Online Learning with Second Life

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Through its ability to enhance social presence, Second Life provides a virtual, learner-centered environment through which instructors and students can mediate the tensions that typically arise in many current approaches to online education. Such technologies allow for a “relationship among learning, playing, and helping” (Barab, Arici, and Jackson 2005, 15) by providing opportunities for human interaction that, in turn, can sustain authentic, meaningful learning experiences. In doing so, they promote curricular innovations that can help students and instructors better understand each other’s needs, abilities, and interests (McCombs and Whisler 1997).

This understanding is necessary in our world where change, globalization, and diversity converge upon our learning environments and where respect and trust are required to foster motivation and learning (McCombs and Whisler 1997). These developments bring social foundations to the forefront. As we adapt to changing conditions, we will need to examine social values, educational contexts, access issues, and basic human needs, from relationship building to creating and donating one’s work to the world. When new educational technologies are vetted theoretically and philosophically through curriculum theory and social-foundations perspectives, then such technological innovations can become truly transformative.

Innovate: Mediating the Tensions of Online Learning with Second Life,. Innovate

Nancy Evans, Thalia M. Mulvihill, and Nancy J. Brooks

A decade ago convergence was the big word: all of these separate technologies, for email, scheduling, music, and video, would merge into a single device. The cell-phone may well be the ultimate expression of this idea. Educational technology is no different. A dozen years ago we had websites, email, maybe a MOO or a MUD. Over time, they converged more or less successfully into course management software.

I think in the next few years the term convergence may come to apply more and more specifically to online education, as old school ‘course management’ systems, which I use now, begin to move closer to what Evans and Brooks call new style “multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs)” such as Second Life. This means that the pioneers of MUVEs today are, in effect, mapping out the technologies and teaching methods everyone in distance education will be using in future.

It’s easy to forget that the current systems are rooted in rapidly disappearing technological limits. Or, rather, that they are rooted in technological limits that are unequally distributed along class lines. It’s easy to imagine an education system in which the wealthiest districts have MUVE classrooms, and the poorest are stuck with static classroom management software.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

The Real Class War Again: In Class

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Nearly every child in America hopes to become a college graduate. Her ambitions are at least partly realistic—rates of high school graduation and college-going are very high. But the chances she will succeed in college are more modest: Less than 60 percent of students entering four-year institutions earn bachelor’s degrees, and barely one-fourth of community college students complete either associate’s or bachelor’s degrees within six years of college entry.

Students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are even less likely to realize their college ambitions. Only 40 percent of beginning college students from low-income families complete a two- or four-year degree within six years. Rates of degree completion are much higher among high-income students (62 percent). Focusing on the most lucrative undergraduate degree, the baccalaureate, there is a 40 percentage point gap in completion rates between individuals from the bottom and top income quartiles. Since future economic and social success is largely predicated on holding a college degree, this low chance of college success among the poorest students perpetuates growth in income inequality.

A Federal Agenda for Promoting Student Success and Degree CompletionBy Sara Goldrick-Rab, Josipa Roksa | August 12, 2008, Center for American Progress.

Here’s more data from the real class war; this time, on the specific mechanisms that make class mobility more difficult than many believe. Or, rather, one of the mechanisms. It’s also the cost of college, from tuition to room and board, and the drying up of student loans, among other things.

What’s interesting about this report is that it focuses on the “lower-class” of the university system, arguing that more money and attention ought to be paid to “the most accessible but under-resourced schools.” The report’s authors want, in effect, to make mobility among schools easier.

I’m not sure I completely agree with the report, in part because it’s proposals rely so heavily on education sociology jargon– “value added evaluation” and the like. I like the idea, though, of making so-called non-traditional college careers easier to manage.

I did poorly the first time I went to school, and only one of my parents had a degree. I took a non-traditional path through community college, and it took five years overall to get my undergraduate degree. My sisters and most of my cousins have similar stories. Mobility isn’t a straight line.

I took seven years off between my M.A. and then my PhD and I won’t pay off these degrees until retirement. It’s easy to imagine anyone stopping at one of these points, or for any number of financial or individual reasons. Making the nuts and bolts of the system work together more smoothly couldn’t hurt.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing

You’re Never Alone in Second Life

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A glimpse into the world of the N-Gen’s texts seems to indicate that these learners have grown up doing the very things that traditional pedagogy discourages. When viewed in this context, the N-Gen student may appear deficient, lacking the skills necessary to succeed in the academic world. Texts that do not look like books or essays and that are structured in unfamiliar ways may leave educators with the perception that the authors of these texts lack necessary literacy skills. Are these students missing something, or are they coming to us with skills as researchers, readers, writers, and critical thinkers that have been developed in a context that faculty members may not understand and appreciate? The striking differences between the linear, print-based texts of instructors and the interactive, fluctuating, hyperlinked texts of the N-Gen student may keep instructors from fully appreciating the thought processes behind these texts. Learning how to teach the wired student requires a two-pronged effort: to understand how N-Gen student understand and process texts and to create a pedagogy that leverages the learning skills of this type of learner.

Innovate: Why Professor Johnny Can’t Read: Understanding the Net Generation’s Texts -Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley, Innovate, August/September, 2008.

This is one of those solid, common-sense articles that appear now and again, reminding teachers that their students are different and pedagogy must adapt, etc. It’s probably more true at this moment in history– given the flood of technological change– than it’s been since the 1960s.

It’s a helpful reminder, especially for those teachers who continue to bemoan the ill effects of the computer on writing, or who resist it’s introduction into the classroom. On the other hand, all of the efforts to teach to the “first generation of kids raised on television” did not really come to much.

It seems reasonable, then, to be skeptical, at least until the economics behind these phenomena play themselves out a bit longer. Right now it seems faddish at best when schools set up Second Life campuses; maybe in a decade or more it will seem evolutionary.

What I look for, too, is some sense that the teachers are pushing back against the market in a productive way. This article has little of that, I’m afraid. The market wants constant change, movement, obsolescence; we need to offer contemplation, reflection, even solitude.

I’m not sure how we go about doing that, given that the culture of education seems so polarized between a kind of willful anarchism and a willy-nilly embrace of each and every new product that comes along. My guess is that good sense is out there somewhere, uncelebrated but productive.

Posted in: Language, Online Places, Professional, Writing

The Dream of (Canadian) Centralization

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A Gartner analyst thinks Canada’s natural resources and cooler temperature can help it take advantage of the growing cloud computing trend to provide services and Web applications.

The country has an estimated server installed base of more than one million units, and in the next five years, the market will demonstrate incremental growth typical of a mature market, said Jeffrey Hewitt, vice-president of research with Stamford, Conneticut-based Gartner Inc.

“But is there a way in Canada for that to be boosted beyond that standard incremental projection?” asked Hewitt.

He thinks the country’s years of investment in hydro electric power facilities and ambient temperatures will enable data centres to be powered and subsequently cooled. And, he said, the concerns around power and cooling are only getting bigger as Web content grows with video sharing sites like YouTube. Therefore, the country can take its hydro electric infrastructure to “another level” and extend it to the Web, said Hewitt.

Canada primed for cloud computing: Gartner | The Industry Standard, Kathleen Lau, ComputerWorld Canada.

I used to work at a school that dreamed the dream of centralization and not surprisingly, it was a disaster. This dream is a variant of the automated factory dream; the idea that one day we can get rid of all of those pesky, complaining, expensive workers.

I’m no Luddite. This dream has to do with the idea of a pure profit, divorced from human labor, not with technology. Technology is simply the dominant strategy of the dream in our time. In universities, the dream is as strong as anywhere else, maybe stronger.

Imagine a school without teachers and their pesky unions! Actually, though, the dream as I experienced it had to do with the expense of support people. We had a nightmare of a classroom computer system that needed to be updated. That was clear.

It was also clear that the reason the system was a nightmare was that there was not enough support personnel. Somehow, someone heard about “thin clients”– computers that were, in effect, nothing but a monitor and a box with some flash memory. The software lives on a central server.

It sounds so great. Obviously, the real problem isn’t a lack of support personnel, it’s those wacky students and teachers who keep messing up the system. The “thin clients” made sure that no one could change anything important. It made support almost unnecessary!

The dream was, of course, utterly wrong. In fact the new system was even more of a nightmare than the old, outdated computers. If one thing went wrong somewhere on the network, none of the computers would work. Another dream come true.

The idea of putting the servers in cold places is a good one, but I think it’s also important to think very carefully about cloud computing as the latest instance of the dream of centralization. It’s fine to put all our You-Tube videos in the same place. I’m not sure the same holds true for much else.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Composition, Economics, Professional, Union, Writing