Week 4 - Blog Posting #7 -Second Life

(**Note: one of the suggested SL sites, EduIsland, was not accessible from either the FSO link or the Discovery Education blog.)

I should first come clean about my Second Life bias. I'm sorry to admit, I have yet to be sincerely impressed by SL. My first experiences with it were in previous Full Sail classes, and I found it to be confusing, clumsy, awkward and hard to navigate. During my first experience, I was very taken by the graphical interface, and how much work had gone into many of the "worlds" we visited. As someone who considers herself to be an early adopter and advocate of any new, interactive and social web tools, I had a very hard time controlling my SL avatar. I walked into things, almost drowned a few times, and then at one point I somehow lost my hair and have never been able to get it back.

While one could consider these to be minor annoyances that are part of the learning curve, my deeper exploration of Second Life was still a disappointment. Some of my classmates had worse luck than I trying to function as SL avatars, and I would often invite people to visit me in a world only to find they couldn't get there, didn't know how to use the chat function, etc. We had a class meeting once in SL that was complete chaos. While I was avoiding awkward conversations with non-FS Second Life visitors who had limited English skills or were otherwise incapable of appropriate communication, I found myself in lands that had appealing, promising names but the content would range from just interesting, nothing more, to downright silly and frivolous. I'm sure it had some meaning to someone, but I seldom found what I was looking for. Again, prompted by our assignment to visit SL lands for educators, I traveled to Second Life, and again I felt the same disappointment.

"joannamkay"'s MindMap of Second Life in Education (Wollongong 2009) was very encouraging; looking at the very thoughtfully planned and crafted locations, it gave me hope that there are valid arguments in favor of using SL in education. For me, however, I don't see how SL does anything that other web tools do better: CMS/LMS systems, social networks, social media sharing sites, and so on. Perhaps my resistance stems from being a learner with a low-ranking preference (a "non-preference", if you will) for interpersonal learning. Patricia Glogowski states,
"...using Second Life for educational or other purposes involves a steep learning curve that involves learning how to function in the environment and how to build the physical content. In addition to basic skills, building educational spaces and bringing learners into Second Life requires creativity, time, patience, and innovation. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the content created by residents will be educationally valuable. A further criticism of teaching in Second Life is the misguided pedagogy of using Second Life and other newest technologies to teach in old ways; often it’s the traditional, teacher-centered, unidirectional teaching transferred into a new environment." (2009)

I haven't given up on Second Life yet. Perhaps this is a good challenge: the tables have turned on me, and now I need a good technical guide to help me navigate a frustrating, but nonetheless worthwhile, universe.

Glogowski, P. (n.d.). Digital Technology in Education/Second Life. Wikibooks. Retrieved September 20, 2009, from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Issues_in_Digital_Technology_in_Education/Second_Life

Wollongong, J. (2009, January). Educational Uses of Second Life 09 [Slides for use in SL and RL]. Retrieved September 20, 2009, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/jokay/sets/72157612171568581/show

Week 2 - Blog Posting #4 -21st Century Skills & Lifelong Learning

I definitely agree with Prensky's suggestion (2001) that students have to "power down" at school because of the way that most content is delivered. I have observed it myself working with students over the last few years. While we as teachers can find many more current ways to deliver content, promote communication, and administer assessments digitally, one of the biggest challenges is still inspiring students to simply enjoy learning. Cultivating a love of learning at a young age is something individuals can carry with them throughout their lives, and help them to evolve into lifelong learners.

An interesting report entitled Voices of Students on Engagement (Yazzie-Mintz 2006) suggested that students felt that school was not "intellectually challeging" (as opposed to "academically challenging") and the researchers attribute that sentiment to a feeling of lack of engagement. Note the following statistics that the researchers reported:

Engagement is about interaction; 21st century learning modalities promote this interaction. When used in conjunction with education, social networks, blogs, photo sharing sites, microblogs (such as Twitter) and online discussion forums all demand more interaction, and therefore can result more engagement.

While the older teachers that Prensky refers to as "digital immigrants", i.e. those who didn't grow up with the internet, adoption of these technologies may be slower but the results (with regard to engagement) can be comparable. A study conducted by Tomorrow.org (2007) addressed online learning trends in both students and teachers, and found that teachers were growing more and more interesting in participating in online staff development and coursework:



In my "perfect world", teachers will begin to accept and embrace the power of 21st century learning strategies, and by using them to continue to be lifelong learners, will model for their students how to be lifelong learners themselves.

References:

Learning in the 21st century: a trends update. (Rep.). (2007, Fall). Retrieved September 12, 2009, from Project Tomorrow website: http://tomorrow.org

Prensky, M. (2001, October). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved September 12, 2009, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/

Yazzie-Mintz, E. (2006). High School Survey of Student Engagement (Rep.). Retrieved September 09, 2009, from Indiana University School of Education website: http://ceep.indiana.edu/hssse/