First Life - a different take

Listening to a Training Magazine Network recording of Allison Rossett talking about what e-learning is and isn't, I came across this YouTube video. Good for a chortle.



Have you considered First Life for your business meetings, yet? ;o)

Edward Castronova on virtual worlds

A friend sent me a link to this webcast of a presentation to Open University staff by Castronova who is (of all unexpected things) an economist. He talks about Second Life, World of Warcraft and Tolkien... from all sorts of angles, including economy, research and psychology. Check it out. It's long (90 mins) but worth it. Utterly fascinating.

Get a (second) life

Until quite recently, I have not had the connection speeds at home required to be able to navigate around Linden with any great success. .. and of course, such things are banned at work. I have long been curious about the possibilities opened up for learning. Because I haven't been able to explore what's on offer, I have had to depend on other people's feedback and have been disappointed to learn that, for the most part, it seems that people are using the space to deliver chalk-and-talk sessions in a virtual environment. New wine. Old wineskins.

Now that we have a fast enoug connection, I decided the time had come to find out for myself what was on offer. I have signed up for a workshop that George Siemens is running on Wednesday, but of course, I have no idea how to get to it or how to participate once I'm there.

One of my Facebook friends offered to show me around. She said I should log in at around 8pm my time last night and wait for her. She would send me an invitation, which would show up in the bottom right corner of my screen. I should accept this and the option to teleport to where she was. I waited, not knowing enough even to try to look for her. Nothing appeared in any of the corners of my screen.

We used the IM feature in Facebook for a while, assuring each other that we were both logged in and that she had my avatar name right. Still nothing. After about 20 minutes of this, she declared herself baffled and gave up.

I tweeted my frustrations and a twitter friend of mine has offered to try to pick up where the other volunteer-tutor had left off.

I might not get a (second) life in time for the workshop on Wednesday, but I will get there in the end... "with a little help from friends, oh I get by with a little help from my friends." Take it away Joe Cocker (apologies to those who prefer the Beatles version)

Second Life et al

Right at the outset, let me say that I have yet to be in an environment with enough bandwidth to be able to make Second Life a viable option for me. I have also yet to meet a client with the appetite for a solution which might involve delivery via SL.

That doesn't change the fact that I am deeply curious as to where it might go. and what it might have to offer. These thoughts bubbled up again today after I read Mick's post.

As I said in my comment on his post, it is important to grasp that SL is not a “computer game”. It’s a platform. People who go there and expect exciting things to happen are missing the point. After all, you don’t go to town and then sit around there waiting for things to happen. Nor do you go and drift aimlessly wondering what the point is of being there. You go because you have some fixed objectives in mind.

When the same is true of SL, it makes more sense. If you’re attending a meeting, visting an art gallery, attending a seminar, etc. you have a goal and a purpose and SL becomes the platform by which you achieve it.

Having said that, I see no point in using this new wineskin for old wine. Why use SL to deliver a traditional classroom-based, teacher-led, chalk-and-talk session? Instead, you could have a dispersed team from around the world carrying out a project together and learning as they go. You could have simulated scenarios that can’t be recreated in the physical world for whatever reason, and use those for learning. I have been told that there is a teaching hospital in SL, where patients with predetermined conditions await treatment by student doctors and nurses. Obviously, in the physical world, there is the risk of patients dying or suing. This risk is mitigated in a virtual environment.

I suspect that what people tend to do is to say: "This is what we've always done, let's do it via Second Life, because that will be sexy." Instead, I suggest we should be saying "This is what we want to achieve, is there some functionality in Second Life that will help us get there?"

And, yes, Second Life has been around for a while, now, but it is still a fairly fledgling technology. There are teething problems. The direction these technologies develop in can be dictated by their users. If we start making demands of it, start pushing the envelope in this or that direction, it will have to evolve to keep up.

Think about it this way: we can have a say in what virtual worlds become by dint of the magic words "I want..." This is what I suspect is happening with the Wii.