Speed, silence and sanctuary, is the topic of discussion for the final week of study in Introduction to Digital Environments in Learning. We began the course by talking about the ever increasing workload that teachers are facing in the work place. I wrote this blog: IDEL Redefining Personal Boundaries in Education where I reflect:

“In environments where technology and e-learning has not "Yet" been adopted, teachers and lecturers are used to a structured workplace where the teacher is in almost complete control of where and when they and their students can interact. Some may feel that with all the benefits that come with e-learning there will also be sacrifices and that they will have to give up more of the control that they once had.”

 So this seems to be a fitting place to finish of this module. Not only because of this, but also because it is a relief to see that education establishments are taking the lead in awareness of the issues surrounding the problems and challenges of the fast paced workplace.

So what can a university like Edinburgh do to help its students prepare before joining the workforce? What are the solutions? 

It is important as Levy states, first to reach an agreement on the nature and extent of the problem:

“This could mean raising the issue as a topic of discussion and debate on individual university campuses, as well as within umbrella organizations.”

This is something that we have been doing for example in the last week of debate during this module.  Also, it is important to conduct research and studies to examine the extent of the problem, and perceptions of the problem.

Mind over matter:

I mentioned in my last blog that I’ve found necessary with my increasing work load to find techniques that help me relax and focus, techniques such as listening to music or taking walks.

In this spirit, Levy suggests bringing contemplative practices explicitly into university curricula to help students, faculty, and staff, “strengthen their attentional faculties in the face of the erosion effected by multitasking and acceleration.”

Contemplative practices quiet the mind in order to cultivate a personal capacity for deep concentration and insight. Examples of contemplative practice include not only sitting in silence but also many forms of single-minded concentration including meditation, contemplative prayer, mindful walking, focused experiences in nature, yoga and other contemporary physical or artistic practices. We also consider various kinds of ritual and ceremony designed to create sacred space and increase insight and awareness to be forms of contemplative practice.  http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/

Ultimately whether such practices that prepare students for their speedy careers ahead of them are incorporated or not, humans do what humans do best, they adapt. However, some guidance along the way, and creating awareness and debate on such issues are at the core of what education is all about.

References:

http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/

Levy, D. (2007). No time to think: Reflections on information technology and contemplative scholarship. Ethics and Information Technology, 9(4): 233–236.

“An environment with choice and a diversity of perspectives, will encourage critical and creative inquiry. Such a community of inquiry is a requisite for higher-order learning” Garrison, D and Anderson, T (2003).

Aside from my PhD, most learning that I have been “subjected to” ( ß I choose my words carefully! ) in the past at school, college, and university, has followed very authoritarian teacher lead methods. On the other hand, this e-learning course has been a fun collaborative learning community in which there has been clear evidence of interactive cognitive presence, social presence, and teacher presence.   

But anyway, I’m about to be assessed soon, so it’s only fair that I pre-emptively return the favor, and assess my assessors and this course against the community of enquiry model detailed by Garrison, D and Anderson, T (2003).

Cognitive presence:

What is it?

We see cognitive presence ‘as the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry’ Garrison, D and Anderson, T (2003).

Confirmed at: http://communitiesofinquiry.com/cognitive_presence :

“Cognitive presence is the extent to which the participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication”

Therefore clearly an important component of cognitive presence in a community of enquiry is debate, which necessitates:

a.    The availability of enthusiastic fellow learners and educators to debate with, a requirement which has been met throughout the course by constant interactive dialogue over a range of topics with fellow students, and with teachers and tutors who have actively encouraged and participated in the discourse.

b.    The availability of mediums of communication that enable sustained rich reflective communication between the participants. The course organizers and tutors have made a fantastic effort providing us with, and encouraging us to use a number of mediums of communication, from the slow paced WebCT discussion boards, to Twitter, and the faster paced Skype Chat, Second Life, and Adobe Video Conferencing.    

Another important component of cognitive presence is the ability to construct meaning through sustained communication and reflection.

We have discussed many related topics throughout this course, and have gained meaning by reflecting on everyone’s input including that of our tutors in our weekly session using different mediums of communication. We have also been encouraged to gain meaning and reflect individually on our reading and debates through our blogs, like I am doing now!  

Categories and indicators supplied by Garrison, D and Anderson, T (2003) to assess the presence of cognitive presence:

Triggering events (Indicator could be: Sense of puzzlement): Yes for example when Clara showed up looking like a dragon, which triggered allot of puzzlement J, and a long debate on how identity in a medium such as Second Life compares to our real life identity. Other triggering events for example were our scheduled meetings in Second life, Skype, Twitter, etc. This triggered a sense of anticipation, and made me organize and collect my thoughts prior to the meetings.

Exploration (Indicator for example Information exchange): This category seems to be the same as the earlier discussion on debate. Exploring ideas, and exchanging knowledge and perspectives is essentially what debate is all about. 

Integration (Indicators: Connecting Ideas): This happened throughout the course guided by our tutors through discussions, email exchanges, and blog comments, and also by us using the discussion boards, and during the 2 weeks when we collaborated to enrich David Silver‘s, and our individual wiki’s using hypertext and other web 2.0 technologies.

Social Presence:

What is it?

“We define social presence as ‘the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, as ‘real’ people (i.e., their full personality), through the medium of communication being used’” Garrison, D and Anderson, T (2003)

I’m not too comfortable with this definition. Two questions spring to mind, What is real? And What constitutes my full personality?

I love Einstein, because his work crosses so many boundaries. Everything can be relative, not just the movement of objects relative to each other and the speed of light through space.

If someone spends allot of time in an environment such as Second life, and interacts with a community in Second life, then for this community, their virtual characters can be just as real to each other as people are to each other in the “real world”.

Second is the issue of what constitutes a full personality. Do we always project our (full) personalities socially and emotionally during serious discussion and discourse?  Do we really need to? What about the projected personality of my avatar in SL, how do I project this personality in a video conference that has nothing to do with SL? As I argue in a previous blog, I believe that presence can occur at varying degrees. We don’t have to be fully present with our entire bodies to have useful discourse. Sometimes my full physical participation maybe required, sometimes just my voice or even just my thoughts through text chat can be enough to have effective social presence. Sometimes a text conversation maybe the most effective form of presence when other attributes such as voice or physical form could be a distraction.

Maybe I’m being very picky, but let’s try and make the definition more realistic (I’m in a critical mood):

“We define social presence as ‘the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, to a level at which they are comfortably able to communicate, and exchange their thoughts and emotions through the medium of communication being used’”

The question of social presence seems to link to that of embodiment, and identity. Garrison, D and Anderson, argue that:

Immediacy is important to a supportive and secure learning environment because it reduces personal risk and increases acceptance, particularly during critical discourse with its sometimes aggressive questioning and challenging.

I agree but I also feel that immediacy becomes less important when discourse can happen over a long period of time (This e-learning course). So for example I recognize a social presence in our email exchanges, in the blog, and on the discussion boards even though the sense of immediacy is not pronounced.

But also our tutors have encouraged us to use mediums of interaction where there has been a clear sense of immediacy, for example our camp fire voice and text conversations in Second Life, Twitter discussions, our video conference, and our skype chat.  The tools available to us on this e-learning course are more than capable of facilitating the projection of our social presence.

Teaching Presence:

“Teaching presence is defined as ‘the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes’” Garrison, D and Anderson, T (2003)

Our tutors have been present throughout this course, guiding our focus and conversations, and have participated in and directed discourse so that defined learning goals are achieved. (Go back and read everything in purple!).

Overlapping Cognitive, Social, and Teaching Presence:

A community of learning is most effective when these 3 presences are present and operating effectively together. Garrison and Anderson provide two overlapping areas of presence:

Social Presence and Cognitive Presence overlap to create an environment which supports discourse. This was in evidence in IDEL through our discussions on the various mediums of communication made available to us. Our dialog was focused on the topics of discussion required to achieve the objectives of this module because of our collective desire and motivation to enhance our understanding of the topics of discussion. Therefore I believe that motivation is key for relevant discourse to occur.

Teaching Presence and Social Presence overlap so that a climate is created where discourse is structured and guided. This again has been evident throughout the course where tutors have arranged and encouraged interaction between us using the mediums provided, have guided our discussions, and have participated in the discussions.    

Clara in the discussion board also suggests an overlaping teaching presence and cognitive presence:

Teaching Presence and Cognitive Presence overlap so that our dialog and reflections aren’t distracted by irrelevant topics of discussion such as our pets. Where I highlighted motivation as important in the overlap between social presence and cognitive presence to keep discourse on track, teaching presence can provide a helping hand to maintain and guide this motivation.

“Cognitive apprenticeship is a theory of the process where a master of a skill teaches that skill to an apprentice.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_apprenticeship

Assessment Outcome: 

Having analysed the criteria, and reviewed the evidence. I can certify that this e-learning course has so far proved itself to be a prime model of what a community of enquiry should be.

If I was to provide a grade then I would also have to take into consideration some minor technical issues that interfered slightly with my program of study (Services weren’t available once or twice over the duration of the course during weekends). But the positives overwhelm any minor blips, and the objectives of the course have on the whole been realized, therefore my final grade for IDEL2011 is:  95% Leaving a few percentage points to encourage discourse for improvement in this community of enquiry.  Please feel free to use this grade as a guide for any grading activities which may occur in the following weeks … cough …ehem …

References:

Garrison, D and Anderson, T (2003) Community of inquiry, chapter 3 of E-learning in the 21st century (London: RoutledgeFalmer) pp.22-31.

When choosing to play as a Zerg or Protoss, I would play much more aggressively without having much concern for the troops I was sending into battle. As Terran on the other hand I was much more careful with the army, and tried not to lose any units. Even though it is just a computer game, I was empathising with the human characters as though they were real! As I got immersed in each game, I had some kind of personal connection with the human soldiers I was controlling on the battle field.

This is a feeling that many beginners have when playing games such as Starcraft. Statistically most beginners choose to learn to play with the Terran race first when they are first introduced to this game:

“There is a path most novice players take when selecting their race. They start with Terran, simply because the Terrans are us, humans.”

http://starcraftlictor.com/terran-protoss-or-zerg-which-race-to-choose/

Not only this, but when playing with beginners that prefer the Terran race, I notice how reluctant they are to send their troops into battle, preferring very defensive postures, and crawling forward very slowly as if loosing too many troops would result in Vietnam or Iraq like outrage back home ! (This is a recipe for disaster by the way because the winners in games such as these are almost always aggressive attack minded players).   

So what makes a computer game like Starcraft so immersing? Why did I and others reach a level where we would have empathy with the digital human characters?

There are many appealing factors in games like these, such as problem solving (balancing the size of the economy with the size of the army, choosing the right army units in response to what the enemy is doing, choosing the correct battle strategies, etc.), team play (It is a collaborative multiplayer game ), speed and multitasking (Also known as APM=Actions Per Minute, the ability to manage an economy, scout the enemy, and lead an army simultaneously as quickly as possible using a mouse and a keyboard).

All these factors lead to a game where the player is fully immersed in the game. My vision is wholly fixated by the fast paced action on screen, my hearing is consumed by the sounds coming through my headphones, and my brain is fully engaged working hard to synchronise with allies, and to reach the ultimate objective; beating the other team. My nervous system is essentially swamped, and the real outside world is blocked out. My body is still physically located at my desk at home, but my mind’s presence is now elsewhere, it is in the game.

Presence, Black and White?

Lombard, M. and Ditton, T. (1997) defined presence as “the perceptual illusion of nonmediation”. They go on to say that presence “does not occur in degrees but either does or does not occur at any instant during media use; The subjective feeling that a medium or media-use experience produces a greater or lesser sense of presence is attributable to there being a greater or lesser number of instants during the experience in which the illusion of nonmediation occurs”

I’m no authority on the question of presence but I’m not sure I agree with this statement. Because I do believe that presence can occur in degrees. I feel that the degree to which my mind is present somewhere depends on how swamped my nervous system is by that location. If I switch of the volume in Starcraft and listen to some music while playing a game, doesn’t that mean that I am present in the game to a lesser degree than I would be if I had the volume switched on?

I used to feel anxious during military computer games because I wanted to avoid the conflict and violence involved. But I’ve learnt to differentiate between reality and computer games. Therefore can’t I argue that the degree to which I am present in these games has changed? It is very similar in a way to how some people hate watching horror films. Some are easily fooled by their senses, and others are better at maintaining a perspective on what is real and what is not (This is assuming of course that people who like horror movies aren’t at heart aggressive people who in a lawless society would likely be evil criminals, but that is an entirely different subject …)

Therefore my presence within this game and others has fluctuated as my experience has changed. I no longer concentrate so hard so that I don’t make mistakes, and can easily talk to someone in the room as I play a game. When I first passed my driving test for fear of causing an accident, I preferred not to speak when driving, I was fully immersed in the driving experience, my mind was totally present on the road, but as my experience increased, much of my actions have moved to the reflexive parts of the brain, and I can now listen to music and talk while driving without any difficulty.

As I became more experienced in Starcraft, and after analysing my own play, I gradually learnt to lose the empathy I had for my virtual human troops. If anything I’ve become more aggressive with the Terrans than the other races because the graphics are so good, and blood splattered everywhere looks so cool ….. I’m joking; I lower the graphics so I don’t have to see any gory details.

So interestingly, perhaps, as we grow accustomed to different online and offline environments, and the more experienced we become with their workings, the less present we need to be there. The work load on the brain is at its greatest at the beginning when the brain is learning about the new experience, but as the brain gradually becomes used to the new environment, it learns to function sufficiently within the environment without the need to be fully transported to it or immersed in it.  

An example of a starcraft game:

References:  

Lombard, M. and Ditton, T. (1997). At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence. JCMC 3 (2).   

One of the questions that arose while we edited and enhanced David Silver’s blog was whether we could go beyond adding links, references, pictures,  etc., and change what the original author wrote.

I came, I read, I re-wrote:

When an author publishes an article on a collaborative site, doesn’t that imply that the author expects people to add to and alter the content? Also we must remember that the author didn’t actually place his article on the wiki. It was originally a blog that was transferred by us onto the wiki, and therefore Mr David Silver has no real say in how the article progresses from this point forward.

I can see two points to consider here, first the legality and morality of taking someone else’s work and modifying it to suit ones needs, and who decides at what point the text becomes modified substantially enough that it no longer belongs to the original author? The second point is that it certainly seems to be more interesting and useful for any reader to be able to take a piece of text, and decide its meaning for him or herself. In “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes (1977), he argues:

"To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."

“We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.”

Also interesting as was pointed out during board discussions is Reader Response Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader-response_criticism

“Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance.”

“each reader creates his or her own…”: What if a number of people are collaborating on a piece of text?, with each having differing opinions regarding its meaning? How can we fit a number of different interpretations into a single piece of text?  Is it not best to leave collaborative works to articles of science and fact, and leave pieces of opinion and art to individuals so that personal expression can come out? Or is there a way for the ideas of individuals to shine through a compromise created by committee?  

The good old days:

Editing hypertext documents reminded me of those adventure books (Choose your own adventure) I read as a teenager. At the end of each page the reader is given a number of options on how the story can progress, and based on the choice is instructed to go to a particular page in order to continue the story. The entire adventure including all options for progression is contained within the pages of one book, and I can imagine those “choices” as a very early form of hyperlinking long before the internet started to make its mark in business and education.

Using wiki’s, and hyperlinking, stories can also be created intentionally this way. Or even non-intentionally where any online article together with the documents that it links to can be considered to be one story (as long as the hypertexts link to content that is relevant to the general narrative of the original text).

But current technology also gives us the ability to introduce ideas, and empower the reader and the writer in ways which weren’t possible in the “good old days”. Some interesting ideas and examples of what can be done include Editing Stretchfilm by Anders Fagerjord which offers an insight into Landow’s view of how hypertext can be used, enabling readers to select from the content of an article depending on their own needs.

The Mystery web essay is an example of the adventure stories mentioned earlier where the reader can go in different directions depending on chosen hyperlinks. Also going back to the question of author ownership, and reader-response theory, while exploring this essay we notice that the author follows different ideas depending on the paths chosen. Some paths are circular leading back to previous pages. The content is non-deterministic, vague, with statements, media and images that can be interpreted in different ways.

I enjoy mystery, and found this essay fun and interesting to explore. Perhaps the author’s intention is for different endless perspectives to coexist, stretching the imagination of the reader to offer his or her own interpretations of the content.   

But going back to “History, Hype, and Hope: An Afterward” I found it difficult to modify the text itself. It didn’t seem right to do so, and my thinking was that if I have my own ideas and perspectives then I should offer them in a different wiki or blog. I’m sure some would disagree with that, and feel it is ok to modify the content of someone else’s work even if it is opinion, but regardless, web 2.0 offers so many more ways to enrich and enhance works such as these by adding images, hyperlinks, video’s, comments, etc.

Sometimes just a picture, and a few colours, can make an article more appealing to read than one long slab of text.

References:

Roland Barthes,(1977) The Death of the Author: 

http://www.deathoftheauthor.com/

David Silver, (2008): History, Hope, and Afterward:

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2143/1950

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Hypertext and social media

Inchoate: Landlow comments that well organised, and well formulated websites (Not inchoate), websites such as “The Victorian Web”, permit students to find what they need quickly. These websites for example provide students with a local site map that makes it easy for them to find the information they need. 

Impinge: Well-designed hypertext encourages students to make connections among learning material they encounter. This creates the habit of discovering how various causes have an impact on single phenomenon or event. Developing this habit is major component of critical thinking.

Inculcate: Hypertext, has the ability to teach and instil the novice student with the unique culture of a particular discipline. This is because hypertext “provides a means of experiencing the way a subject expert makes connections and formulates inquiries”. Also students have the opportunity to follow their curiosities as far as they wish.

Phonocentrism:  One of the factors that can negatively affect group discussion is the social influence of the more dominant group members on the rest of the group.  This social influence can inhibit the quantity of original and creative ideas generated by the group as a whole.  Hypertext can be a tool for additional forms of discussion that can address this problem. Thus using hypertext, team members are able to contribute ideas in writing if they find group discussions inhibiting. As Landlow states, Hypertext can shift the balance of creative debate from speaking to writing.

Autodidact: Hypertext provides the individualistic self-taught learner with the perfect tool for exploring a particular area of study. It enables the learner to move between some familiar and some not so familiar related areas of study, and in the process instilling the important habit of making connections, an essential habit for many professions.

Corollary: Texts in a hypertext environment exist in relation to other documents on the system in a way that printed document and books cannot. From this Landow deduces that any document electronically linked to any other document collaborates with it. This connective quality of hypertext environments creates a medium that encourages collaboration.

Docuverse:  Hypertext places each document in the virtual presence of all previously created document and their creators. This transforms individual documents in to a collective that could have been produced by several people working collaboratively and at the same time.

Incorporating technology into educational practice:

Sophomores: Students in their educational experiences will usually study different courses at the same time such as maths, biology, business studies, etc. And there is nothing usually that connects the various knowledge they gain from these different courses. This contributes to the sense of a fragmented education as students have a series of unrelated educational experiences when they read different works.

Dissonance:

“A central dilemma that schools must address in the consideration of e-safety and Web 2.0 activity is how they can support children to engage in productive and creative social learning while protecting them from undue harm”. (Sharples et al. 2009, p. 70)

Clark et al. (2009) introduce the term Digital Dissonance. The authors use the term to describe the tension related to whether learners can use popular Web 2.0 social technologies in formal school settings.

Epistemology: Ravenscroft reflects on the research needed for evaluating how Web 2.0 technology as social utilities, affect knowledge production.  He points to the need for conceptualization of learning that follows more social, participative, and collaborative understanding of knowledge, and how it is acquired. He goes on to ask, what are the new pedagogical frameworks for implementing social software for learning? What if we rethink learning to account for this new online social way of acquiring knowledge?

This view is mirrored in (Hemmi, Bayne, Land, 2009):

Anachronistic:

“Their tendency is to attempt to render the online learning space familiar through a conservative dependence on pre-digital metaphors, signs and practices which are increasingly anachronistic as digital modes gain in social and cultural significance.”

Instead of trying to force-fit these new exciting ways of acquiring knowledge, interactivity, and collaboration into old pedagogical frameworks, why not change and expand our pedagogical frameworks? And why not change the way we do academic learning to exploit these powerful emerging social software, and new online social habits? 

References:

Clark W., Logan K., Luckin R., Mee A. & Oliver M. (2009) Beyond Web 2.0: mapping the technology landscapes of young learners. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 25, 56–69.

A. Hemmi, S. Bayne and R. Land (2009). The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in higher education (pages 19–30)

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Landow, G (2006) Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in a Global Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) extracts: 278-291 and 302-309.

Sharples M., Graber R., Harrison C. & Logan K. (2009) E-safety and Web 2.0 for children aged 11–16. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 25, 70–84.

A version of "Hypertext Into Practice" can be found on Ellis's Play Ground at the Holyroodpark wiki. 

Cousin argues that statements such as these neglect the fact that the technology and the mediums through which education is conducted are themselves the pedagogy. Second Cousin argues that technology should not be considered merely to be in the service of humans. Statements such as these he argues block our view of the full potential of computer technology for education purposes.

In this respect I believe that Cousin makes a good point because education is no different from any application domain for technology. Many of the life style enhancements we have experienced over the centuries have come as a result of experiments or accidents that had unforeseeable results. If education policy makers make an effort to find out what technology experts are getting up to and creating, and consulting with them as to the potential benefits of latest developments for education, they will undoubtedly come up with ideas that would enhance pedagogy in ways that education practitioners wouldn’t even think of.

30 years ago when PC’s did a fraction of the number of calculations the modern PC can perform, and before someone thought of linking them all up using the telephone system so that information could be shared and retrieved on a global scale, I doubt that education policy makers included in their list of objectives, giving every teacher and student an email account where they could replicate documents, and exchange and share them in a manner that was more efficient than what was available using paper alone at the time.

The point is that technology can create teaching objectives that pedagogy hasn’t even thought of yet. That is why technology should work together hand in hand with pedagogy rather than technology being seen merely as a tool.

Rather than defining the objectives and then asking; Can technology help us achieve these objectives?  We should be asking: Where is education at the moment? Where is technology at the moment? Now what are our objectives taking into consideration what technology can do for education?

Keeping our identities everywhere, even in education:

This also relates to the question of our evolving identities. 4000 years ago, I would not have been able to learn anything because of my bad eyesight. My glasses or contact lenses today are an important part of who I am. In the same way as I wouldn’t have been able to do this e-learning course if it wasn’t for my digital identity though the internet. Cousin points out that:

Every kind of technology is an extension of our nervous system, which imprints out imagination with the realm of the possible.

By appreciating this concept of our evolving identities with technology, and that our identities should be part of who we are in every walk of life, and because our education is an important part of our lives, we should therefore develop our teaching practices to walk hand in hand with our identities. If I went back 4000 years into the past, my teacher might have said to me that those things on my eyes are witch craft and I have to throw them away! Similarly today, some teachers might frown on students having their mobile phones switched on in class today, even though they might be using them to take notes or even to record the lecture.

Our online Youtube and Facebook identities are part of who many of us are today. And instead of seeing them perhaps as distractions that have no place in the proverbial classroom, maybe we should see them as opportunities.

Shifting focus from the teacher to the student:

Our identities have expanded and they will continue to expand as we find new technologies to enhance our lifestyles. It is difficult therefore for an educational institution to be able to judge the most suitable method of education for individuals. Some students may prefer traditional learning methods at varying levels of tutor involvement, or some may prefer general guidance on learning requirements and goals and to be given a range of choices to achieve those goals.

If I were to define a student of the 1970’s, I would say:

Student (1970) = “Body(With everything included)+Books+Pen+Pencil+Paper+TV+Radio”.  

On the other hand:

Student (2011) = “Body(With everything included)+Books+Pen+Pencil+Paper+TV+Radio+Mobile Phone+ Laptop (MS Word+ PowerPoint+ Excel+ Notepad+ Mediaplayer+Computer Games + …..) +Notebook+Ipod+Ipad+ Internet (Facebook+Google+Twitter+WebCT+Email+Wikipedea +…..)”.

I could go on and the list is just going to get longer, the tools and options available to students to learn are increasing, and it is only natural that education establishments recognize this, and recognize that all this innovation cannot fit tightly into teacher led approaches otherwise teachers and student s would simply go insane.  Students must be allowed to make their own choices based on their own identities, and therefore learning has to become more flexible with student choice being at the heart of it.

 “Rather than integrate tools within a single context, the system should focus instead on coordinating connections between the user and a wide range of services offered by organizations and other individuals. Rather than interacting with the tools offered within the contexts supplied by a single provider, the PLE is concerned with enabling a wide range of contexts to be coordinated to support the goals of the user.”  Wilson, et al (2007).

 And of course this needs to be done with the guidance of the teachers because there is a great deal of information out there and students can easily become lost:

“The sheer abundance of idiosyncratic information on the internet can produce nomadic leaners who succumb to an endless search for a knowledge oasis rather than enter into the process of digging for one”  Cousin, G. (2005).

The huge variety of sources of information, and the ease at which this information can be found on the internet can easily lead to distraction. Whereas prior to the digital age when all that was available to us was our teachers and books, the learning process was a much guided one, confined by the learning material and methods at hand. It was more focused. I can find virtually anything about everything through my web browser today. Therefore self-motivation and teacher guidance we can argue have become more important than ever before so that students remain focused on what is important.

References:

Cousin, G. (2005). Learning from cyberspace in Land, R. and Bayne, S. (eds) Education in cyberspace. London, RoutledgeFalmer. pp. 117-129.

Wilson, S., Liber, O., Johnson, M., Beauvoir, P. Sharples, P. & Milligan, C. (2007). Personal Learning Environments: Challenging the dominant design of educational systems. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 3/2.

It is a beautiful place with fantastic piano music, and a location of SL that is a definite must if you like music, gardens, and friendly folk talking about philosophy, art, and science.

Be warned though, the music can be addictive, it kept me there much longer than I intended. It was a welcome relief after trying to remember the names of all the drugs at the VMD location! Of Warburton’s categories, I would say that this is an example of innovative use of SL through establishing a community presence, and through creating social rich interactions.

There was a group discussion going on in the garden area, and it is interesting how real life like I acted. I kept my distance, and sat a little further from the group so that I didn’t disturb them. It didn’t feel right to just go up and sit among them as they seemed to be in class mode. If I recall correctly, they were talking philosophy trying to prove that they are human!

Anyway, because of the serious discussion going on, I was very aware of my “Self”. Maybe now in my 30’s I’m getting older and wiser, but I was tempted to go over and dance on their table just for a laugh, so just maybe …

The location was very organized with a welcome package, and a map of the entire area. There was also a schedule of weekly activities, so I have taken note of that and will be visiting every once in a while to enjoy the music, and listen to what’s being discussed. An interesting benefit of using SL I’ve noticed, is that even if you’re a complete stranger, and not officially a member of a community, no one seems to mind if you sit somewhere nearby and just listen to an interesting discussion, something perhaps which you wouldn’t do in “real” life.

 Over 80% of UK universities and at least 300 universities around the world teach courses or conduct research in SL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Second_Life).

After doing some research on the World Wide Web, on the SL website, Wikipedia, and a few other blogs and websites, I’m ready to leave the comfort of Holyrood Park, and do some exploration. And being a complete SL newbie, I’m not too concerned with finding a location in a subject/issue/discipline that is necessarily part of my repertoire of interests! I want to find a place that can show me what SL can do, and also what its benefits can be.  

I stumbled around a few interesting and some not so interesting locations (Mostly from http://secondlife.com/destinations/learning), and finally found a place that grabbed my attention. Address:  http://secondlife.com/destination/virtual-medical-doctor

The Virtual Medical Doctor (VMD) is a SL space released by MadPea Productions. It takes you to a time in the future when “Surgery is so minimally invasive that all you have to do is take a pill”. The aim is to learn about the human body, its vital organs, and how various diseases can be cured.

(Warburton, 2009) talks about how a SL experience can facilitate innovation in pedagogy, through: Extended and rich interactions, Visualization and contextualization, Exposure to authentic content and culture, identity play, simulation, Immersion, community presence, and content production. Of these activities, I would say that the VMD fits nicely into the Visualization and Contextualization, and Simulation categories.  

The first thing I noticed when teleporting here was that there is no stumbling about aimlessly as is the case in many SL locations. For someone who isn’t very familiar with SL, this was a welcome because I am still very much in SL learning mode, and therefore happy to find structure and direction in the learning activities where possible.

When you teleport to the VMD, you will be greeted by Poseidon!  The environment has a futuristic and very “Let's get to work” kind of feel to it.

Poseidon assumes nothing about your level of SL expertise. After Touching Poseidon, he will provide you with 4 different options:

If you’re completely new to Second Life, then the Basic Tutorial is the place to start, and after you’re confident in your ability to do a few simple things like walk around, sit on chairs, and interact with objects and characters by “Touching” them, you should be ready to begin with the VMD Tutorial.

Medical education happens on the training level where you learn about the vital human organs (Heart, Lungs, Stomach, etc.), and about medical problems that can occur in these organs.

Next comes the hard part; learning about drugs. I did try my best to understand as much as possible, but I'm not a medical person and found this section somewhat difficult!

Despite the fact that I gave up the drug section fairly quickly, I can see how interesting this kind of environment can be for medical/pharmaceutical students, looking for creative ways to help with their learning.

So after studying and learning at your own pace, and when you're somewhat confident that you've digested enough information about drugs and the body, you can move into a section filled with patients, and where you will find a number of quizzes to test your knowledge.
 

The real fun starts next. It's time to teleport to the hospital on Tupol Island. At the hospital you’ll board one of the 3 different Cheirons.

 Each Cheiron is designed to deal with a different set of medical problems. These are futuristic vehicles, which you enter, and in which you are miniaturized before you begin your journey of exploration inside the human body!  

There are scenarios and challenges, which you’re presented with while inside the body, and where you have to treat different ailments.

In the following scenario I’m faced with an ulcer inside the stomach, which I have to treat before I can progress.

And after completing my first mission I realized that in the same way I was happy to get a sticker for doing my homework when I was at primary school, I’m still very happy to get a reward after doing my homework and completing a mission in Second Life.

Overall, I found this experience a fun example of how virtual environments such as Second Life, can be used to enhance the learning experience in a very practical field such as medicine. The quizzes, the Cherions and the miniaturization process give students the ability to look at the body and its medical problems, through a different set of tools. And although there is no substitute for real practical experience with real patients, I certainly enjoyed the VMD, and I think that games such as these can make learning some very tough subjects allot more enjoyable.  

I explored this SL location on my own, but there is room in the Cheiron for a second passenger! which I can imagine would make this experience even more fun.
The VMD was only released on the 15/January/2011 so it will be interesting to find out a year from now how popular this programme is going to be.  Here's the official trailer for this SL location:

Imagine this; A world where you and your friends meet in the pub, a restaurant, or a coffee shop, order drinks, and sit down to socialise, and talk, and share your experiences. Someone starts talking about something, someone responds , two other people respond, not one after the other, but:

BbOoTh AaRrEe TtAaLlKkIiNnGg AaTt TtHhEe SsAaMmEe TtIiMe

Three and then four people start to talk, not waiting for each other to finish, and to make matters worse, you're each saying something different in the same tone, and then all 8 people join in !

Who do you focus on? can you focus on anyone? Maybe if 2 or 3 people are talking you might be able to pick out a voice but 8 people? What about 16 people? They never shut up ! But you manage to pick out something that some one is saying, and now you want to respond. Everyone is still talking VERY LOUDLY so you close you eyes to focus on your own voice, and join the conversation, or the shouting, or whatever you want to call it. You don't really know if anyone heard you, but when you finish what you're saying, you stop talking to pick out something new from the chaotic situation, and then you close your eyes, and start again.

Welcome to the world of on-line text chat ! But with a difference. You use your eyes, and not your ears. Ten conversations are going on at the same time, but it does not matter because your eyes can pick out the conversations that you want to participate in. If you want to remember what someone said earlier on, you can scroll up, read, and re-read it as many times as you like ! (If there's no video cam, you can also join the chat unshaven, in your pyjamas, listening to some music, watching TV, and eating a tub of Ben & Jerry's).

You can also save the conversation on your local drive, or on the university e-learning discussion board for future reference.

Chat can be a fantastic tool for online learning, where in a very short space of time great minds can meet, focus on a particular topic, and share their ideas. This is true especially when discussions are joined by experienced tutors (Like Rory and Sian) guiding the conversation topics at various intervals.

So until we can develop faster than light travel, go to a nearby star system (Distance and speed depending on how far back in time you want to see), and use a super high resolution telescope with a very wide lens pointed at earth in order to lip read what was said by a particular group of people at a certain time (I don't think sound can travel that far). Until we can do all this, we should certainly further explore the benefits of text chat !       

I have to admit that when I first heard about the digital natives and the digital immigrants, specifically within this environment of e-learning, my immediate thought was that the Digital Natives are teachers and lecturers (You) wanting to persuade and teach students (Us) about learning technology, so that we can migrate to a new way of learning (e-learning). 

But that is not the case ! As defined by Mark Prensky [1] the originator of this theme, the Digital Natives are students that: 

"have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using; computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age."  

But how strict is this definition? Speaking from personal experience, I was once upon a time a High School student during the early 90's in Syria, which at the time was certainly not very digitalised. My only experience of using a computer during that time was a 1 month summer course learning BASIC programming using a Commodore 64. I didn't begin using computers properly until starting university in 1995, as a Computer Systems Engineering Student at Sunderland University. I have not spent my entire life surrounded by Digital Gadgets, but I do not consider myself less comfortable using such technologies than those who have.

I turn to the Internet first rather than later for information, I enjoy experimenting with how to use new technology first before turning to a manual, and I do a fair bit of on-line socialising. So by Prensky's definition, am I a Digital Native, a Digital Immigrant? Something in between? Or are computing and technology graduates an exception to this definition? 

Also, the most complete and popular social networking site on the internet at this time is Facebook Launched in the year 2004, 3 years after Marc Prensky's paper: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants [1]. So there seems to be a new generation that came after the original Digital Natives of the late 1990's, what do we call this new group? 

  "If we ask ‘native of where?’, we begin to see that each demands a territory, a nation‐state or a landmass"[2]   

 So I am slightly confused about what is meant by Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, who belongs to these groups? Findings in [3] suggest that there are a number significant minorities within the younger generation that are not as technologically adept as their fellow students, and that there are indeed differences between age groups, and between student groups in difference locations. The paper suggests that "age maybe less important than exposure to technology", a statement which makes more sense to me than Prensky's definition.

My mother and elder members of my family have been exposed to technology for a relatively short period of their lives, but they are confident Digital consumers. And I'm not sure how they would react if I told them that in some academic and learning circles they are known as "Digital Immigrants". They would probably laugh, but even so I don't see the point in using terms that divide directly or indirectly people from each other based on their age.  

Having said all this, I do agree with Prensky's intentions. This is an age where students (of any age) have access to the conveniences of the Digital world. There are more ways to interact with each other than ever before, and they have access to anything they need when they need it. They don't even need to go to the library to find information because it can be found from home on the internet in many formats; Wikis, Videos, News Articles, Blogs, etc.

Therefore teachers must adapt and make use of this technology in order to make learning more of an effective and enjoyable process. But also, the appropriate educational bodies must provide teachers with all the support they need so they can this.  

[1]Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

[2] Digital native' and 'digital immigrant' discourses: a critique:

https://www.vle.ed.ac.uk/webct/RelativeResourceManager/Template/readings/bayneross.pdf 

[3] Net generation or Digital Natives: Is there a distinct new generation entering university?

https://www.vle.ed.ac.uk/webct/RelativeResourceManager/Template/readings/Jones_2010.pdf