Metamedia

What's Wrong With This Picture?

What's wrong with this picture?  You don't really need to look carefully, it should be pretty obvious:

 

No, not those avatars. Those are perfectly normal in SecondLife.

Rather:  Of all the possible new and exciting ways of doing things in a virtual 3D world, we replicate the rank and file seating of the 19th century industrial classroom.

Simulation Pedagogy, or A Tale of Tainted Love

Here's an interesting quote from Kevin Alderman, a pioneering entrepreneur in Second Life, who recently sold one of his popular virtual sites for $50,000 (yes, 50 thousand dollars) to a group of investors:

Static web pages were great for information connectivity. But (in virtual worlds) you make the paradigm leap away from something that is projected to you and toward something you create that represents yourself. You impress your own psyche, motivations, creativity onto a group of pixels and become quite attached to it.

I think we have all had similar experiences not just online, but in many captivating activities in which we invest self. The various forms of telepersona are expanding to be more interactive that ever before: daybooks, scrapbooks, journals, photo collections and other physical methods of self re-creation are being extended even more powerfully into the virtual realm.

I think that is an important psychological clue as to why simulation software is the future of foreign language learning.  It is not just the ability to automate in a very sophisticated way the old fashioned drill and repetition, but that with a telepersona involved there is a much higher level of personality and personal involvement. 

And that addresses one of the most important factors in adult second language learning: overcoming the social and self inhibitions that impeded the motivation to learn, to get beyond the specific task oriented model of simpler simulations and become open to more sophisticated life like interactions.

BUT, getting virtual environments like Second Life to work for teaching will mean not just using them to replace current practices, but instead to start to build a simulation like pedagogy of practices, such as James Paul Gee advocates.

Virtual Simulations as Teaching Tools:Welcome to Second Life

Virtual simulations for (foreign language or other) education:  I spoke about this topic last July at the NITLE Foreign Language & Technology conference in Salem, and finally reality – well virtual reality anyway – has caught up to us.  So I thought now is the time to post something for you who might be interested in this topic.  This is the future of social software, the first really usable version of it is called Second Life. It has many potentials as a teaching tool for creating Simulations.

Second Life is a 3d on-line virtual world. It is not a game, but a virtual space where any sorts of social activities can take place. It is free to use, but, for a fee, you can “buy” “land” in it and set up a permanent space.  In fact, it has developed its own economy and social structure. There is a special “island” in SL (as it is often abbreviated, contrasted with RL, “Real Life”) for educators, at educational discount prices.

A growing number of colleges and universities have already staked out space in it, as well as corporations; Reuters even has a reporter stationed at its headquarters in Second Life.