Forget everything you’ve heard about Second Life. Forget the stories about unicorn babies and vandalized presidential campaigns. Even forget the concept of people spending real money for virtual goods.
Now imagine a safe online world where kids dress up in their own Medieval costumes and live the life of a manor lord, clergyman, town blacksmith, or peasant. Students adopt the appropriate dialogue and language, role play their parts, and create their own products to sell at a marketplace. At the same time, they learn about history, art and culture, and even mathematics and economics.
Teen Second Life, which is geared toward 13- to 17-year-olds, and other virtual environments offer these learning possibilities for both teachers and students.
Digital technology has become an integral part of young people’s lives, both socially and in educational ways. Educators, businesses, and communities increasingly are investigating ways to leverage these multimedia tools for classroom and learning purposes.
Digital Immigrant, Meet Digital Native
To reach today’s children, we must try to understand how they approach technology. Expert Marc Prensky calls today’s children "digital natives" because they are native speakers of the digital language of computers, the Internet, and video games. This generation was raised on cell phones and text messaging, email and the Internet, and computer and video games. The rest of us are "digital immigrants" who have adapted to the new technologies but often retain an "accent" — such as printing out a document to edit it rather than editing on the computer.
Digital natives need more than computers and Web access to appeal to their tech prowess. They are accustomed to peer-to-peer interactions in social networking sites and networked video games. Connecting with and engaging this generation requires collaborative learning and interactive technologies.
Putting Technology to Use
Julie Franklin, an IT resource teacher in Virginia, says virtual worlds have "a lot of educational advantages." The Weather Channel, for example, has created an area within Second Life where students can experience a tsunami or ride a weather balloon and learn how it works. "You live what you’re doing," she explains, adding that even young kids love the virtual environments and interaction that are part of these online worlds.
Franklin admits that there is a lot of adult content in Second Life. To avoid student exposure to these areas, school systems can buy Second Life space at a discount and close it off for their students, creating an environment that also meets state standards of learning.
Whyville is another virtual community that engages preteens and teens in games and roleplay in a variety of subjects, from geology to geography. "Whyville is an inquiry-based pedagogy that allows student-centered teaching where teachers are assistants and not directors of the learning," Whyville founder and CEO Jim Bower says.
The site’s games are designed to provide learning experiences through game playing in a social setting. And it works, Bower says. "Students spend hours and hours on things like the WhyEat nutrition project — where the goal is to keep their avatar healthy through good eating habits. It’s not because they have to, but because they want to. That’s what learning is all about, and good teachers already know this."
Virtual Goes Corporate
The corporate world has taken notice of these new technologies, providing sponsored learning environments within the virtual communities. For example, Toyota has made a significant investment in promoting its Scion car brand, geared at younger drivers, in both Whyville and Second Life, and soon in the Gaia Online virtual world. The Ganz gift company has secured a virtual presence with its
Webkinz toys, which include a code for an online virtual world where kids can play with a virtual version of their toy. The company says its site has more than one million registered users.
Beyond incorporating existing technologies, some groups are looking to new innovations in digital learning to shape the education field. The MacArthur Foundation is sponsoring a $2 million competition to find and encourage new ideas about learning in a digital world, with a focus on innovation and knowledge networking. The Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) is administering the competition. HASTAC co-founder David Theo Goldberg says the group is seeking new applications of existing technologies, such as how information from Wikipedia can be leveraged into teaching programs, perhaps by having students verify sources while gathering information.
We need to "listen to children and watch how they learn and what they learn from and how excited they get from these interactive practices," Goldberg says. Providing a learning environment that enables that interaction and encourages that self-motivating energy could help to transform the classroom. "Teachers become the shapers of information, not the givers of information," he says.
Collaborations and interactions among students and between students and teachers are the purpose of pursuing these technologies, which in turn make those goals achievable. Transformational technology may bring us one step closer to the basics of learning.
Marc Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, October 2001.
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Interview, Julie Franklin. September 11, 2007.
Interview, Jim Bower. September 18, 2007.
“Learning Nutrition at Whyville’s Virtual Cafeteria.” School Nutrition Association, May 2006.
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“Businesses experimenting with virtual worlds.” Washington Post, June 2007.
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Interview, David Theo Goldberg. September 18, 2007.
New $2 Million Competition to Challenge Innovations in Digital Learning, August 2007.
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