It is Valentines Day - spread the love around - especially you Mr. Downes!
I am responding to recent comments about Second Life where the gist is that educators are only replicating classroom environments in a virtual environment. Well, I have seen evidence of both replicating old environments and some stunning new ways of learning, but if we (the royal we here includes Jo Kay, Sean Fitzgerald, and the organisation we work for) get to fly a project here in NSW Australia I can assure you we will exploit the full range of pedagogy, creativity and community that Second Life makes available!
Where else could you stage an avatar based fantasy, say an interpretation of a piece of literature and then film it and set it to music, and then use it in an inworld film festival?!
....or collaborate on the building and governance of a village and then live there and participate as a citizen?!
... or access the community in Second Life to research and represent customs from different countries, (or come up with some new one!)then create them in second life, film and edit a narrated collation of them?!
Creating music film clips excites me, hell make the music too! Yes you can do this in real life, but the range of characters and gravity defying abilities are just not possible in real life!
The features of Second Life can be used to record, document and produce user generated content. Then it can be uploaded and distributed via the internet to portable multimedia players and mobile phones.
Whats the point? Team work, communication skills, conflict resoluction, problem solving, ICT skills (yawn...)
I know I am stating the bleeding heart obvious, but its OK, learning is sweet in Second Life! Be my Valentine!
2 comments:
There's nothing so sweet as life filled with friends and foes alike.
I also agree with the notion that SL in many instances has not escaped the confines of the literal architectures that humans have locked themselves into here on earth.
However, having said that, what sorts of out-of-body or in-world behaviour has led to the demise of the human body in the real world ?
Should we be looking towards the health of the individual in the "real" sense and devise a lack of visible architectures in SL to ensure that we reach a new humanoid form which can easily frequent both domains ?
The closest irreality that suits my sense of SL is the control room in the movie "The Matrix". Can we mirror something of that notion or are we continually going to build buildings and occasionally brush up against other avatars in the hope of humanising our electronically mediated existence ?
Same for students. When will they get the chance to have their electronically mediated existence honoured by our aging page driven corporatised electronica ?
Soon I hope.
Thanks for the Valentine.
My comments are based as much on the hope that we can transcend the limitations of the current form as on the fear that we, in this case, won't.
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