Terra Incognita and using Secnd Life as a space for learning
Thursday, 12 Feb 2015, 13:06
Visible to anyone in the world
As a part of Week 1 Activity 4, we were asked to read John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler’s Minds of Fire open education, the long tail and learning 2.0. We were asked to pick one of the innovative projects and research it. I was interested in the Terra Incognita project.
For me there are two reasons why it interested me; first, because virtual worlds where learners can come together offers a potential avenue for collaboration and communication with what I hope to do with my own work.
In 2013 while I was studying the H818 module and looking into Personal Learning Environments which I envisaged my project would be based around I read an article I found on www.lheadacademy.ac.uk (Boyle and Jackson, 2009). Here I’m going to shamelessly copy and paste from one of my assignments:
‘I read that the tools a VLE could include would include communication tools, interactive content delivery, assessment tools, and interactive collaboration tools. Since the inception of the so called Web 2.0 which allows people with access to the internet and the necessary hardware to facilitate their use to interact and collaborate within social media settings to create user-generated output in virtual communities, users at large have become far more tuned into how the internet is no longer a passive static medium. In addition, while researching VLEs I came across a blog set up by Bath Spa University for Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning with a video of an ALT-C conference from 2009 featuring speakers talking on the subject of whether ‘the VLE is dead’ http://bathspaweb2.edublogs.org/tag/vle/
A speaker asked a series of questions as follows:
“How many of you have a VLE?” (all hands go up)
“How many of you go to your VLE when you want to learn something?” (one hand goes up)
“How many of you go to Google when you want to learn something?” (all hands go up)
Also, in the video Steve Wheeler Associate Professor at University of Plymouth argued that a VLE is not a learning environment but a content management system and that VLEs homogenised content and that content was owned by the company/institution as opposed to the learner and that learners prized personalization highly and in personalizing their learning environments they could engage with them better and be more interested in it.
I was introduced through the video and the offshoot blogs of some of the speakers involved, for the first time, to the concept of PLEs (Personal learning environment) and how their flexibility and accessibility made learning less commodified and more democratized and it overcomes the divide between the environment and learning through shaping personal learning environments through software that is available to everyone.
I was also reminded of Robert Capps’s The Good Enough Revolution article in Wired (2009) which I had come across while writing H818 TMA1 in regards to how the digital tools we now use don’t have to be sophisticated, but simply do what they need to do.’
Therefore, Second Life or similar virtual worlds, being customizable, easily accessible, and potentially fit for my purpose could serve a function in what I want to do, provide a space for learners to work together in a learning Engish as a foreign language context.
First I looked up info on the Second Life Terra Incognita project on Google. Very much in-keeping with the benefits we’d already discussed regarding openness and the benefits of blogs one of the first and things I found was a very good blog post by a previous H817 student, Patricia Daniels in 2013. In it, she did a lot of my work for me, discussing the dissertation written by Terra Incognita virtual island’s founder Lindy McKeown Orwin 'Affordances of Virtual Worlds for Professional Development conducted using Action Learning'(2011) and even visiting the island in the Second Life virtual world.
An unexpected benefit of finding Patricia’s blog is that she actually discusses language learning in virtual worlds, my personal context, ‘Using virtual worlds for language learning is an ongoing and seemingly popular practice. Speaking from personal experience, it is a teaching practice that I can recommend, especially for language teachers like myself who provide instruction via Skype or a similar web-conferencing tool. This immersive environment enables me to engage in authentic activities with my students that would otherwise be impossible in our usual language learning context. They respond emotionally to their surroundings and much more spontaneity comes into play. It does require taking time to develop your electronic literacy skills. However, I found this learning phase quite humorous i.e. bumping into walls, falling off buildings, walking through oceans and all without an injury, not even a bad hairdo or smeared makeup to complain about.'
She cites a couple of studies and in searching the Open University library I found a few more relevant to my context which I’ll list below as much for myself to find them again later as for anyone else that my have any interest in using Second Life or any other virtual world environment in facilitating language learning or perhaps any other learning for that matter.
Using Second Life to Assist EFL Teaching: We Do not Have to Sign in to the Program. Wang, Feihong, Shao, Enming TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning. Jul 2012, Vol. 56 Issue 4, p15-18. 4p.
Pedagogical challenges of spoken English learning in the Second Life virtual world: A case study. Haisen Zhang1 haisenzhang@uibe.edu.cn British Journal of Educational Technology. Mar 2013, Vol. 44 Issue 2, p243-254. 12p.
Collaboration and knowledge sharing using 3D virtual world on Second Life. Rahim, Noor Faridah Education for Information. 2013, Vol. 30 Issue 1, p1-40. 40p.
Learning effects of an experimental EFL program in Second Life. Wang, Charles, Calandra, Brendan, Hibbard, Susan, McDowell Lefaiver, Mary Educational Technology Research & Development. Oct2012, Vol. 60 Issue 5, p943-961. 19p. 1 Illustration, 8 Charts.
Terra Incognita and using Secnd Life as a space for learning
As a part of Week 1 Activity 4, we were asked to read John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler’s Minds of Fire open education, the long tail and learning 2.0. We were asked to pick one of the innovative projects and research it. I was interested in the Terra Incognita project.
For me there are two reasons why it interested me; first, because virtual worlds where learners can come together offers a potential avenue for collaboration and communication with what I hope to do with my own work.
In 2013 while I was studying the H818 module and looking into Personal Learning Environments which I envisaged my project would be based around I read an article I found on www.lheadacademy.ac.uk (Boyle and Jackson, 2009). Here I’m going to shamelessly copy and paste from one of my assignments:
‘I read that the tools a VLE could include would include communication tools, interactive content delivery, assessment tools, and interactive collaboration tools. Since the inception of the so called Web 2.0 which allows people with access to the internet and the necessary hardware to facilitate their use to interact and collaborate within social media settings to create user-generated output in virtual communities, users at large have become far more tuned into how the internet is no longer a passive static medium. In addition, while researching VLEs I came across a blog set up by Bath Spa University for Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning with a video of an ALT-C conference from 2009 featuring speakers talking on the subject of whether ‘the VLE is dead’ http://bathspaweb2.edublogs.org/tag/vle/
A speaker asked a series of questions as follows:
“How many of you have a VLE?” (all hands go up)
“How many of you go to your VLE when you want to learn something?” (one hand goes up)
“How many of you go to Google when you want to learn something?” (all hands go up)
Also, in the video Steve Wheeler Associate Professor at University of Plymouth argued that a VLE is not a learning environment but a content management system and that VLEs homogenised content and that content was owned by the company/institution as opposed to the learner and that learners prized personalization highly and in personalizing their learning environments they could engage with them better and be more interested in it.
I was introduced through the video and the offshoot blogs of some of the speakers involved, for the first time, to the concept of PLEs (Personal learning environment) and how their flexibility and accessibility made learning less commodified and more democratized and it overcomes the divide between the environment and learning through shaping personal learning environments through software that is available to everyone.
I was also reminded of Robert Capps’s The Good Enough Revolution article in Wired (2009) which I had come across while writing H818 TMA1 in regards to how the digital tools we now use don’t have to be sophisticated, but simply do what they need to do.’
Therefore, Second Life or similar virtual worlds, being customizable, easily accessible, and potentially fit for my purpose could serve a function in what I want to do, provide a space for learners to work together in a learning Engish as a foreign language context.
First I looked up info on the Second Life Terra Incognita project on Google. Very much in-keeping with the benefits we’d already discussed regarding openness and the benefits of blogs one of the first and things I found was a very good blog post by a previous H817 student, Patricia Daniels in 2013. In it, she did a lot of my work for me, discussing the dissertation written by Terra Incognita virtual island’s founder Lindy McKeown Orwin 'Affordances of Virtual Worlds for Professional Development conducted using Action Learning' (2011) and even visiting the island in the Second Life virtual world.
Patricia’s blog post was made on the 10th of February. In September of that year, McKeown Orwin posted that the island was to be closed down as, while there had apparently been a number of other studies conducted there, there were none at that time and unless someone else wanted to rent the island, it would disappear in October of 2013. A quick search now for the virtual island in Second Life http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Terra%20incognita/156/99/33 and http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Terra%20incognita/156/99/33?q=Terra+Incognita&s=Places appears to show that is the case.
An unexpected benefit of finding Patricia’s blog is that she actually discusses language learning in virtual worlds, my personal context, ‘Using virtual worlds for language learning is an ongoing and seemingly popular practice. Speaking from personal experience, it is a teaching practice that I can recommend, especially for language teachers like myself who provide instruction via Skype or a similar web-conferencing tool. This immersive environment enables me to engage in authentic activities with my students that would otherwise be impossible in our usual language learning context. They respond emotionally to their surroundings and much more spontaneity comes into play. It does require taking time to develop your electronic literacy skills. However, I found this learning phase quite humorous i.e. bumping into walls, falling off buildings, walking through oceans and all without an injury, not even a bad hairdo or smeared makeup to complain about.'
She cites a couple of studies and in searching the Open University library I found a few more relevant to my context which I’ll list below as much for myself to find them again later as for anyone else that my have any interest in using Second Life or any other virtual world environment in facilitating language learning or perhaps any other learning for that matter.
Using Second Life to Assist EFL Teaching: We Do not Have to Sign in to the Program. Wang, Feihong, Shao, Enming TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning. Jul 2012, Vol. 56 Issue 4, p15-18. 4p.
Pedagogical challenges of spoken English learning in the Second Life virtual world: A case study. Haisen Zhang1 haisenzhang@uibe.edu.cn British Journal of Educational Technology. Mar 2013, Vol. 44 Issue 2, p243-254. 12p.
Collaboration and knowledge sharing using 3D virtual world on Second Life. Rahim, Noor Faridah Education for Information. 2013, Vol. 30 Issue 1, p1-40. 40p.
Learning effects of an experimental EFL program in Second Life. Wang, Charles, Calandra, Brendan, Hibbard, Susan, McDowell Lefaiver, Mary Educational Technology Research & Development. Oct2012, Vol. 60 Issue 5, p943-961. 19p. 1 Illustration, 8 Charts.