Story Quest

STORY QUEST. Not only is this a brilliant idea, it represents yet another signal to the wider educational technology teaching community that virtual worlds are fast crossing over as the place to take your read/write/make classrooms. The impossible is possible, and with a clearer understanding of writing – students can experience a much more open and immersible learning environment – exploring on their own terms and raising questions that it generates. While the current fuss over Google Wave rages on Twitter, I can’t help keep asking what is it for – in the classroom. What does it do that can’t be done. I suspect Google Wave will have implications for people, but not sure how it would align with the current syllabus’ demands for information communication technology.

The great thing here is that you can not only watch that video; but step into it yourself. You prompt the action and interaction and your presence in the space triggers the events. It is designed for architects, to understand how to look at Second Life or Reaction Grid as an instructional design space that is created to meet outcomes intended, though activities and assessment. For more information, check out Jo Kay’s blog post on Story Quest, grab a walking stick and explore a new way to tell stories – and in Story Quest, there are no stupid questions.

As I begin a 6 month project in Virtual Worlds … this sim to me, shouts – this is where story’s and learning are heading …

Reaction creates attraction

The recent debacle over Jo Kay’s SLEducation wiki has provided a wave of new discussions around Virtual Worlds in Education. It has raises discussions around the idea that Second Life is not THE virtual world for education, just one execution of it – and what if we used something else?

Many of those who have been writing, developing and researching are clearly past the critical flack of the initial beach landing, have overcome the initial ‘yeah but’ barrage from the sand dunes and are confidently aligning virtual worlds and games with learning and assessment.

Unlike a great deal of Web2.0-ness, virtual worlds are long supported by a wealth of academic research to suggest they are extreamly good at motivating students and offer high quality instructional design environments for learning.

Obviously not everyone is going to explore them. The biggest barrier is that in muves the experience has to be instructively designed to create opportunities that extend beyond it and facilitate experiences that cannot be created without it – Who has the time to do that?

Well lots of people actually, not least the students we are teaching and certainly the multi-billion dollar technology industry.

A flood of educators followed Kerry Johnson’s footsteps into Reaction Grid, a community of inter-connected Open Simulators.

The discussions have not been about whether Second Life is better, but how it changes pedagogical opportunities. I am yet to hear from teen-educators that Linden is easy to deal with, or overly keen to help – quite the opposite. But Lindens notice to Jo felt like a wake up call to lots of Second Life Educators.

Maybe it was time to get past what we can’t do and look at what we can. As blog posts appeared online last week over Jo and Sean’s well established (and Linden referenced) wiki there was a flurry of new activity – not about the wiki issue, but in going right around the problem – which was all about ownership and trademarks, not community. We get the idea of trademarks by the way.

The Jokaydia Second Life community flocked into Reaction Grid and Jo Kay has established a new outpost to allow Second Life educators to explore Reaction Grid with the same level of support, resources and expert development you’d expect.

There’s also an ISTE2010 conference proposal via  Judy and Vicki Davis that was put together via iPhones and Google Docs in a few hours this week to meet the call for proposal deadline.

In the next few months, there will be open resources and open spaces in Reaction Grid created for teachers to explore with students – and this will lead to further instances of students read, writing and making things outside of them. Some will be online – and perhaps some will be downloadable – able to run on local machines as stand alone or LAN learning objects. Imagine being able to download a unit of work around Huxley’s Brave New World and run it on your nice new DER laptops using open source resources – offline. Giving students a zip file to unpack and run for homework, where they have to model mathematical problems. Virtual school in a virtual world.

Change comes from places you least expect and creates opportunities you never imagined. You get into Reaction Grid for FREE. Join us at 9pm AEST on Sunday night – because that is where the new curriculum in being crafted. You can google it.

Marionettes to avatars

This is a presentation given to Macquarie University staff about considering the opportunities that are presented by virtual worlds in education. I tried to keep it simple and included some of the uses of Second Life Campus. The aim was to get them to look past the visual and to consider how shared reality is a familiar way to experience technology in informal situations such as Facebook. During the presentation In a time where Web2.0 is abundantly available for read/write, virtual worlds offer instructional designers a controlled and measured ability to deliver eLearning in experience/evaluate. It was followed by a tour of several educational spaces to support the presentation.

Spy Class – Orientation

ORIENTATION for the super-secret spy class (I still have no idea what they do) was held in Evergreen tonight for distance students preparing for a role-play assessment task. This is actually the space for Scott Merrick and Co’s MUVERS activities in simulations and assessment. It’s got this great feel to it and has very simple, but effective instructional design. It took only a few minutes to get off the landing area and to a point where the students had configured their audio, learned how to move in the space and interact with the environment. The session then moved to Jokaydia to the role-play area and students were able to walk though the actions that they will soon be doing under assessment.

Like the rest of the internet, Linden has made massive leaps forward in terms of functionality and reliability this year. Macquarie University has access to all the usual video conference tools – so there has to be a pedagogical reason to choose Second Life!. That becomes obvious when students are engaging with the environment that has been designed specifically for a purpose, not repurposed. There is a purity in Educational Second Life away from the duplication, and noize of the 2D web.

The ability to conceptualise yourself in spaces and situations that are impossible otherwise provides a clear focus, and readily allows the alignment of outcome, activity and assessment. For distance learners; this is affords an opportunity to experience a ’shared reality’ – and has been warmly welcomed. Of the few comments the spooks made “this is so much fun”, and yet they were learning. The level of stress and effort to get them here and prepared for their assessment has been absolutely minimal. Perhaps the game-like space brings an assumed understanding that not everything will be explained or prescribed. Seriously if all you are using in distance education is a forum – you are at the telegram level of engagement with learning online.

Designing assessment is Second Life is possibly the most rewarding and creative parts of instructional design for me. Watching avatars interact and explore puzzles and problems, talk and work together to solve them in real time is amazing. Even if they won’t tell you anything about their course or what they do. Spys are not the most sharing people to teach. I’m looking forward to the role-play sessions.

How to assess international spys

DISTANCE students in an International Security course at Macquarie University are about to play games. The are playing the roles of people who might potentially be making some of very important ones for real. It seems that the chances are, many conversations will happen over great distance as well as in the conference room. While on campus students can role-play their assessment in the comfort of the super-secret high tech lair, those distance students might have previously been given some alternative task. No fun in that, so now there is a weekly task held in world with their teacher.

Second Life is incredibly flexible in assessment of this kind. The course designer can create a ’shared reality’ by role-playing and facilitating an engaging environment for the students. Progressively over a two weeks; students have waded into virtual worlds – using online resources. The space is designed to be a ‘three click deal’. As they enter the space; they are automatically given note cards.

1. Click to arrive in-world in a realistic room with simple props. An automated note card pops up to give the student instructions on what to do next. It logs their attendance automatically with time and date.
2. Click the folder on the desk, marked top-secret. It provides some tips on effective role-play and presentation, so there is additional motivation to get some extra help that is normally shared or observed in physical space but not online.
3. Click to sit in the chair, read the briefing – and the assessment is recorded in real time; then given back to the student so they can reflect on their performance after grading. They are given a notecard at the end of the session with further reading and instructions in the main MQ building via a landmark and leave.

The instructional design for this was developed using simple storyboards in Apple Pages; and gradually we explored and expanded on the functionality and environment needed to bring absolute newcomers into a virtual world and undertake a very real assessment task. Each week, the students will get watch a video briefing from SL (we film them all in 15 mins in one session). So far, this has been met with real enthusiasm by the distance students and will be interesting to evaluate. In getting the solution for the students, the teacher has had to do some work too – and already has forgotten about trying to using …. I can’t say too much more …. I hear footsteps heading my way.

In a Perfect World

IN A PERFECT WORLD everyone would be a great storyteller, and be able to create compelling narratives and imaging worlds and characters. If they were gifted at art, like this 6 year old, they could illustrate like Brian Froud. But we can’t. Most of us are pretty regular – even those who attend pay-to-learn schools. Games provide a narrative that students can use to build from. Who hasn’t come out of the movies with friends and talked about a better ending or how they disliked the character even though they should have loved them. Shared experience based on shared reality is what is driving social-networks – and can power classrooms.

PERFECT WORLD – is a high quality online MMORPG – that has a lot of detail in it’s story telling. The game’s Asian origins have afforded it an back story which in itself could be viewed as contemporary literature.

In an age when the Heavens were not yet stretched over the Earth, and Hell still silent beneath the lands of creation. When all creatures bright and dark had yet to grasp the first weapons and tools left behind by the gods and their children, there was the Void.

The game features three races, with two distinct classes. There are distinct race-requirements to play them there is a lot of variety in terms of what – and who – you’ll see running around. Of course, that also means that the more popular classes are in abundance. To make it more bearable, “Perfect World” features very detailed character customization. Hair, ears, nose, breast size, and more can all be tweaked, resulting in characters that look similar, but different enough to appear unique. So for those lamenting the lack of access to Teen Second Life – PERFECT WORLD, when aligned with outcomes – can offer a wide range of learning experiences. Yes it’s a game, but it is a social-game. The term ‘video game’ is far too facile to describe today’s interactive offerings. Yes some of the characters are not wearing their Sunday Church clothes – but then this is not 1809, and if we apply that logic – then we might as well close the internet and entertainment business down – the photo opposite is pretty typical of the ‘toons’ – and that is what they are … toons … just like moving, interactive paintings … and we study those in school now don’t we?

Don’t blog – Rez!

WE CONSTANTLY seem to hear about ‘leaks’ and ‘errors’ when personal information appears online – and powerless to retract, control or predict it’s impact.

The ‘culture of participation’ is not an opt-in experience as there is no opt-out.  We are tagged, poked, @’ted, linked, referenced and befriended to the point where the representation of ourselves is fractured, atomized and abstract. We don’t even need to decide to put a footprint down – by making a blog, often – as my Director pointed out today – the employer lists an enormous amount of information online for you.

Do we really need to put students into this environment?

We are as liberal with information today as hippies were with flowers in the sixties – we love to freely express our experiences, creations and opinions with often little regard for ourselves or others – we justify this as being ‘virtual’ – when in fact nothing is virtual – it is connected to us all the time – even when we move on.

We create virtual worlds and avatars into which we project ourselves.  Those busy stomping their foot prints in the digital landscape often place virtual worlds such as Second Life or Quest Atlantis as marginal learning spaces – where games, fantasy and user generated content is immature or facile. I beg to differ. Having an avatar in a virtual world is an excellent idea for students and teachers – your avatar is you. You own it in safe fail environment, where you control the IP, where you decide what happens, where you decide who to talk to, who to work with and what you then leave behind. This, to me is a lot safer and sustainable than blogging.

Its not about ‘publishing’, its about ‘learning’ – and social media is not an idyllic environment – though a virtual one can be. I can only wish I was going to GLS5.0 - as some of the ideas and work there is not only inspirational, but also some of the most meta-cognitive, most enquiry driven, most motivating and Safe Fail places to learn for students – not just K12 – but TAFE and Higher Education.

I am not saying avoid online media and collaboration – just that places like Skoolaborate, Ramapo Islands, Edmodo, Moodle, Elgg etc.,  seem to me to be a lot safer than the real one right now – especially when schools start pushing hundreds of kids ‘online’. Joining a virtual world project and using that – still seems to me to a very wise move – and in terms of motivation – ask them what they’d rather do.

Image : Don Hosho