I came in a little late to class today because I got tied up at work (school), but I wanted to weigh in on the education discussion.
If the Alvarez article proves anything, it is that there is very little known, and very little being done with Virtual Worlds in K-12 education. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the only thing this article says convincingly. In my opinion MUVEs do have the ability to provide educational benefits in K-12, but it is extremely difficult to take advantage of them in their current state.
The logistical issues if using MUVEs in K1-2 are unfortunate, unavoidable, and nearly impossible to overcome. We have discussed at length how difficult it is to establish a K-12 presence in teen second life, and even if you do you can’t control where students go and what they do elsewhere in teen second life. To be a plausible option, I think you would have to go with Active Worlds, or some other secure MUVE where you could control who had access and who didn’t, and where else they can go. It’s easy to say that this isn’t an issue, but if you work in a position where you are responsible for what students do and don’t do online you realize the importance of control.
You could theoretically create excellent virtual learning environments if you had time. Most teachers, even if interested, do not have the time to learn how to create objects and setup a virtual world, let alone scripting to create any meaningful interaction with the environment. The current state of things is that teachers would need to team up with developers, or get paid over their summers to have any sort of a hope of developing an original, effective virtual world experience. Yes, students could log into a virtual world and interact, but without a meaningful environment developed around them, it really does become a glorified chat. Premade virtual environments (like islands in SL, or existing games) are options, but they are few and of varying quality right now.
Another major roadblock is pedagogical. While we know that role playing / experiential learning / social constructivism etc. are effective learning tools very few people have started working out how to apply these in practical ways to MUVEs. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t or can’t, but there is a lot more pioneering to be done before we can say with any surety that MUVEs are effective.
There are administrative / security issues, but I see those as outgrowths of the pedagogical issues. If you can show an administrator that a method is effective, that it can cover the standards required, and that it can motivate and engage students, then these issues become much easier to over come.
My primary reason for taking this class was to explore whether bringing a MUVE to classes at our school would be a plausible option. At this point I can say that SL and TSL are definitely not good options for K-12 education. I see other virtual worlds as a reasonable option with good educational possibilities, but again the time investment that it would take to create world, add meaningful structures for learning, and deploy it would require funding above what most schools could afford.
With this said, I think there are some real, concrete ways that teachers can start using MUVEs in their classrooms with relatively small amount of effort.
1) Use a SL account to demonstrate a trip to an educational location in Second Life. For example, the teacher could visit the Abyss (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gun/61/48/82) and lead the class in an exploration of the area without needing everyone to have accounts. Yes, it would be better if each student could explore individually, but this method could serve as a starting point.
2) Use existing role playing video games as a demonstration in the class to lead discussions on decision making, ethics, etc. I don’t have access to the article anymore, but there was an article on a teacher who used Neverwinter Nights for this in a secondary class with one computer and a projector with much success (http://www.aect.org/Intranet/Publications/index.asp#tt)/
3) Use elements of game design in lesson design. If you can’t use actual games or MUVEs in the classroom, you can at least recognize those features of the games that provide motivation and effective teaching. For example, problem solving, scaffolding, mystery, narrative etc.
4) Use existing educational games in the classroom. Drill and Skill is fine when used in the proper context for appropriate purposes, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The Algebra game DimensionM that I posted before is a good option. Some teachers have use Civilization in their history classes. There are few games that fall into this category, but I think there will be more in the near future.
In summary, I think MUVEs provide the opportunity to effectively teach secondary students, but in their current form they are not a practical option for most schools.
-David
3 comments:
David has made some interesting and thought provoking points that I want to comment on:
1. "You could theoretically create excellent virtual learning environments if you had time." Isn't that the idea of ActiveWorlds and the OpenCroquet project? I can envision a summer class at the Digital Worlds Institute in which teachers use either of those platforms to create their own MUVE. I wonder what a MUVE created by teachers would look like, and how different it would be from something like SL? It sounds like a great idea.
2. "While we know that role playing / experiential learning / social constructivism etc. are effective learning tools very few people have started working out how to apply these in practical ways to MUVEs." So are you leaving it up to higher education to work out how to apply innovative pedagogical theories in practice, or can this somehow be done in K-12?
3. You say, "that SL and TSL are definitely not good options for K-12 education". On the other side of the argument, I've heard that they are good for immersion into an emerging "real" culture. I realize you still have issues of where students go, but if they only had access to TSL during their class and were supervised, that would provide more structure. Of course, they are innovative enough to figure out that they can log on from home as well...
4. You said, "I think MUVEs provide the opportunity to effectively teach secondary students, but in their current form they are not a practical option for most schools."
How would you change MUVE's to make them a practical solution? What would you add/subtract/edit to something like TSL to get it to be a practical option for most schools?
Very good discussion and I'd be interested in some other responses to this post.
Dennis
1. Yes, I think a summer institute would be a great idea. The main thing is that teachers need the time/money to be able to spend doing this and then I think you would see great results.
2) No, I don't think it should just be higher Ed. We need people to be pioneering these efforts in Secondary ed as well. I think the suggestion above in point number 1 would be a great place to start.
3) I missed the "real" emerging culture discussion yesterday, so there may be more arguements there than I am aware of. School is alreay a real culutre that students encounter. The advantage of another culture would be, I guess, that they would be exposed to a wider variety of people / opinions. That's fine, but I would still think it should be in a more controlled environment than TSL. I applaud TSL security efforts, but I still can't ger over the fact that they have access to other areas that adults can not access. Some people may disagree with me and that's fine, but I couldn't endorse using it with students for that reason, "real" culture exposure or not.
4) Primarily, I would like to see buidling / scripting become even more accessible. There are a lot of options out there right now for teachers to program/script/write code without having to invest the time it takes to learn programming. Similarly, premade objects / prims that already have some functionality that only needs to be tweaked woud help. Of course both of these thing may exist to some extent, but what I'm getting at is that the learning curve needs to be reduced for more teachers to be able to create meaningful learning environments.
For context: My primary interest has always been interactivity with content (as opposed to interactivity with peers or teachers) adn teacher-created content. So my arguements are skewed to that perspective. I would like to see more enviroments that are manipulable and experiential for learning and more support for teachers interested in making environments. Other educators who are more focused on social interaction may find much more to like in SL as is.
-David
It's been a long time since I have had any involvement with the K-12 system, so this may seem like a clueless question.
Who is making classroom content now? Is it district instructional specialists who pipe best practices to the classroom teachers? Is the content driven enough by FCAT that there are state-wide recommended lessons that teachers just go down the list of tasks and check them off?
Even in post-secondary classes where a textbook and content are mandated, there is still some academic freedom to put your own touches on a class. Is this no longer an option in the K-12 setting?
After developing and teaching a number of online and blended courses, I see your point that content development takes time, but innovative teachers will want to try new teaching and learning tools, if the learning curve isn't too steep.
Doug
Post a Comment