Presentation in Ontario Island in Second Life
The author received the following letter from the organisers of Ontario Island presentations.
Representing the Ontario Ministry of Government Services, Curious Dover (rl Barbara Schwarzentruber) welcomed everyone to Digital Ontario Island, and introduced the moderator Gillian Morigi (rl Gillian Mothersill), Associate Dean, Faculty and Student Affairs in the Faculty of Communication & Design at Ryerson University.
The first speaker was Emerly Alter (real-life name: Vimani Gamage), a masters student in business studies at Massey University in New Zealand. For her thesis, she is trying to determine the factors that influence educators to use virtual environments as part of their educational programs. At the moment Ms. Gamage is at the data collection stage of her work, and is using a virtual classroom in Jokaydia as part of her study.
The next presenter was Alx Beaumont (real-life name: Alexandra Bal), a faculty member in the new media program in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University,
Toronto. Dr. Bal gave an overview of educational models and how they relate to the change in learning and institutions that has or is maybe coming about due to the presence of social media, of which Second Life is one type.
The final two presentations dealt with interactive projects in Second Life. Ephraim Dalglish (real-life name: Mark McDayter) is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Western Ontario. He described a project called “The Printer’s Devil”, which has been set up on the University’s island in Second Life. It includes 3 buildings – a coffee house, a printer’s and booksellers shop and a Rare Book library and reading room. Dr. McDayter described the area as a laboratory space for the arts and humanities, where the intersection of the material culture and literature of the day can be studied and experienced. Coffee houses of the time were important places where the exchange of ideas took place and literature was read out loud. By recreating the atmosphere of a coffee house in Second Life, students will be able to visit and discuss ideas with each other in much the same way as people would have done in the coffee houses of the Seventeenth Century. At the printer’s, visitors will be able to learn about the methods of printing of the time by accessing information posted throughout the building. They will also be able to interact with a hand press that has been
recreated by following a printer’s manual from the 1680’s. There are no such hand presses in existence, so this will be an opportunity for people to study, in detail, something that has disappeared.
The last presentation was given by Hilde Hullaballoo (real-life name: Rochelle Mazar), Instructional Technology Liaison Librarian at the University of Toronto. Ms. Mazar has built a sim in Second Life called “Cancerland”, an immersive exhibit that allows visitors to follow her through her diagnosis, treatment and recovery from cancer. Ms. Mazar showed a video and spoke about the sim, saying that people found the build the most thorough way of gaining information, more so than by reading her blog. Visiting the sim itself is very strongly recommended, as a description of it pales in comparison.
APPENDIX I
Meeting with SLENZ (Second Life Education New Zealand) group
SLENZ bog (SLENZ,2009) has published the following regarding the author’s meeting with SLENZ.Masters student in business studies at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand-Aotearoa, Vimani Gamage (SL: Emerly Alter), has set herself the difficult task of establishing what factors influence teacher acceptance of multi user virtual environments (MUVEs).Briefing members of the SLENZ Project team last week she said that she was seeking to establish for her thesis how the known determinants of Technology Acceptance (according to existing TAM-related research) influence the intention of educators to use MUVEs to conduct virtual classes and how educators perceived the potential benefits of educational use of MUVEs as claimed in the literature.
Gamage is using a virtual classroom on Jokayadia within Second Life for her study which will involve the use of a questionnaire to explore teacher perceptions.
Although not wanting to compromise the results of her research in anyway, I
personally believe the greatest influence on teacher perception of the benefits of MUVEs is directly related, initially, to the informal linkages the teachers form and the networking they do on MUVEs like Second Life when they first enter, perhaps to play.
For early adopters and subsequent promoters of the benefits of MUVEs for education, I believe, the major initial influence is “other people” within the world and the virtual society they become attached/addicted to. For those teachers who “only work” in virtual worlds, MUVEs can apparently be a very boring place indeed. One sees them nitpicking on the SLED list and other lists, complaining about the technology or lack thereof, or being pedantic about educational theory. They sometimes forget that MUVEs are fun and should be fun … that is the easiest way to learn … something the earliest adopters discovered and why many of them are still there. When I consider some of the “reluctant” educators I meet in Second Life I am reminded of a great quote from the Wizard of “Watchmen” – Alan Moore: ” All too often education actually acts as a form of aversion therapy, that what we’re really teaching our children is to associate learning with work and to associate work with drudgery so that the remainder of their lives they will possibly never go near a book because they associate books with learning, learning with work and work with drudgery.
“Whereas after a hard day’s toil, instead of relaxing with a book they’ll be much more likely to sit down in front of an undemanding soap opera because this is obviously teaching
them nothing, so it is not learning, so it is not work, it is not drudgery, so it must be pleasure. And I think that that is the kind of circuitry that we tend to have imprinted on us because of the education process.”
My great hope is that MUVEs are never viewed like that – by educators or students. Vimani’s classroom is worth visiting for the range of educational tools she uses.