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books. 

Prensky, M. (2001b). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants II: Do They Really Think Differently?. On the Horizon, 9(6), NCB University Press.

Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), NCB University Press.

Settle, M. (2008). Is computer use changing children? BBC News, 15.08.2008. [online]. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7564152.stm [Accessed 26 January 2009]

There's a lot going on on the discussion board - and it's really good philosophical inquiry.  I last opened it yesterday late afternoon but first thing this morning there were 36 entries to look at.  And I'm going to be away until Sunday evening with no internet connection; at this stage of the course this could be a problem.  I'm taking the textbook with me so I can at least keep in touch with the ideas.  But after what I've just been looking at, I now want to take Notes from the Underground too - and Being and Nothingness if I have it, but I don't think I have.  But I was trying to travel light!

The debate about truth seemed slow to get going at first and now there is no stopping it.  I've contributed a few things and have nearly made several other observations but have stopped myself (I'm always interested when that happens).  In one case, i wanted to say something about Plato's Symposium (during our debate on Love) - but I felt it might be a thread killer.  In another, I wanted to add something but hadn't worked it through or had got into an internal contradiction. (I should note when this happens though.)

I haven't much time this morning - I should be marking, I'm packing to go to Aberdeen and I have to go for my train to go to work.  I'm writing hastily and all the time thinking about what this blog should "feel" like.  It's not really just a matter of transferring from Blogger - that's a different type of space.  It almost feels as though in it's in a different place (physical) in the web - which does suggest an intersubjective construction of the online world.

This sounds as though I'm going to want to keep two blogs going.  (But it'll be next week before I can do this.)

Prior to the "Understanding Learning in the Online Environment" module that I undertook last semester, I had used Delicious and Connotea as my principle web services for collecting, storing and sharing bookmarks, news articles and journal articles with my colleagues and interested parties.

On the module, Hamish Macleod suggested that we might like to create a Diigo account to share any bookmarks and resources around how learning could be facilitated through an online environment. The tool is very easy to use and allows you to create lists and groups. I had created a list for the learning challenge that I was undertaking at the time. I am now using Diigo to collect, store, compile and share on anything pertaining with gaming and, in particular, game-based learning - this collection can be found at the following address: http://www.diigo.com/list/heywayne/gaming

This is the first week of the "Introduction to Digital Game-based Learning" module. Over the next 12 weeks, we will be exploring the world of digital games in terms of ideas, concepts, issues and controversies and in particular how games can aid with the learning process - what lessons can be learnt if any? I do believe that exploration and play are the building blocks of learning.

But before we begin our adventure into the realm of gaming and the gamer-learner, we must start with that time old tradition of storytelling - the back story or rather my back story which will provide some historical context to my relationship and engagements with games.

I was never fond of traditional sports like football or rugby and as such a lot of my peers felt that I must be a misfit or something. But I did enjoy games that were created from my own imagination involving LEGO, Meccano and toy figures. This extended to the traditional board games like "Cludeo" (a personal favourite), chess, draughts, "monopoly", "snakes and ladders" (another favourite) which I played with friends and family - so the socialisation of game playing became an important aspect for me. I was very keen (and still am) on "Top Trumps" and other card games like poker, 21 and cribbage.

By the time I reached my teens, this would be the 1980s with the advent of the arcade games, like "Pac Man" (another favourite), "Asteroids" and "Breakout" and some of the earlier computer games. I owned a Binatone TV Master that played a number of rudimentary games like "Pong" and "Tennis", this was later superceded with an Acorn Electron which ran a version of BBC BASIC and allowed me to play such games as "Repton" and the near legendary "Elite" which made use of wireframe technology and was one of the first games to make use of the "back story" in the form of a mini novel. At college, I had become hooked on the game version of Douglas Adams' "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy", which was a text-based role playing game (it has since been updated by a friend of mine who went to the same college and was a collaborator of Douglas Adams).

However, these early games soon lost their appeal on me as that all important socialisation factor was missing - while some people could be engaged with the competitive nature of trying to beat the computer it lacked the camaraderie. I became aware of the role playing game genre or RPG that involved creating characters and becoming them to be able to perform a range a series of tasks or activites usually within fantastical settings that required creativity, imagination and team work. The RPG that I enjoyed the most was based upon H.P. Lovecraft's stories and was called "Call of Cthulhu". What struck me the most about this game was the narratory skills of "The Keeper" which, if played well, was atmospheric and damn-right scary - here you were completely immersed with the story and the character which you are playing. Whilst there were a load of game-based resources for this game, I had preferred to create my own "Call of Cthulhu" scenarios inspired by the works of Lovecraft, Poe, Conan Doyle, Christie and such like - if only the Internet was available at the time.

In the mid 1990s which saw the rise of the Internet within the Higher Education sector, I had developed a SF / murder mystery game called "Murder on the Aurora" which was developed using HTML and Javascript and was created to help new users to the World Wide Web get to grips with this new, emergent technology.

Whilst I don't own a Wii, X-box or any of the PlayStation variants, I have become interested in the alternate reality game or ARG phenomena which have been made popular by TV shows like "Lost", "Spooks", "Heroes" and "Torchwood - again, this plays heavily on story telling and having the gamer to "live out" the role.

That's my "back story", so let the adventure begin...

This is the first day of this blog and the Research Methods Course and I've also decided to keep a private journal just in relation to the dissertation.  I'll start that today too.  I think this means that my other blog (in Blogger) has to go for now! I don't want to spend so much time reflecting on what I'm doing that I'm not actually doing anything.

But the proliferation of reflection and discussion places is getting me to think about readership/audience.  I like the idea that one (possibly the main) reader is my future self - and that's easier when the blog isn't assessed. So I want to record what's uppermost on my mind in relation to being a student and how that affects what I do as well as who I feel I am.  But this isn't in isolation - the concurrent readership forms the community and context and I am likely to be their readers too.  This is where it differs from my public blog on Blogger, at least as it is to date.

And I want to make my blogs more stimulating for a reader too - so I need to work on that, in particular with more links and visuals.  Perhaps I'll start with a new photo; people will start to see I've been using the same photo for two years.

But for this first day, I'm just checking that it works and I can edit on it etc.  A bit like the digital equivalent of sharpening pencils and smoothing out page 1 of the notebook.  As far as research is concerned, I'm thinking about the online use of language shaping courses in a different way - and that does include non-use of language too.  But it's still very open.

This is now Week 4 of the Learning Challenge (LC) and I've been a little naughty in that I have allowed the "Learner Analysis" assignment to interfere with the LC. The "Learner Analysis" assignment is due to be submitted on Sunday 26th October and I have probably spent more than is actually necessary on it.

I am back on the "I Will Knot" website to refamiliarise myself with the knots that I was practicing before the assignment got in the way. It's amazing how much you quickly forget because you haven't been practicing to the point where it "sticks" or "clicks" into place. At the moment, I am practicing once with the knot with the aid of the step-by-step video and then a further three times without the aid of the video - the trick is to try and repeat this tomorrow without the aid of the video at all!

On the subject of the "I Will Knot" website, I mentioned to a colleague of mine who teaches Chemistry at my University and has just been appointed a Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator for my Faculty that I was doing this learning challenge as part of my MSc and showed her the website I was using. She was most impressed by it - NOT because it showed you how to tie knots in easy step-by-step videos BUT how the idea behind the easy step-by-step videos could be used to show a particular Science experiment / practical to a group of students.

This visual aspect to learning is indeed a powerful motivator, and if done properly it could instruct students better than just reading it out of a textbook.

It's Week 1 of the Learning Challenge (LC) and I have set aside 30 minutes to practice the art of knotcraft. The first website I went to was "Knots: How to Tie Knots"; I was not impressed with the rather short but pedestrian instructions with the naff looking illustrations - if I was having trouble understanding how to tie easy knots, what was it going to be like with the more complex ones?

The next website, "Ropers Knot Page", has slightly longer, but equally, pedestrian instructions with rather confusing looking illustrations that don't do anything to enlighten me as to what I am suppose to be doing. I am beginning to wonder if I have chosen an appropriate learning challenge - certainly the free resources I am using are not explaining themselves very well.

My next resource, "I Will Knot", is something of a revelation to me. It uses a mixture of short, sharp videos and short, but still, pedestrian instructions. But it is the videos that work for me. When it comes to something that involves a motor skill, I am someone who likes to be shown so that I can mimic and keep practicing that skill. In that sense I could be considered as a kinesthetic learner.

This also suggests to me that if you want someone to learn something online, the materials / resources you create will be dependent upon the task / skills / knowledge / information that you wish to convey to your students.

So, do you use drawings, photographs, videos, audio recordings or text to put across something that needs to be learnt? Should this resource be passive or interactive? Can the learner work in isolation or does this require a collaborative / community dimension?

Interesting questions indeed!