While reading works by authors in the area of social media, hypertext writing and academic literacies, I have come across words, and terms not used very often in mainstream English. I will present some of these terms here while reflecting on questions that academic institutions and education as a whole need to address while incorporating new collaborative digital technology.

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. 

According to the Educause publication, 7 things you should know about personal learning environments, PLEs:

• comprise the tools, communities, and services (not necessarily restricted to the online) that constitute the individual platforms learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals
• and thus illustrate how individuals approach the task of learning
• because of what has been said above, PLSs are learner-centric
• as they put the learner in charge of their own learning processes
• and also promote authentic learning by incorporating expert feedback into learning activities and resource
• PLEs allow students to draw connections from a growing matrix of resources that they select and organise and thus become an extension of the historical model of individual research
• this way they require students to engage in ongoing decision making to maintain, organise and grow their learning environments (this is the stage I am at and which is illustrated by my iGoogle pages)
• but, what is more important, PLEs constitute an environment where ideas are generated, problems queried, and content created and where feedback becomes the combined output of peers, colleagues, and friends as well as experts and critics
• what I have learnt about PLEs and what I consider to be a task for me now is that my PLE should integrate the resources that include the work and voice of others as readily as a my own critical reflection and scholarly work

I hope the image below reflects what my ePLE looks like now and what changes I am planning to introduce to address the fact that I should move from just listening in and reading to actively contributing to the communities, sharing and collaborating. That would be in vein of learning by doing and teaching others in order to maximise your own learning.

You can see a PDF version here. 

A visual evaluation of my wiki migration experiment, its benefits and drawbacks plus a host of questions:

A link to a live map can be found here. There are notes explaining the features of the map (an icon next to the central bubble of the mindmap).

How I acquired a virtual life in Second Life.

Click on the image below to read on about

• my personal reflections and impressions 
• more academic implications in the areas of selfhood, co-presence and implications for education

This is what Clara wrote in her mid-course feedback:

* Reflection - Does the weblog demonstrate sustained reflection on the course

content and its application for the participant’s professional practice?

You are impressively demonstrating sustained reflection. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing how you relate the course materials and environments to your own learning experiences, practice and areas of interest.

* Regularity -  Are entries into the weblog frequent and substantial enough to

demonstrate such sustained reflection? Are they spread throughout the duration of the course?

Your postings are regular and substantial demonstrating the sustained reflection required for the weblog.

* Knowledge and understanding - Does the weblog demonstrate a good understanding of the technologies and ideas introduced?  Does it show a critical awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of a range of technologies and pedagogical approaches?

You are meeting this criterion very well.  I’m left in no doubt as to the intelligent, thoughtful engagement with the concepts and technologies and am impressed with the way you draw readings together to create your own frame for understanding.  I have enjoyed your exploration of ideas beyond the strict focus on the course materials – since this course is about exploring digital environments in relation to learning, I see these as ‘variations on a theme’ rather than being off-track.  :)  I would encourage you to delve into the course readings a little more, but having seeing where you are going with this in the ‘Prenksyan polemics’ part of your wiki, I have no doubt you are on track for this.

* Communication style and multimodality -  Is the style of the weblog vivid and personal? Are the ideas discussed well-structured and well-argued? Does it make creative use of the weblog form via inclusion of image, media and linkage?

The weblog (and now wiki!) are clearly expressing a vivid and engaging personal style.  The play with creativity and visuality makes for a thought-provoking as well as aesthetically pleasing ‘read’.  I can only continue to encourage you in this vein and look forward to seeing what you will do next!  :)

Immersive Education was one of the many companys that I had on my ‘To Visit' list at BETT. Media Stage is a 3D virtual perforamce stage. Users are involved in script-writing, casting, set building, propping, directing, lighting, audio-recording, editing and camera skills:

Immersive Education: Students build and populate their sets, select their characters and arrange lighting and cameras using objects from the software library. Character movements, lighting and cameras are in their full control. Students can:

• Record or type in character dialogue and see it performed with automatic lip-synchronisation
• Control character movements, gestures and emotions
• Set camera positions and live edit
• Save and share performances

John Griffiths from Immersive Education gave me a demonstration of the software. I have to say I was very impressed! It is amazing and almost freaky how realistic you can make your characters. Having an old woman character called Enid say ‘Hello' in my voice was just incredible!

This software will be/is fantastic for role play. In fact I am lead to believe that it is being used with young offenders, making them realise and understand the consequence of their actions on their victims.

Here is a clip that Ewan McIntosh shot during a Teachmeet in 2006 where media stage was being demonstrated. Click here

Here is another clip where the topic was MacBeth. Click Here

Intro

There are certain domains in which virtual experience seems of little comparison to an in-world one (consider on-line confessions or learning how to skydive). And yet, some of our learned contemporaries never cease to prove us wrong.

Having heard of schools of languages offering classes in Second Life (such as the Lingualand school in Krakow, Poland), I decided to explore a less obvious example of SL use. Inspired by an idea in the Warburton’s text (the briefly mentioned PREVIEW project) and a number of other articles discussing e-learning in nursing and medicine (for a fuller list of my findings please check below) I decided to locate the Second Life PREVIEW project facility. And indeed, I had no problem finding it and was allowed to run a quick trial.

Please note that simultaneously a number of related projects are already available, including Second Life Medical and Consumer Health Libraries (Healthinfo Island—funded by a grant from the US National Library of Medicine) and VNEC (Virtual Neurological Education Centre—developed at the University of Plymouth, UK), as well as HABITAT, MOOSE and PLaNET projects.

About the project

The PREVIEW Project, provided by the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences (a partnership between St George's, University of London and Kingston University) aims at training future paramedics in contextualised environments. The island is located here, and the project’s website with a more exhaustive description can be found here.

Provided with a nice welcome pack (including the ER outfit) the student is free to roam the training area between a number of locations (a street, an underground station, etc.) in which a variety of possible health-/life- threatening situations have occurred.

The PREVIEW experience

When a student approaches the emergency site a short text appears providing details of the circumstances (e.g. the cause of the accident, if the casualty is breathing or if there is any visible bleeding, etc.). What follows is a series of possible actions to be taken by a paramedic, the choice of which is briefly followed by another set of changing circumstances or new options to choose from. The accident site is often accompanied by a media-tutorial screen. Fret not, dear disciple, for there is no time limit to take appropriate action nor patients’ screams to be heard. What there is, however, is a fantastic opportunity to visualise the emergency situations in life-like contexts and practise various life-saving strategies individually or in a group.

More in PREVIEW

Apart from the Second Life interface, the project is supported by the blog, a dedicated Youtube channel, student experience surveys, related academic journals and links to useful/related websites.

Advantages

My short list of advantages of learning a medical profession in SL will inevitably map those of Warburton’s, with visualisation and contextualisation in the lead. With a number of various pre-loaded actions that a paramedic may take, experimenting and making errors poses no real threat. I can imagine that the SL training may greatly help in automating responses in at least the most common of circumstances. Through immersion and multiple repetitions a paramedic novice may practise ad nauseam, with the feeling of actually performing treatment.

Disadvantages

To the catalogue of potential drawbacks listed, unerringly, by Warburton (e.g. the Identity problem), I would like to add some specific dangers I perceive in learning paramedics online. Namely, the already mentioned comfort of no time limit to perform an action, or the potentially misleading selection of choices, while in real life these may be strictly limited by the very individual circumstances. I dread to think what possible harm could be done by sticking to the routine and ignoring other pieces of information that had previously been ignored by the virtual world builders.

Related resources

• Kamel Boulos, M. N. et al. (2007). Second Life: an overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical and health education. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 24, 233–245. (also available from Google Scholar)

• Skiba, D. J. (2007). Nursing Education 2.0: Second Life. Nursing Education Perspectives, 28, 3, 156-157. (also available from Google Scholar)

• McCallum, J., et al. (2010). Exploring nursing students' decision-making skills whilst in a Second Life clinical simulation laboratory. Nurse Education Today, doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2010.03.010 (also available from ScienceDirect.com)

• Honey, M., et al. (2011). Teaching With Second Life: Hemorrhage Management as an Example of a Process for Developing Simulations for Multiuser Virtual Environments. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, Vol(X), 000-000. doi: 10.1016/j.ecsn. (also available from ScienceDirect.com)

I might have made an impression since the last entry that I consider philosophers to be an annoying lot. Leaving that for a separate discussion I must admit they are definitely good at one thing, asking questions. The seemingly annoying (again) question “what do you mean by this?” is the key to the right understanding of things. Only this will allow us to form a specification of a given idea so that once it is clear it can be understood in the same way by everyone. Let’s take ‘freedom’, for instance. It can represent living without any constraints brought on citizens by governments (e.g. freedom to speak), or it can be a feeling of being able to act in possibly any way we wish to at any given time (I choose to switch on the heater now).

Defining ideas that are subject to constant change is even more difficult. That is precisely the case with virtual worlds. Should we maintain a basic and most generalised (ageless?) definition or should we amend and expand it on a regular basis?

Warburton (2009) rightly (or so I believe) opts for the former, repeating Schroeder’s (1996) definition of virtual world as one which: 1- is computer generated, 2- gives sense of being somewhere else than we really are, and 3- allows users to interact with each other or the environment. This definition is very straightforward.

I will refrain from analysing/polemicising with Warburton’s ideas of applying Second Life (SL) as means of learning/teaching as I have no sufficient knowledge or research history in this field. I do, however, have a few observations and comments after reading his article.

Warburton concludes that there are three major components that make up the Second Life experience. As we read we find out that each of the three components has certain limitations. The difficulties with the SL’s technical infrastructure – the first of the three components – are posed among others by the 3D visuals. These are running on the Lynden Lab servers, thus posing a substantial stress in the user’s bandwidth. In fact the big upside is that the downloadable interface (initially 24MB) is in fact minute in comparison to, for instance, most game installations. The stress placed on the user’s bandwidth should, in my opinion, be one of the determiners of SL’s minimum requirements. The simple fact of the matter is that SL cannot be used, understood and fully appreciated with slow internet connections and long lags caused thereby. Tightening the minimum internet speed would surely not diminish the number of SL users any more than a failed first impression could.

           I do not understand the author’s mention of “educators’ limited resources” as a barrier to SL use, since both the engine, use (to a large extent), and update downloads are all free of charge. The supposed ‘burden’ of installing new client releases has been a part of the software industry ever since and is more and more often overcome by automatic (often without user’s awareness) updates (e.g. such services are provided by Google’s Chrome).

           Speaking of current trends and developments in MUVEs (Multi User Virtual Environments) I admit to be particularly optimistic about the work on open standards and portability of identities. I would risk a claim that moving between various platforms/virtual worlds with only one avatar/virtual profile would allow these platforms to become more specialised and focused in their domains. Users as such would be able to experiment with different experiences without wasting their time on creating new profiles or learning how to move around in the new worlds. This could even lead to a fantastic surge in course taking by those who have already done it once (starting with an on-line Spanish course a student may want to try to learn some Hungarian next spring, or a 5-week course in cooking, followed by an improver's photography course, etc.).

... and elsewhere. I'm finding this blog platform restricting, especially in terms of embedding multimedia (or maybe I'm just too much of an immigrant to explore the possibilities?) To treat the subjects of the first few weeks of the course, namely the digital natives fallacy and the Dreyfusian concepts of distance learning, I have created a wiki (screenshot of the home page below).

Since I am slightly more familiar with this environment (I have used it before in projects with my learners and I am going to use it again hence my need to remain conversant with the environment ) the technology is more transparent for me, which allows me to delve deeper into the discussed issues. I can also experiment with multimedia more and thus give vent to my creativity. It all started with Dreyfus' text which stirred quite strong reactions in me, to an extent I decided to break down the text into different themes which I tackled in a series of postings. Due to its chronological nature, the blog was somehow imposing a linear/vertical way of presenting the thoughts whereas I was more interested in verticality,a web-like presentation that can grow unrestricted in all directions. A wiki lent itself more to this. It also gives more freedom to the reader as they can decide in what order they want to explore the topics. The wiki is also public (that was not planned as accidentally I chose the non-education version of the wiki where I cannot create guest accounts; to make access easier for tutor's feedback and later assessment I opted for the 'public' in the accessibility settings), which makes it an additionally interesting experiment in terms of online presence, identity and visibility.

When making a decision to switch to the wiki, I was aware that I was being slightly anarchic and thus might be overstepping the mark. I knew the reasons why we were asked to reflect on our learning using this particular blogging platform and the consequences it might have in terms of assessment (although I hope that creating links between the two platforms will let me bypass any potential problems). At the same time I believe that as an adult learner I am and can be more self-directed and autonomous in achieving my learning goals. 

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.