Second Life is building up an image – problem in education, what to do

The discussion about SL; its sex, its drugs, its rock and roll (SDR) and not to forget gaming, is the same as we had in 1995, in the breakthrough of what we now would call web 1.0. I’d rather speak of programmable web than of web 2.0 but that is a different discussion. So let us not get too excited about the flat representation in the global media about SL. Because of this media – attention, focused on the darker sides of life, SL is building up an image problem.

For us educators that is awkward because in our colleges and universities the adversaries will use this attention as an argument against experimenting with it! That is a difficult problem to tackle. The best way is to keep mentioning the facts, preferably those that counter and /or match the ones used in the media at the moment.

SL is hype, sex is business in SL and therefore sex in SL gets more attention than education, as it would anywhere. The media are fairly hypocritical in mentioning the SDR - triangle in a new environment like SL, while they stopped writing about the same SDR - triangle in Real Life. The first is news, the second is everyday life. On the other hand my tours show that most of what happens in SL is very common as it is in everyday life in RL. OK, we can do things some of us cannot afford in RL, but we would be able to. I mention: laying in the ho ttub, taking a balloon flight, fly your own helicopter, dive in the ocean, etc. I haven’t seen somebody mowing the lawn so far! So let’s face it. In one way SL is very different to RL, you can do things you hardly get to or are unable to in RL In another way it resembles RL when it comes to do those things we are all occupied with every day of our life. Including sex!

Education has not shown much change over the past 200 years when it comes to free learning from the boundaries of schools. So far education has not shown much change in SL either, at least from what I have seen. Most universities, colleges, educational projects, consultants building a campus show little real activity so far and I am not convinced at all that many present initiatives will become successful projects in SL.

I would like to share some lessons learned with you

I did best practice research between 1994 and 2002, not accidentally coinciding with the development of the WWW. Doing that, I found out that good projects or initiatives had some characteristics in common. I will share them with you here. All projects that were/are successful in the sense that it attracted much attention by not only managers, students and teacher but also by policymakers and administration have or do:

Charisma: Hard to define, but well described by Dany Jacobs as the WOW – factor. The wanna-do/wanna-have aspect of projects that attracts people like honey does bees. In some cases it is the hidden promise like in The Brain, the visualization tool for concept – development or advanced searching. Sometimes the brilliant combination, the mashup, we would say now between to successful technologies like Lego and ICT in Mindstorms. Sometimes the simplicity as in the Mobile Inquiry Technology – project and to finish this round up the impressive educational and philosophical concept behind it as in Bereiters and Scardameglia’s Knowledge Forum. It is also good to keep in mind that relevance to the society, not just limited to education, is an important factor for success.

Focus: Almost always there is a mismatch between the granularity of the solution and that of the educational problem. In other words we use an elephant foot to kill a mouse. Most educational ICT projects aim to solve problems like contact hours, lack of communication, access to relevant learning materials and 7/24 coaching. Successful projects focus on one or maybe two problems to solve and succeed in focusing on that. The owners found a way to cope with all those around that whisper: wouldn’t it be nice if we at the same time and as we are doing this also………….. Examples are the Digital Library Project, Intersect en the Modus – project. Trying to solve one specific or generic problem and doing that right, continuously and persistent.

Think big, start small: Not to be explained, but often ignored. The Jason – project is a good example of that approach, but there are dozens, if not hundreds of them. And of course, there is also luck to it, and in most cases continuous funding or ROI.

Direct transfer or interaction with the educational environment in, what we would call now, Real Life. Best examples are hands – on initiatives, not seldom by a teacher with a class from Monday till Friday. What about Cybercast and Contrasting Cases, are they or were they not excellent in their practicality? Interdisciplinarity is also important as projects that involve teams in projects, rather than focused on subjects seem more successful too.

Enduring ficancial commitment. A lot of projects start with one or two very driven individuals and sometimes put their private live at stake to follow their dream. That situation will not last long and it will finish when they, sometimes literally drop. Successful projects have, almost from day one, a sound financial perspective. It is either very cheap to do or it has the money to last or to become self supporting.

Now what if we question the present projects in Second Life, to what extent would they score in a scale of 1 to 5 to these criteria? Which projects come in mind and how would we best present them to our peers and managers?

Looking forward to your reaction.

I made a post on my personal blog last month about the importance of transparency in a relationship, this was inspired from one of my friends Christopher Penn.

I’ve always been a fan of openness particularly in educational circles, yet still I find many educators are more closed than people working outside of the sector. This is worrying and should be addressed at many levels.

We are now operating in a new-media world, the old school mentality of “knowledge is power” in so much as “it’s mine, I have it and you don’t” has gone. Academics who hold on to this will fall beside the wayside and simply get left behind. The reason being that nobody will trust you, nobody will believe you, you will not develop a medium of reaching your audience in the new-world.

Old fashioned media was based on the concept of large print houses, the commercial value being the physical size of the print house and the physical size of the distribution network it could maintain, based on the physical size. If they wanted to reach more people, they needed more print house space for more copies, more staff, more delivery people.

This is changing and changing fast.

We no longer need the big print houses to distribute, you can distribute yourself right now, you can tell the world, you can voice your opinion more easily that ever before.

BUT, you must build your network well, you must build your own network(s) of believers, people who trust you, and follow you, if you are not transparent it will not work.

This then is a call to being as transparent as possible in all your endeavours, if you give give give, you will get get get. Why are you spending so much time writing an academic paper for a closed audience, when you could be publishing on a blog and multiplying your audience, AND, having them comment on your work easily. You never know you may even make a new friend, and learn something.

Are you lecturing a subject, why not blog it too? Practise it, share share share.

I recently attended a podcamp un-conference, and this is the best get together I have ever been on, this blows academic conferences right out of the water. And why? Because people were open, transparent, I trusted them, they shared knowledge openely and willingly.

Check out that conference report here (it is SecondLife related)

Comments encouraged