A second look at school life
By Quin Parker,
More Second Life. Love it or hate it (well perhaps ‘hate’ is too strong, maybe a case of not appreciating it as being applicable to your teaching) it does raise a lot of questions with regards to teaching in virtual worlds.
This article explores the OU’s Schome project in which involves teaching 13 – 7 year olds in virtual classrooms and spaces. Interesting since it involves Teen Second Life an area where adults are discouraged from entering (you will be subjected to criminal record checks).
What’s at issue here is not much the power of the virtual environment but the decision by the project leaders and tutors to let the students suggest and lead the educational activities. For example “For instance, classes in archaeology take place on a recreation of Hadrian’s Wall. Physics students, who are mentored by staff at the National Physical Science Laboratory, have been conducting experiments to calculate the value of gravity within Second Life. The ethics and philosophy seminars, which are set in a Japanese Zen garden, are comparatively simple, taking the form of an online chat lightly prompted by Jen Booth, a researcher at the University of Warwick.”.
And this is interesting in terms of protecting the teaching from disruption by outsiders (often a risk when using blogs and wikis): “”Griefers”, game players who deliberately sabotage events, are a persistent problem throughout Second Life. Luckily, on Schome Park there has been only one crisis so far. One morning, a pupil – perhaps accidentally – deposited thousands of tiny brown boxes all over the island, all of which had to be laboriously cleaned up one at a time.”.
And I like this. Placing responsibility or at least assigning some of it to the participants: “Policing disruption is often done through the students themselves – after all, it’s in their interest to prevent things from descending into an electronic Lord of the Flies. Results in this area have been encouraging, which has enabled staff to slowly begin withdrawing from directly regulating the project. They watch from a distance, only intervening in cases of health and safety or when a teenager pushes the big red “help” button located in the island’s shop. Pupils are also wrestling with the responsibilities involving governing Schome Park.”.
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