Tony O’Driscoll speaking at UTVWC
(image by Laura Thomas)

I attended a conference on virtual world (VW) technology for the first time, yesterday. The New Ventures and Leadership in Virtual Worlds conference at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business was an opportunity to hear about some research into conducting business in VWs, visit with folks who are thinking about creating a presence in Second Life (SL), and meet the First Life avatars of a couple of SL acquaintances.

Arriving late, I walked into a small lecture hall for the first session to find about fifty people listening to Tony O’Driscoll (image) who seemed to be presenting a historical perspective of technology (and perhaps social media?), discussing how that might play out with virtual worlds. (Question by a visitor to a virtual tech museum: “What is this room?” Answer: “This is what used to be called a classroom”.) Having missed much of his talk, I was glad later to learn that he documented his presentation online.

My first conversation began with small talk over bagels and fresh squeezed orange juice (what a world!) with Hugo, a visitor from outside the U.S. He mentioned his company’s interest in developing a virtual world presence and that an exploration of platforms was underway. He said that he knew little about OpenSim, so I made a note to send him some information…and later decided to simply develop a page about OpenSim at the new blog to serve as a reference.

Many of the folks I spoke with were very new to VWs. Often, I found myself in the role of a VW ambassador, sharing glimpses of the metaverse and describing various aspects of VWs; functionality and opportunity of user-generated content in SL/OS, challenges in designing content for education, and the potential of OpenSim to deliver a more robust VW than SL. I enjoyed the opportunity to visit with several of the speakers, who all seemed enthusiastic.

Stockholm School of Economics’
virtual meeting space in SL

The conference was a mixed reality event, with VW participants contributing to the conversation, and slides and audio simulcast in SL (image). MLani Montgomery, one of the SL attendees asked a question that went unanswered:

Question: As a K-12 educator in a rural area, we have a cutting-edge distance learning program in terms of delivery, but not content… Is there documentation to bring from the business world to outline basic tech skills future employees will need as a baseline?

Hmmm. Basic tech skills that today’s students will need tomorrow, as employees. I think I’ll break from this to root around a bit, and see what I can find…

Stata Center at MIT

“Virtual Worlds: Where Business, Society, Technology & Policy Converge” – the metaverse conference at MIT. Is this what IT was like in the early nineties with the birth of the World Wide Web? Bob Sutor: posts the agenda with links to videos. My impression – given Mr. Sutor’s description before the event – was that the conference discussion would center on standards for implementing the many platforms that are likely to emerge. (How will Azwaldo Villota – my Second Life avatar – travel to an IBM grid, or the Pepsi-verse?).

Opening remarks by Frank Moss, the Director of the MIT Media Laboratory (who hosted the event), highlighted the potential for new technologies to allow us to connect “in many different dimensions” while also pointing out many of the challenges faced in bringing virtual worlds (VW) to the mainstream user. Joey Seiler of Virtual Worlds News posted notes during the conference. Good read, well done.

Most significant to me – perhaps – was that Mr. Moss went over the time alloted his opening slot. Where ideas seem to move at the speed of light, is time of little consequence?

What models of education will replace our current traditional system? Business needs educated candidates; lacking that they will need to do the training themselves…

How can I help?

Feedback suggests that educational content in VR (specifically SL), can benefit from approaching design with the intent to increase interactivity. Many in SL have commented about how education in SL needs to be something new, how we cannot just rely on traditional methods for this new technology to evolve. Not so many are developing these new tools.

At least one veteran SL user has remarked on this in a weblog:

“…a lot of the ‘uses’ for SL have revolved around replicating existing teaching methods. So people build lecture theatres so students can experience the pleasure of reading someone type with super-lag. People drop notecard-givers on every corner, pumping out raw text ¹ with very little creative possibilities.”
Kisa Naumova

What will be the nature of an effective, asynchronous instructional object?

Sitting in a desk chair, the notion surfaces once more that I need a more comfortable chair. Not just a chair, but a working platform, a helm; yes, I am thinking something more like a dentist’s chair. Padded, tooled-up, with a motorized reclining feature. Of course, my (new) dual monitors will have to be mounted – or better, suspended – from above so that I can continue to do what I am doing this very moment, which is interacting.

Because I am going to be here for a while.

If young learners are to be guided, perhaps escorted, within a learn-on-demand campus such as Second Life, then there will need to be training camps for the mentors. Maybe even networked teams of roving avatars (think social media). How is this different? What are the features of this place that serve the big picture? What in Kimi’s tutelage is unique when compared to Education 1.0? One difference, it feels like friendship.

Look at what we have now. In just under four days, I was been able to learn to build, script, explore, and even dress myself. Granted I had spent many hours with Second Life: The Official Guide, but still, a motivated learner has all of the information available to get going, moving forward. Look at what I am doing now, no word processor or application suite. I am writing a note that can be posted to anyone in the world, drawn from as content for another application, even e-mailed out to the outer grid (snapshot the note, select e-mail to friend).

I have created and designed.

Regardless of the debate (see Scoble’s threaded discussion) over whether this is an OS or not, what matters is this: Will we find what we need to communicate right here, at our fingertips.
I write this entry after having spent two RL (real life) hours in a dance club. The visual stimulation inspired me to come up with my own acronymious teen speak (You know, the short abrev/fonix type words that young people are text messaging and IMing while some of us (those who remember rotary dial telephones) wonder if they may be doing it just to be obscure.)

IO

IO = information overload. There was so much going on; music, dancing, costumes, chat text, IMing, that i could hardly take pictures of my new friends (all my SL friends were there !). At times I had my browser open with a blog or wiki to learn about SL, or about how to SL, or whatever else i might do on the WWW. But in this case, my virtual self was doing some salsa dancing with my mentor, Kimi. Later, I would actually jump up onto one of the floating pedastals myself, and earn a bit of kipper while the music thumped. Dancing actually freed me up to do more of this that I am doing right now – generating content.

WAW.

(What A World.)

It is encouraging that a web development icon like Jon Udell frequently shares—through his online presence—his genuine interest in educational technology. In “Re-imagining education” he posts the challenge:

“Access to knowledge, access to publishing. Motivation and context. If an educational system embraced these principles, what would it look like?”

And, for Mr. Udell, it is not just rhetoric. He explores a topic with a mindful bent toward problem solving. In a recent entry, he speaks about his podcast interview with Graham Glass, (founder of edu2.0) about the future of education. This sort of conversation is like ear candy for the edTech-minded. Udell brings unique insight to the conversation; the links alone, given the extent of his journey across technology and the Internet, present a wealth of material that can keep an educator’s eye on the leading edge. Prime example: this link to a project based learning video produced by high school students (app. thirty minutes; worth a look).

I often find it necessary to edit my pessimistic view, if only to keep myself on the constructive side of the dialog. I have, for example, cut entire rants about the inertia in public education (where technology is concerned). Railing on about adoption lag time is not going to bring about change. The teacher’s lounge that is the Internet streams a cacophony of complaint.

It helps to hear such a clear message from folks like Jon Udell.

Classrooms have changed plenty since the early nineties. This is not only due to the gadgets that have come into vogue; I was as geeked out as anyone back then. I recall staying late on campus one Friday, hooking up the first laserdisc player on campus; then, going home to spend most of that weekend scripting buttons into a Hypercard stack to remotely navigate a disc’s program while simultaneously throwing instructional text up to the monitor.

That felt like Education2.0. What we didn’t know back then was that it was still World1.0, and that things were about to change. Oh sure, some few would have seen clear to the tech horizon; but their voices were drowned out by the steady thrumm of copy machines spewing handouts; their vision blurred by chalk dust. And the failure—yes, I think we failed—to keep up with the pace of development has left a great rift between what we now have and what could have been.

In “K-12, Higher Ed, Apples, Oranges…”, Christopher Dawson offers—almost in passing—a notion that has driven my own webquest:

In many ways, higher ed and K-12 are two different worlds.

Could someone please shout that from a rooftop? If we had any hint of the change to come back then, would we have worked any harder to promote development of K-12 educational technology? Tried to keep pace with the development in academia? Well, better late than never. The extent of technological progress over the last decade leaves me grinning at the thought of trying to imagine what the standard will be in ten years. And it will be prudent to temper the charge with advice like that from Kirk Kirksey

“Just because we can create a technology doesn’t mean we will do something worthwhile with it.“

I am reminded here of something that Carl once wrote:

“Even if I could have a to-do list holographically projected in 3-D, floating in front of my face with really cool spaceships battling all around it which was activated via voice command, I still wouldn’t be anymore productive.”

Comparatively, just because a student has posted in a weblog about the way a jazzy podcast has helped him to contribute to a wiki does not mean that he is gaining knowledge. Or, does it? (Carl?)

Best, perhaps, to just keep plugging along, keep looking for what works now.

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