Second Life Experience

Second Life Experience To say the least, it was a little different than being in a classroom. There are plenty of interesting distractions, so it will probably take a while for the novelty to wear off.

It is still awkward for me to navigate my character, and due to the software it doesn’t seem that the motion will be as good as some video games. But the characters do move, and it looks like their hands are typing if their real people are, and if there is no activity with the real people for a while, then the characters seem to fall asleep. There are even yawns that can be conjured up, much to the consternation of the teacher.

The hardest part for me to deal with in SL is the same thing that I had commented on in my last semester’s class, that the chat room experience is more like something that could have been invented in the 19th century, like “Mr. Edison’s Teletypewritergraph”. You type, and someone responds at a distance. It’s a little more sophisticated than a telegraph and its Morse Code, but not as sophisticated as a telephone which transmits voice immediately.

Which makes communication in a group somewhat weird. Typing, which is not my forte, as I still have to look at the keyboard, from lack of discipline in high school typing class, so that slows me down. Plus I am so persnickety about spelling; I have to check it before I send. But it doesn’t seem to bother most people when confronted with misspellings in the heat of the game. The thoughts come up, but then there is this delay in transmission by not vocalizing the verbalizations.

My own sentiments are that there is no substitute for face to face learning in a classroom environment. Not only is speech used, with its modulations so that meaning is more readily apparent, but there is of course the body language and eye contact that really helps the communication.

Not that I am not open to looking at new modalities. Will the classroom of the future be totally on-line? As for the subjects I am teaching right now, since they are so demonstration intensive, I couldn’t see it. Of course it could be said that the demos could be viewed on line, but then again it all could be faked.

To paraphrase a slogan from the Gay Rights movement, “It’s here, it’s queer, get used to it.” There are enough forces academically and commercially that are propelling the movement to have these virtual classrooms. It will be interesting to see where it all ends up.

So I am willing to play around with this SL business, to see what are its advantages and disadvantages. It definitely slows down the learning exchange, since the motions are awkward and communication is slowed down due to the typing.

It sounds like not everyone is as open-minded as myself and there is a little bit of a possibility of mutiny. And I can see the point of why go through all this monkey motion of having this virtual world be the classroom? What is the real advantage of having your avatars? If the point is to simply chat, then why have a setting?

I find it kind of humorous to the objections that there are things there that would best not be seen. Being a bohemian artist type, where anything goes, not too much disturbs me. It’s a cartoon world, and you can always teleport away from the scene of the crime. But what I don’t find humorous, actually downright disturbing, is that it seems that Dr C. has been side-stepped and complaints lodged with administration re the SL, which is every teacher’s nightmare.

We shall see what happens next time!

Test

Hey, is this thing working?