I started of reading the Bayne (2004) and Cousin (2006) texts. I am getting the feeling that Bayne's perspective is (at least for me) way too much dominated by her cultural studies background, at least in the two publications in the course I have read so far. Yes, I am putting myself at risk here in this online environment, I just transferred the (substantial) course fee (from my own account, no employer to pay for me) and I very well know that Bayne is the program director. I understand the importance of philosophy well enough to know its limits when it comes to guidance in the practices that I am familiar with.

One quote from the Bayne article I'd like to comment on: 'Yet it is rather hard to see where the virtual shanty-town might emerge among the regulated avenues of the 'e-learning system'.' (p. 314) They are here now, the shanty-towns, they're called social networks. Unfortunately, these social networks are just as much closed environments as many of the 'e-learning systems' like WebCT, or Second Life, all worlds of their own, and I have a hard time connecting them all. (I twittered this week with the mscel hashtag about plugjam, related to this, need to look at it closer.) Below I give a description of my PLE, as I see my attempt at connecting. A solution that works for me and is portable enough.

The Cousin reading read fine in the beginning, much there to recognize. I liked the McLuhan paraphrase on p.119: 'every kind of technology is an extension of our nervous system', echoing the readings of week 3 (Yee (why virtual drawers) and Clark's natural born cyborgs). Wonderful to see also how Tapscott is invoked (p. 120) to support the argument here although we discussed the whole net generation to death in week 2. And then the description of how VLEs enhance and thus confirm existing academic practice (p. 120). I went to Google Books to look up the Cuban quote: 'When teachers adopt technological innovations, these changes typically maintain rather than alter existing class room practices'. (Larry Cuban (2001), Oversold and Underused, p. 71), printed it out and stapled it to the back of p. 123. (Gosh, and I thought I had weened myself of paper over the past year ;-). (Yes, there's lots to tease out here, Clara.;-) I am starting to lose Cousin at the end of that same page. Yes, I think the technology is transformative (or disrupting as we like to say nowadays) but not a glimpse into which direction we would need to look. At the final 'rhizome' discussion I am lost completely.

Which is quite disappointing, since two texts I read earlier this year:

Jon Mott, David Wiley (2009), Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network, in education 15(2), http://www.ineducation.ca/article/open-learning-cms-and-open-learning-network (accessed October 27, 2010)

Jonathan Mott (2010), Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network, EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine 33(1), http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/EnvisioningthePostLMSEraTheOpe/199389 (accessed October 27, 2010)

where somewhat of an eyeopener to me when it comes to my growing dissatisfaction with VLEs (or CMSs as Mott calls them). They are used to 'maintain rather than alter existing class room practices', to quote Cuban again. I won't go into detail about these two (overlapping) texts here, but I would really like your view on the first one, since this one also connects - at least in my view - the technological affordances of web 2.0 with educational theory.

On to my PLE. (I'll send you a scan if you'd like on my drawing / scribbling, if you'd like, that shaped this text. Oh  no, did I manage to get it in? Yes, I did! [You do not have permission to access this file])

Before I start: I travel a lot and don't like to haul notebooks around, I have tried netbooks, but their keyboards don't work for me, and anyway in most places that I am there's always a notebook around for me to use. I am a Windows user, so if your favourite's a Mac you might want to bear with me through the beginning, it's short though.

My typical taskbar (open applications at the bottom of the screen) looks like this:

file manager|notepad|Internet Explorer|Google Chrome|Skype|MSN Messenger

Working outward in, the heavy stuff is in the center. Skype and Messenger are basically used as chat tools although I use Skype a lot for (video) calls and file exchange. Messenger is there because I don't want my 78 yo mother to deal with the daunting possibilities of Skype now that she learned only a few years ago to chat with me with Messenger. And I have a brother roaming the world - Malaysia last week, I believe - inspecting fertizilizer plants who prefers Messenger.

File manager gives me access to a folder called My Library. It has over 500 mostly pdf files of articles and books that I have read over the past five years, annotated and highlighted (using Adobe Professional, now switching to PDF Exchange Viewer as this is a free solution). Very poorly organized (flat folder, I try to use a system in file naming, but in the end I can search these files). My main worry here is syncing the shit between the notebook that I happen to be on, the notebook I use most to maintain this library, and the USB stick that I carry around as backup. A cloud solution is near, I believe, I hope.

Notepad is a very, very basic text editor (I am typing this blog post in Notepad). No distractions and it gets nicely rid of any disturbing mark-up.

The heavy stuff is in the middle, both browsers, both accessible anywhere.

Internet Explorer. Outlook Web Exchange on the first tab. Nice crisp interface (much like the Messenger mail or now called Live Mail that I use for private purposes). Nearly 1 GB of mail accessible to me anywhere in the world. But that's my work mail. Second tab: Confluence, my university's intranet / wiki. Boy, I will miss that one. Third tab: browsing. Right now it's on Holyrood Park Hub, and from there to the blogs, WebCT, SMS, Library without hardly an extra login, beautifully done. Fourth tab might be used for Facebook or LinkedIn, my favourite social networks, and of course there's the Google search bar used many times during the day. Whenever I come across an interesting link, it is saved to delicious (don't ask me where the dots go). Delicious is on the browser's toolbar as well.

Chrome is for Google Reader, keeping up with my 50+ blogs. The Gmail account that I'm switching to. Google Docs for more advanced editing tasks, sharing documents and even concurrent editing of documents (combined with a Skype call). Finally Google sites - but at the moment my wife and I are using it only to build a cookbook and get rid of all the loose stuff. Still, Google sites might be used by me during this course / program. Delicious on the toolbar here as well.

And of course I haven't mentioned all the other uses of my notebook (iTunes, watching DVDs, occasionnally TV since I don't have such an appliance, Dutch radio whenever I get nostalgical in Germany, banking etc. etc.).

There you have it, the first post of week 6. Hope to find some time to reflect upon all this craziness soon.

One more anecdote before I make my point.

I have a sister who works as a teacher in primary education (4 - 12 yo). I have a daughter who works in secondary education (12 - 18 yo). I have spent the past 35 years of my life in universities, as a student, as a teacher, as a student counselor, as a librarian, and now as a student again. If there is one thing I've learned, it is how deeply conservative all these three teaching / learning environments are, and maybe for a good reason, but that's not the point I am / was trying to make here.

>I don’t think I would necessarily see SL as a ‘gaming world’ but more as an alternate, virtual world.  I wonder - are you making an assumption that gaming and learning worlds are different?  Are they?  If we are thinking about learning as collaborative, and thus relying on the social, aren’t there lessons from the one that could be applicable to the other?<

Maybe. Maybe. Yes.

But anyway, I was not making that assumption, I was wondering why the texts we got, notably Boellstorff and Taylor, only dealt with how people experience online worlds as a gaming / interaction platform, and not at all with what I would expect from an introductory course in e-learning, that is, what the relevance of these worlds for learning is in the conservative environments that I know. I also have the impression that SL is quite beyond its peak use, I hardly ever see it mentioned anymore in the past two years in the 50+ blogs that I follow, just to keep up with trends in 'net culture and higher education. As with the net generation theme, I wonder whether the IDEL course is running behind on what's happening on the 'net at large, and maybe not connecting enough to the world of practitioning teachers.

I also observed that much of the literature was quite old and, because the texts deal with internet phenomena, most probably outdated. It made me wonder when this part of the course was renewed for the last time. Please challenge that assumption ;-).

>As for immersion – is it worth contrasting this with the idea of authentic learning?  It might also be useful to think about how immersion in specific social practices might relate to learning as immersion in particularly communities (a la http://www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm ).<

You're missing the point I was trying to make. Before you can make SL work as a tool in the practical learning environments that I know, teachers and students would need to immerse themselves in SL as a tool for quite some hours before they can actually see how it could help them achieve their educational goals. Not to mention the support disaster with SL viewers not running on outdated hardware or for whatever stupid reason, I've seen enough of that, even with the tech savvy students in this course in the past two weeks (praise to Fiona who was, I think, responsible for handling that shit). I have no problem with the IDEL educational goal of getting students acquainted with the many possibilities, including SL.

I will dig deeper into this point in week 6, when it comes to the actual use that is being made in universities of LMSs or VLEs. Most is simple file upload of presentation slides. And now we see an enormous growth in canned video lectures being uploaded to these systems and to iTunesU (for marketing purposes, maybe?). Wow, really innovative.

Addendum, added October 27, 2010

Just came across this very interesting review study of educational uses of SL:

Hew, K.F. & Cheung, W.S. (2010). Use of three-dimensional (3-D) immersive virtual worldsin K-12 and higher education settings. A review of the research. British Journal of Educational Technology 41(1), 33–55

Worth a read. A literature search yielded 470 articles, only 15 of them where about empirical research into the use and effects of SL on teaching and learning. The single most prevalent research method was descriptive, only one study had an experimental setup using control groups. This final study failed to show a significant difference between three test groups in terms of test scores.

Other results mainly confirm the upsides and downsides already noted. Conclusion: we know next to nothing about the usefulness of SL for learning.

Hi Hans

As promised, I want to give you some mid-way feedback on how I think the blog is shaping up in terms of the final assessment. Basically, things are going reasonably well for this stage of the process.  The criteria for assessment are:

* Reflection – you are posting thoughtfully, linking the course materials to your experience and professional practice where possible.  As we’ve discussed, I think there’s more opportunity for you to develop this as a sustained reflection, drawing together different readings and concepts as you move through the course. 

* Regularity – you are posting regularly and substantially.

* Knowledge and understanding - You’re demonstrating a sound understanding of the technologies and ideas introduced. Again, as we’ve discussed, I’d encourage you to keep developing towards a more synthesised, coherent framework.  You might find it useful to look over the way ‘knowledge and understanding’ aspects of the postgraduate common marking scheme criteria are described on pages 25-27 of the Programme Handbook.

* Communication style and multimodality – the weblog has a clear sense of ‘voice’.  The ideas discussed are often well argued, though there are times when I think you could tease out further what you mean (which I’ve generally flagged in my comments).  I’d encourage you to play a little bit with blog in terms of image, media and linkage.

So, in summary, I think things are going generally well with some opportunities to develop your blog further as a critical reflective piece.

Please let me know whether this is any use to you – I’m more than happy to chat through the blog process.  Also, I would like to develop my own practice further, so I’d appreciate your mid-blog feedback too!  Are my comments useful?  What could I do to be supporting your blogging more?

Cheers

C.

p.s. if you would like to paste this review into your blog as an artefact of some sort, you’re most welcome. 

Well, there's actually one thing that I am happy about regarding week 4 and 5 and that was to see librarians actively involved in the learning environment. Something I argued for already 9 years ago (Roes, Hans (2001), Digital libraries and education: trends and opportunities, D-Lib Magazine, July / August, http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july01/roes/07roes.html).

On to the reasons why I am not happy.

1. I already commented on the Boellstorff chapter. Many stories in there about how people experience SL, but in how far is it relevant to the subject of the course? I asked for perspective, but did not get a real answer. In week 5 we get a very similar text from Taylor, this one from 2002 about a virtual world even crappier than SL. Again, stories about how people experience this world, again etnography.

My point is that you can learn something from these texts, but what you learn is how people experience these 'worlds' as a gaming annex social environment, in both texts there is absolutely nothing about how these 'worlds' would be experienced as learning environment. In both texts the word 'learning' is almost absent.

Also, both texts are ethnographies about people that immerse themselves deeply in such worlds. My question would be how deeply people - students, and teachers - would need to immerse themselves in such 'worlds' before they become adequate environments for teaching and learning? I am not sure, but see the next point.

2. In week 4 and 5 I attended 4 meetings in SL. Yes, I can see some progression in how the tool is being used in discussions. The discussion I attended last night was much more focussed than the one last week. On the other hand, we had only 5 participants last night, including the tutor (Pancha / Marshall, hey hey, a librarian!). Also unlike the discussion last week, Pancha was now present all the time and was actively steering the discussion. So I wonder what caused the progression, the fact that the students were more experienced, or the facts that the group was smaller and actively being led. I guess the latter factors are more important. And an important takeaway for me: I suspect 5 to 6 participants is about the max a group chat can have. (From my teaching days I remember research into the optimal / maximal sice of working groups, I'd suspect that there is research as well in this area.)

And of course, like I said last week, the meeting is still basically a group chat. Yesterday night I discovered that for the most time I just concentrated on the chat, and when I looked at the screen, I was mostly looking at the avs' names rather than at the avs themselves.

Okay, maybe it is just my lack of imagination. In this regard I'd also like to respond to a remark by Clara last week about whether or not I was experiencing 'flow'. A concept I always liked (although I wished that the guy who came up with it had an easier to spell name ;-), and also a concept I have tried to apply in my management positions: challenge people beyond their abilities, but not too much beyond. Incidentally, the Gee text also describes flow, second paragraph on p. 70, without any reference, but than there are no references in the Gee text at all. Back to 'flow' for me in SL. The simple fact is that I don't feel challenged by SL, let alone intimidated, as I have the impression some of my fellow students are. Again, it maybe my lack of imagination, but it's something I can't help.

Now, of course it is important for me to know how people might experience a 'world' like SL, and in a sense I can really follow all these stories in the Boellstorff and Taylor texts. But again, I am dearly missing the link to the relevance of all these stories for learning.

And, more importantly, I think Clara remarked a few weeks ago that technologies in a sense can also hinder learning. Now, I don't think SL is an obstacle there, but chat is a tool that at least for me is not really suited for a good discussion. It forces one to use short sentences, and slows my thinking down to the speed at which I can type. Maybe it's my background as an economist, but I can't help finding it a most inefficient way of communicating. The Yee text for me confirms this: games are all about slowing you down.

3. Learning then. Here we have three texts that at least have the words learning in their titles. Warburton, Dickey, and Gee. The first disappointment here is that Gee and Dickey are from 2002 and 2003 respectively. It made me want to shout at the librarians involved here: surely you could come up with more up to date texts here?

I will not repeat what I said about the Warburton and Dickey texts last week. I had another look at the Dickey text and although her analysis in terms of affordances and constraints is worthwhile, the example she uses - Intro to RWX Modeling - is in the end not a professional example. At the time she researched her article one would probably not find such a professional example, but that only reinforces my point that a more up to date text would have been very helpful.

4. Which brings me finally to the Gee text. Gee (that's a pun, yes), I thought, so now we have a linguistics professor that seems to be developing his own learning theory based on his individual experiences with a particular computer game. And gee, not a single reference in that text except for a short bibliographic note at the end that mentions some research into learning. Already on the second page (52) he puts me completely off with the remark 'your character - that is you'. No, you are playing your character, there's a fundamental difference there. And there is this strange second paragraph on p. 57: "One sort of limitation video games certainly bring up to real-world baby-boomers like me is that they do not reward - in fact they punish - some of my most cherished ways of learning and thinking (e.g. being too quick to want to get to a goal without engaging in sufficient prior nonlinear exploration)." Now, I recognize what Yee said about games slowing you down, and, being a baby boomer myself, I can see his point of too quickly wanting to reach a goal, but too quickly wanting to get to a goal is _not_ a way of learning, but hey, I am not a linguist, and English is not my first language, so who knows.

On p. 58 and 59 we find paragraphs beginning with "It is not uncommon ...", and "It has been argued ...". Citation needed, I thought, Wikipedia style.

On p. 61/62 we get to what seems to be the core of Gee's learning theory: entice to try, put in lots of effort, achieve meaningful success. Seems plausible to me, but my theoretical background in pedagogy is just not good enough to judge the validity of this. I really would like to have seen some discussion here (I might start one today, I am not that active on the discussion boards). Also, an interesting question would have been, assuming there is some validity to his learning theory, how Gee's principles might apply to the design of e-learning.

So there you have it, the reasons for my unhappiness. And yes, maybe I do want to get too quickly to my goals ;-).

 

In the article Assessing the global accessibility of the Internet, digital divide is caused by different level of computer skills, and factors such as ethnicity and language. It also compares infrastructure cost, including connectivity infrastructure and service cost, among Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East and North America, by using methodology and finding with discussion method. The result provides the gap exists already and how to narrow down it is still an issue to look into, for example who will pay for that progress?

Experiential learning by means of playing games either in real life with other participants or virtually in an online gaming environment according to Gee (1) draws on the experience, beliefs and moral values of the player’s real world identity. In turn the player gains knowledge by experimenting safely in a learning environment, knowledge which then blends into and transforms his real identity that as a result promotes change to a new identity. The centre of learning therefore is based on own subjective experience and it is experience that guides what the person learns and when it is learned according to David Kolb (2). The desired outcome is a transfer of emotions, notions, capabilities that derive from a safe learning experience where the learner has had an active part in the evolution of the learning environment and the events that have lead to the learning experience.  Thiagi (3) and many other use games regularly as a means to destructure and restructure learning.

Unlike Boellsdorf virtual identities in SL Gee’s players enter a set framework given by the game design with a choice of “unique backgrounds” and features. The creation of the virtual identity is framed by design and not as in SL a free choice and construction of the person. Consequently a game seems to be a more structured way of learning than an identity in a SL environment. Throughout the game the decisions made and the development of the game add to and develop the gamer’s virtual identity as foreseen by the game design, whereas in SL the rules and rewards are defined by the social conventions created and implemented by each individual group (assuming that we don’t enter a preset domain but that we meet on ‘neutral’ grounds’). The choices made according to Gee are filtered by a projected identity that acts an intermediary between the real and the virtual identity. While in both cases the environment provides anonymity the mandatory gap between the virtual and the real world Boellsdorf stressed as being foundational in Gee’s version seems to be bridged by the projected identity that serves as a ‘transmitter’ or ‘synapsis’ between both worlds.  In my previous post I pointed out that in my view even in SL there is a reciprocal ‘contamination’ between the experiences in the real and the virtual world. Gee’s view on using games to transfer and enhance learning seems to confirm this impression. The express purpose for playing online in Gee is to learn. So why and how can playing be an effective learning tool?

Experiential learning expert David Kolb proposes a model of learning cycle with four learning styles: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active, experimentation, which all engage the learner at some stage of the game. Kolb suggests that a learner enters the game with his own personal style and moves along the cycle during the game experiencing and interacting with all four styles. By playing the game the person is actively involved in the choices and decisions, thinks before and after about the alternative choices and their consequences, is able to take the experience out of context and to a meta level of understanding where it will enhance what the person already knows and will support with ‘tangible’ activities that promote learning-by-doing.

http://holyroodpark.net/danielag/files/-1/1091/diagramm0004.jpg

Learning cycle

Source: http://weatherhead.case.edu/executive-education/programs/subjects/e

To have a successful learning transfer Gee sees three basic requirements that need to be fulfilled:

1-     The learner must be enticed to try (…)

2-     The learner must be enticed to put in lots of effort even if he or she begins with little motivation to do so

3-     The learner must achieve some meaningful success (…)

How can that be achieved? Gee admits that video games are good for some type of learners, so that would confirm Kolb’s different learning styles and different approaches to learning. How can games be used effectively in education, higher, professional or any other education to provide an interesting entry point for all learners?

Based on my experience as an experiential outdoor facilitator games have first to be designed carefully and then briefed and de-briefed well. The briefing serves to set down the framework, similar to a game design in an online environment with its basic rules, choices, characters and roles. The de-briefing serves to transfer the findings of the game (the virtual world and the identity the learner assumed there) into the real world, they need to answer to the question of “how can I apply this in my daily life/work?” and serve as a bridge between both worlds and both identities.

Briefing and debriefing should aim at enticing the learner to try, to offer a safe environment to learn detached from his real life and the identity he or she is required to have in a specific semiotic domain. A feeling of safety is important as well as willingness to commit which might be achieved by showing first that there are no repercussions in real life and second ‘what is in for me/him/her’ or expressed differently “what will I get out of it?, what will my success look like?” And it must be clear that success is closely related to how much effort is put in the task. It should be clear to the learner that the responsibility for success and reward are in his own hands.

Is that enough to motivate people to risk doing something which might make them look stupid, inept or clumsy? Indeed, this is a major obstacle in the real experiential world which requires a lot of ‘pedagogical care’ (Barnett, 2007) or as Gee phrases it, to learn actively and critically. Personally I quite like the idea of identities as an ongoing development program where knowledge is used as a catalyst for developing a new identity and to form bridges from the one’s old identity to the new one. The virtual world has the advantage of offering anonymity which provides a feeling of safety that in turn reduces risk and increases the risk readiness for the learner to allow himself to get involved in the game. How can we ensure that the real world identity will profit from the virtual world identity?

 (1)   James Paul Gee, (2004) “Learning and Identity: what does it mean to be a half-elf?” from What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy”, pp51-71, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

(2)   David Kolb, Learning from Experience, http://www.learningfromexperience.com/ accessed on 17^th October 2010

(3) http://www.thiagi.com/

In the article by Luyt, the system of XO seems have its own product line. So I was wondering besides the hardware cost, what is the potential software and resources cost further to enhance a better using of the XO.

I had already mentioned that I did not find the core readings for this week very helpful. The Warburton article too technical and only in passing mentioning some uses of SL for learning. The Boellstorff chapter not even mentioning the word learning (and not even learn, for that matter).

So, I was hoping for something better when I started reading the Dickey article. One thing that struck me was that the article is from 2003 and not about Second Life. But then again, the way Active Worlds is described shows very much similarity with SL.

The distinction being made between discourse tools, experiential tools and resource tools seems useful to me.

The analysis of the affordances and constraints of Active Worlds is something that for 90 percent also carries over to SL. It makes you wonder just how little progress there has been in this area in the last 10 or 11 years, Dickey somewhere (ah yeah, p. 109) mentions that her data are from 1998 / 1999.

So, where does this leave us all?

1. I am still not over the feeling of being lost. I know how to move around in SL, how to get to the meetings in time, how to chat there and, hey, even to save a chat in a notecard and drop it on Pancha. Where I am lost is that I don't see how this week fits into the overall idea of the IDEL course.

2. I had intended to do a search for some more recent literature on the educational uses of SL, but haven't found the time. It's hard enough already to catch up after the lost week and in the final weeks of my employment of Jacobs. I also would have liked to explore some SL educational sites. Frank had a reference somewhere in the discussion boards, but again, not found the time to get around that.

I'll be having a day off on Wednesday so I can do the week 5 reading, and be on track again.

After reading Yee's (2008) The Unbearable Likeness of Being, a couple of thoughts occurred to me.

One is that I wonder whether this whole fuss about bodies might have to do with our conception of what virtual reality is (or could be). Yee's article starts with a quote from Barlow ('Suddenly I don't have a body anymore ...') If this was a virtual reality thing with like video helmet and data gloves (the movie Tron comes to mind, or, even more extreme, The Matrix trilogy), than, yes, I could follow that people feel disembodied in a virtual world. To describe Second Life as a virtual world in this sense is ridiculous, because you are very aware of yourself sitting behind a screen looking at the back of the head of your avatar, looking at other avatars. Hell, not even the experience is 3D, it's an utterly flat world and you really need to stretch your phantasy to imagine it as being 3D. Somehow this echoes with Yee's observation that in a textual multiuser online game his embodiment was 'salient in a way I'd never experienced in either physical reality or graphical worlds.'

Yee has two other observations that ring a bell with me.

The first one is that 'Games are all about slowing you down ...' This was the experience I had in the two Second Life sessions we had last week. The second session where we discussed, or rather should discuss, the literature made this awfully clear. The tutor was hardly around, spending her time picking up lost avatars probably. The discussion was a chat, much like the Skype chat we had two weeks earlier, with second Life functionng effectively as a wall paper to that chat. It, the chat, took well over an hour, if you reread it, it takes you about 5 minutes. What an inefficient way of achieving things.

What really hit me is Yee's following remark: 'If you were using a virtual world for work, why on earth would you want people to walk places, open virtual file drawers, be blocked by virtual walls, or have to figure out what to put on in the morning?' Exactly. Our thinking about how we have always done things offline influences pretty heavily the way we do things online, and as a consequence, we are many times disappointed in what technology has to offer.