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Second Life in Education
- 1. Exploring Second Life as an Instructional Tool Staci Trekles Milligan Clinical Assistant Professor School of Education, Dept. of Graduate Studies Purdue University Calumet
- 9. Quick Travels through SL
- 13. Vassar Island (Vassar College)
Notes de l'éditeur
- Test site: http://purdue.moodlefarm.socialminds.jp
- Interestingly, most of the students saw some benefit and usefulness to a virtual world like Second Life as an educational tool, but many pointed out problems and pitfalls with SL as well. Even those who were “comfortable” with gaming and technology found themselves feeling leery of the other people they met in the virtual world, whether those people were on educational islands or not They seemed to judge people on the appearance of their avatars much more than what those people had to say to them – case in point, during class one night we all got into the virtual world together, and one student came across a person on the ISTE island who seemed to know a great deal about SL, and was more than happy to accommodate my student who confessed he didn’t know much about SL and wanted to learn. The new friend took everyone on a guided tour of the Vassar College island, where representations of the campus as well as the Sistine Chapel and some other interesting architecture and art have been created, and are all open to the public. There is a lot to see and do on Vassar actually, but it was interesting to me that my students were still somewhat apprehensive about this person, who was taking the time to help them and answer their questions. His avatar was dressed a bit strangely, resembling a harlequin, and his username was Filmmaker Movies, and they all seemed to think that he was generally a bit “weird.” It took some convincing in the first place to get them to really take advantage of this person trying to help them out and answer their questions – some were quite shy to converse with him, even though they were all hiding behind their own avatars! Interestingly, all of my students spent a good portion of their class time with Second Life updating their avatars! Something they noticed: economics, collaboration tool, museums, travel industry, campus tours, foreign language learning, different people representing themselves in different ways, “strange” people, dealing with having enough time for one life, let alone two!, accepting that people enjoy spending their time in a place like SL instead of in “real life” A social place, a place for exploration, a place where anything is possible and things can be created, manipulated, reinvented, etc. “ More fun to talk to a person rather than type to a computer screen” “ Great that you can’t ‘die’ like in other video games – takes the fear away for people who don’t play games much or don’t play all that well!” One student mentioned the issue of “fitting in” in different places and how SL allows for avatar customization to the point that you can easily make yourself fit into a setting, but you are still sort of “following the herd” as you might in real life doing this; so, socially there are two ways to approach this and look at it Moving around and interacting was sometimes difficult for some of the students – some expected that it should be easier to manipulate than it was, and others expected that their avatars should be able to do more than they actually can Technical issue of bandwidth and waiting for things to load, or freezing entirely, was mentioned by most of the students and it seems that this is a bit of a resource-hog; people with older machines and slower connections will not get nearly the same enjoyable experience One student watched a virtual wedding on a virtual yacht – she said the experience was rather surreal but fun – a neat way to participate in SL and she really felt part of the “family” even though no one was there was likely related or even know who each other really was I found it interesting that the elementary school teacher was one of the people most taken by SL and the possibilities it had to offer. A self-professed non-gamer, she found it very personally enriching to explore the different lands, to participate socially and to express herself through her avatar. She saw the tremendous potential for discovery learning, although she did not think this particular tool would work well for her second graders. She was interested in finding something similar for such young children. http://sketchup.google.com ?? SL ideas Vassar College – tour, Sistine Chapel, library etc. Disabilities: This has been a very important concern of mine for over a year. At last fall's WCET conference (a national organization of educators who use technology) I asked the same question during a demo of SL. I also hosted a breakfast round table discussion where I asked this of those who sat with me. The answers were consistent; no one has found a good solution to this problem. I do not like to be too negative, but I strongly discourage our faculty from using SL as a significant part (read: required) of their classes since that could lead to a very ugly lawsuit and OCR action. I suppose if a class were only advertised within the SL environment then you wouldn't have the compliance problem since the only students who would see the class announcement would already be in-world. However, to ask a group of students in a face-to-face environment to do a part of their class in SL would seem to be tempting fate (so to speak). I've done a great deal of thinking about this issue and the only solutions I can dream up (though I am admittedly rather slow) are as follows: Visually Impaired: This student would need a "helper" student who could actually do the navigation within SL and describe the environment for the student. This would be similar to a student using a seeing-eye dog to get to a physical class. However, the question would certainly come up among the faculty as to which student is actually doing the work. Hearing Impaired: This student can be accommodated as long as the class is not using oral communication. It is certainly possible to use only text chat or IM to conduct class, and the hearing impaired student would do nicely in that environment. Mobility Impaired: Depending on the exact nature of the impairment, this student may be able to navigate OK. However, it's also possible that the student would need a helper to do the navigation in-world. I knew one student with severe rheumatoid arthritis and simply moving a mouse was very painful for her; SL would be beyond her ability. Learning Disabled: This is the trickiest area since there are such a wide variety of these disabilities and their impact on SL participation would be equally broad. A student with some sort of mild disorder may be fine in SL (in fact, may even be more capable in SL than RL). Other disabilities, though, could be much more challenging in SL. In short, you need to be very careful about using SL as a required supplement to a RL class. Please do not misunderstand me; I really like SL and spend as many hours as I can every week in-world. However, SL requires heavy thought before it's used in a class. Just my 2L... --Wissen Shepherd I'm supporting a dyslexic learner in SL with great results. I've worked with hearing impaired people and mute people, and I'm hearing impaired myself. It's great. I was talking to someone who works with autistic people and stroke survivors earlier, and whilst they're also a huge range of intensities and impacts under a few simple words, those with learning difficulties seem to manage. I know I work with 2 RL 17 year old autistic learners, and I'd love to be able to work in SL with them, but the hoops to get us there are too big at the moment. Visually impaired depends on the visual impairment. I have Irlen syndrome (funny reactions to bright light) and photo-triggered migraines. SL with some tweaking of colour of text etc. works just fine for me thank you. I do agree if you have students that impaired enough to need a seeing eye dog etc. there will be severe issues, although I know people with cataracts that use SL successfully, so you can be quite impaired and still use it successfully. Past that, I think the issue becomes one of cultural differences - in the UK a blind student would be given support, and given financial support for this support worker. They would be able to describe a scene etc. in SL, probably, although I have to say I've not done this, nor seen it done. From what I understand of the US, the system is rather harsher - on both sides. You MUST offer the course (we can say you can't enroll because there is no reasonable adjustment that can be made, although we may be asked to justify that in court in theory and practise) but your students with disabilities get no central support to help them cope with learning around their disability I believe. Given that absolute onus laid on you, how do your IT departments cope? What tools and modifications do they use for blind students? For other students who can't handle a normal mouse and so on? I would guess a lot of those tools and tricks might help with SL. El.