I am still feeling quite invigourated from last Tuesday's classroom session in Second Life. Yes, a real time classroom session inside a "real" virtual world. Wowsers! (as Inspector Gadget would say). I did have some questions in mind that I posted in last week's blog entry; despite touching upon a couple of them, I don't think myself nor the group had any firm ideas about them. I personally feel that myself and Wray would need to immerse ourselves more into Second Life to get a sense of it; and would need to have experienced a few more teaching and learning sessions before we can get a handle on it. Mine and Wray's experiences so far have been a little superficial (see Inside the Rabbit Hole) and sketchy.

"Do we take our tutors more seriously if they are depicted as a human avatars? or can they 'command' the same kind of respect if they adopt a non human one?"

One of my questions (see above) piqued Rory's interest. I guess myself and the others on the MSc programme latched onto the comments made in the Taylor (2001) article that referenced users choice to become animal avatars; and that it's role was one of superficiality and playfulness. Infact, one of the group actually turned up to the session sporting an animal's head upon a human body (very Egyptian methinks). The work and research by John Suler, a cyberpsychologist, conducted within the The Palace virtual world identifies a number of psychological and visual profile types.

According to Suler (2007b), people who choose to become animal avatars do so because "animals symbolize certain traits or attributes in myth as well as popular culture" which may represent "some real aspect of his or her identity, or some characteristic admired by the person". Suler goes as far as to liken the use of animal avatars to that of the Native American "totem", which are seen as a "symbol of one's essential nature or potential". In January 2007, Suler visited Second Life and felt that his initial research in The Palace stood up reasonably well with respect to SL with a few notable exceptions - namely making money (Suler, 2007a).

"What kinds of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours will emerge in the virtual world which would not normally manifest themselves in the real world (being bound by social mores, etc.)?"

Henry Keil, who had chosen to portray his avatar as a balding Afro-Caribbean man, found a fascinating article on ageism and prejudice that occured inside Second Life (Koreen, 2007). This suggested to me that Second Life is not as liberated, non-judgemental and all-inclusive as it would like to think itself to be. The three personality types (real / virtual / projected) put forward by Gee (2003) and Taylor (2001) would seem to imply that the "real" personality type is probably the more dominant one; or else people are projecting personalities that they wouldn't normally exhibit in Real Life.

Reynolds (2007) suggests that far from liberating us, virtual worlds like Second Life seems to "reinforce and indeed spread the dominant ideologies of the time", but acknowledges that they have the "potential to liberate".

It would be interesting to hear from Henry how his avatar got on under his current guise. Though it is a little hard to tell, Wray is actually an albino goth - and that comes loaded with all sorts of literary, cultural and mythological symbolism. Indeed, Wray is the metaphorical white rabbit.

References

DiGiuseppe, N. & Nardi, B., (2007). Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters: Class Choice in World of Warcraft. First Monday. 12(5), 7 May 2007. [online]. Available at: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1831/1715 [Accessed 08 November 2007]  

Gee, J.P., (2003). What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Koreen, (2007). Agism in Second Life. EdGames Blog. [online]. Available at: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec670/edgames/2007/11/agism-is-second-life.htm [Accessed 15 November 2007]  

Reynolds, R., (2007). Do virtual worlds liberate us? Terra Nova Blog. [online]. Available at: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/11/do-virtual-worl.html [Accessed 15 November 2007]  

Rymaszewski, M. et al, (2006). Second Life: The Official Guide. London: John Wiley & Sons. 

Suler, J., (2007a). Second Life, Second Chance. The Psychology of Cyberspace Blog. [online]. Available at: http://psycyber.blogspot.com/2007/01/second-life-second-chance.html [Accessed 15 November 2007] 

Suler, J., (2007b). The Psychology of Avatars and Graphical Space in Multimedia Chat Communities. The Psychology of Cyberspace. [online]. Available at: http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psyav.html [Accessed 15 November 2007]

Taylor, T.L., (2001). Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds. In: Schroeder, R. (ed) The Social Life of Avatars. London: Springer-Verlag Ltd. pp. 40-61. 

"Five years from now a social networking site without a 3D universe will look like a dinosaur."
Mark Kern, President of Red 5 Studios. March 2007

I went along to the Tuesday evening induction session for Second Life that was conducted by Fiona and Sian. This was followed up by a session on how to build objects. Despite having a Second Life account for just under a year, I have to confess that I haven't done a lot with it. In my role as a Learning Technologist, I need to keep an eye on what is piquing the interest of the H.E. sector and what tools and technologies may interest my academics - we also have the contentious issue of not allowing Second Life to run on University desktops; bandwidth being cited as the main problem.

The world of the metaverse is something of a hot potato at the moment. The BBC announced in January 2007 that they were planning to build a child-friendly environment called CBBC World. Metaplace are planning to offer free tools for non-techies to develop their own virtual worlds. In March 2007, Sony unveiled it's offering to Playstation 3 owners called Home, where the rich, games quality graphics would give Second Life a huge run for its' money as well as attracting a much younger, trendier market to the already overcrowded fora of World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. The Sony publicity machine went into overdrive and released this statement:

"'Home' is a real-time interactive online world much like Linden Lab’s 'Second Life' and other so-called 'metaverse', except it’s designed for PlayStation 3, Sony’s newest home console. Millions of people now enter 'Second Life' on personal computers, moving avatars, or computer graphics images of themselves, in a virtual universe. Major companies are also setting up shop in 'Second Life', and analysts see great potential for such virtual worlds as a communication tool and real-life business."

Have a look at the trailer that Sony released to see what all the fuss is about; incidently they are offering this as a free download. However, this enterprise has subsequently been delayed until 2008.

Despite the competition, Second Life goes on by putting on live music concerts; degree shows; demonstrating what mental illnesses look like; continuing to promote the application of education; and anything else that makes a thriving community tick. Virtual Worlds are going to be an important tool in the future for the likes of role-playing; language acquisition and running simulations (like modelling diseases) that can advance our understanding about different ideas, concepts and working in dangerous environments or situations. IBM are also doing their bit for the metaverse by developing assistive technologies to help blind people traverse these worlds. Whilst Moveable Life provides a web interface to access your Second Life personae - not that I have been able to get it to work!

Whilst the teenagers of the Ipsos MORI (2007) report would consider University's who would use technology for technologies sake as being "sad" and "tragic". The EduServ Foundation, on the other hand, has been funding a series of reports looking at the take-up of Second Life within the UK Higher and Further Education sectors.

This to my mind is still a fun, addictive and emergent technology. I am looking forward to next week to explore how Second Life, or indeed other virtual worlds, can be used to support teaching and learning and to discover the opportunities and pitfalls that it may bring. Such questions that spring to mind include:

• What makes a classroom? Is it walls, desks and books? or can we think and teach outside of these physical constraints?
• Do we take our tutors more seriously if they are depicted as a human avatars? or can they "command" the same kind of respect if they adopt a non human one?
• How will our choice of gender be perceived?
• How will Gee's (2003) three personalities: physical, virtual and projected come into play? How do they inform and shape our digital identity? (digidenity?)
• Will Taylor's (2001) notion of group, affiliation and social dynamics be easy to spot in Second Life as they do in real life?
• What kinds of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviours will emerge in the virtual world which would not normally manifest themselves in the real world (being bound by social mores, etc.)?

References

DiGiuseppe, N. & Nardi, B., (2007). Real Genders Choose Fantasy Characters: Class Choice in World of Warcraft. First Monday. 12(5), 7 May 2007. [online]. Available at: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1831/1715 [Accessed 08 November 2007]  

Gee, J.P., (2003). What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. 

Ipsos MORI, (2007). Student Expectations Study: Findings from Preliminary Research. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectationsbp.aspx [Accessed 08 November 2007]

Rymaszewski, M. et al, (2006). Second Life: The Official Guide. London: John Wiley & Sons. 

Taylor, T.L., (2001). Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds. In: Schroeder, R. (ed) The Social Life of Avatars. London: Springer-Verlag Ltd. pp. 40-61.