Science ID

Week 3 was a mix of excitement and frustration and I connected with the articles “how not to teach in second life” (http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=1363) and have been exploring the sim tech wiki for code resources. http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page.

I have a map that helps me map out what we could do in SL but I’m having difficulty finding good example. So my topics this week are (1) Are we using tools to playing school? and (2) Should we use these tools at all? / Do they have a place?

First, let me describe what I mean by “playing school.” I’ve seen a lot of tools and techniques that mimic classroom tools, museum and library experiences but do not improve up them and are more cumbersome than web standard web delivery. The interview with Milosun “How NOT to teach in Second Life”warns educators to avoid delivering curriculum with mimicked techniques, however one could make a case that simulating a classroom environment has some intrinsic benefit.

I’ve been teaching, working and developing teaching strategies in Elluminate and I’ve been comparing SL to this platform. There is no doubt the SL has potential beyond white board and application sharing techniques but I’ve haven’t seen anyone really improve upon it. Take the slide show / display board, for example. This is tool is useful for teaching in SL, but is it really a good teaching tool? If you had X number of dollars (or hours) to teach X number of objectives, the display board would be a very poor return on investment. The classrooms, meeting spaces and tools that I’ve seen (so far) allow us to play school. I think there are other reason to use SL and the use of these tools should be limited to brief information exchange.

Next week I’m going to take a harder look at how we can teach in SL. I’m trying to find key areas where educators are using SL to deliver content in new and more meaningful ways. I’m looking for subjects and techniques where one would clearly stay “If you need to teach X the best way to do that is in a virtual environment.”