Virtual Classroom Project - Final Reflections

The inaugural phase of the Virtual Classroom Project is coming to a close. The official in-world meet-up to officially conclude Leigh Blackall’s (SL: Leroy Goalpost) residency on jokaydia as our first Educator-in-Residence will take place in the next two weeks. Details will be posted as soon as the date is finalized.

Before we conclude, however, Leigh and I will use voicethread to engage in conversations about his work and his experiences as our Educator-in-Residence. I hope that you will find some time to not only listen to Leigh’s thoughts but also contribute your own questions or comments. Please check back regularly as we intend to keep contributing to the voicethread throughout the final two weeks of Leroy’s residency.

So, if you’ve been following the project or attended our inworld meet-up during jokaydia’s April Festival, please add your thoughts. Leroy and I are looking forward to an engaging discussion.

Click here to listen to our voicethread discussion or use the embedded player below.

May 7, 2008 | Filed Under educator-in-residence, events, virtual classroom project | Leave a Comment 

“An engine for creativity”

The title of this post comes from Claudia L’Amoreaux, a community developer and educator for Linden Lab, who was recently interviewed for an eSchool News article. She states that

Today’s teens are creating their own content, uploading photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube, and in Second Life they’re making their own games and stepping into them–you could call Second Life a participatory game platform.

As I sit down to reflect on our very own Virtual Classroom Project and the work of our first ever Educator-in-Residence Leigh Blackall, I realize that Second Life is indeed a participatory platform. Those of you who attended our Virtual Classroom Project sessions experienced this first-hand. Leigh’s project gave us an opportunity not only to discuss teaching and learning in virtual environments and in real life, but also to experience his prototype by interacting with it as if it were a physical space. The virtual experience of walking around the “classroom” he has designed taught me a lot about designing spaces for learning and provided numerous opportunities to reflect on the art of designing such spaces both in real life and in a virtual environment such as Second Life.

Leigh presenting at the Virtual Classroom Meeting 1
Photo by joannamkay

It’s hardly surprising that Leigh’s work has already inspired one of our jokaydian residents, slammed Aabye (Dean Groom), to think about exploring some aspects of the Virtual Classroom Project on the Teen Grid where he is creating a presence for his high school students. In fact, both he and another inspiring jokaydian, Judy O’Connell (Heyjude Jenns), have started a Ning group to facilitate their efforts in Teen Second Life and encourage discussion among educators about meaningful, collaborative, and project-based approaches to teaching in Second Life.

As I read through their entries in the new Ning community and look at photos of their Teen Grid spaces, my thoughts return to that eSchool News article on gaming, Second Life, and 21st-century skills. I am sure that their work will culminate in a virtual environment and numerous activities that will help their students develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. I am sure that their work will confirm some of the following conclusions about the use of games and virtual worlds in education:

  • Gaming and simulations are highly interactive, allow for instant feedback, immerse students in collaborative environments, and allow for rapid decision-making.
  • Studies of the brain have pointed to data suggesting that repeated exposure to video games reinforces the ability to create mental maps, inductive discovery such as formulating hypotheses, and the ability to focus on several things at once and respond faster to unexpected stimuli.
  • Video games engage students and help foster some of the 21st-century skills, such as problem-solving, which may be more difficult to acquire in a traditional classroom with a textbook.
  • “When you think about the skills that students need when they leave school, like creativity and curiosity … identifying problems and solving them - these are skills that [can be] hard to teach in the traditional face-to-face classroom,” [...] “And a lot of these technologies are being used in the corporate world–IBM is now using games to train its employees, so you see simulations and games emerging outside of K-12 education.

I am looking forward to following the work that Judy and Dean have started in their Ning group. I hope that the Virtual Classroom Project will continue to inspire Second Life educators and explore the potential of Second Life as “an engine for creativity.”

If you’re interested in sharing your thoughts on Second Life and education, please feel free to join the Diigo group I created to collect and reflect on online resources that focus on teaching and learning in virtual environments.

May 4, 2008 | Filed Under community, education, educator-in-residence, jokaydians, virtual classroom project | Leave a Comment 

Newbie Session and Maintaining my Sense of Wonder

Jo has already written about the hugely successful April Festival on jokaydia which took place last weekend, but I’d like to add a few words about the Newbie Session that she asked me to help out with. It was very inspiring to be with a group of visitors who are keen to start exploring the educational potential of Second Life. One of the most important things that I learned during that session was not to take Second Life for granted. Interacting with those who are new to Second Life reminded me how inspired I was when I first created my avatar and started exploring some of the educational spaces inworld. It was like discovering a new frontier - it was a time to reflect on what I’d accomplished as an educator in the physical and online world, and to also think about the possibilities that await in the virtual environment of Second Life. In other words, it was a time to push my own thinking about education.

As I reflect on that Newbie Session last week, I am reminded of the wide-eyed enthusiasm of our guests and the importance of that almost child-like sense of wonder and exploration that we all experience when we first discover Second Life.

jokaydia Newbie Session (April 18, 2008)

One thing that helps me keep that sense of wonder alive and makes me feel like a perpetual SL newbie is my passion for inworld photography and machinima. If you’re interested in my work, feel free to visit the home of my March Studios at blip.tv or my growing collection of Second Life landscape photography.

Finally, here’s a video to celebrate last week’s festival and, specifically, the magical Newbie Session balloon ride that reminded me of why I love Second Life: As our first Educator-in-Residence continues to demonstrate, it’s a place where the only limit is our creativity (… and the number of prims at our disposal :-) ):



For a full-screen version, click here.

April 28, 2008 | Filed Under events, jokaydia, machinima, photography | 3 Comments 

Virtual Classroom Project Reflection

Cross-posted to: blog of proximal development

Leigh Blackall’s work on the islands of jokaydia in Second Life is truly inspiring. We’ve had many discussions since he agreed to take part in my Virtual Classroom Project and it’s been fascinating to observe his progress. I envisioned the Virtual Classroom Project as an opportunity to explore alternatives to our traditional notions of teaching, learning, and, specifically, learning space design. I’m pleased that Leigh, the project’s first Educator-in-Residence, has taken up that challenge by sharing a unique and thought-provoking concept. I cannot wait to see the finished project and am looking forward to further discussions with Leigh.

Before I delve into my first reflection on his work, I’d like to encourage you to follow his progress and take part in a virtual workshop that Leigh and I will be hosting this weekend on the islands of jokaydia, the home of the Virtual Classroom Project.

Leigh’s Project - A Brief Introduction

Virtual Classroom Meeting (April 14, 2008)

As soon as Leigh announced his plans for a virtual prototype of a learning space based on the principles of permaculture design I was hooked. I realized that, to Leigh, the Virtual Classroom Project presented an opportunity to address learning as a fundamental part of our daily existence. “Leigh’s ideas,” I wrote in my project notes, “suggest that he wants to explore the process of de-institutionalizing learning. He seems interested in asking why learning cannot be grounded in informal places, places that we take for granted, such as our homes.” But Leigh took this one step further. If our place of residence is to serve as a focal point of learning in our lives, then we need to start asking ourselves some crucial questions about the kinds of places we inhabit and the relationship between those places and the environment. In other words, Leigh believes that the process of de-institutionalizing learning cannot lead to creating places that are as insensitive to the natural world around them as the big institutions that currently dominate our lives and, specifically, education. One could extend this argument and ask “What exactly are children learning in a school that does not have a recycling programme? What are they learning in a building that’s surrounded by concrete?” I think that Leigh’s project effectively addresses both of these questions.

Leigh’s use of permaculture design, defined by Wikipedia as “an approach to designing human settlements, in particular the development of perennial agricultural systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies,” suggests that he is interested in exploring to what extent human beings can be engineers of their own self-sufficient and ecologically-friendly environments. His design revolves around the notion of sustainability and is based on re-using discarded shipping containers because, as he says,

they are readily available for reuse, reasonably cheap, structurally sound, transportable (obviously), durable, and come in remarkably good dimensions for proportioning an efficient living and working space.

But Leigh does not use these containers to re-create the kind of institutional, impersonal teaching/learning space that we’ve all experienced in our lives as both teachers and learners. Instead of building a classroom, a lecture hall, or a place formally designated as a space for teaching and learning, Leigh decided to build a

family house that is large enough to host 15 or so people from time to time, but practical as a family home; that is fully self sufficient in providing for its own energy, water and food needs; that is a system that produces no waste; and that uses building materials and structures that are reused, portable and make minimal impact on the area being occupied.

Leigh’s Project - Key Ideas

In one of his blog posts devoted to the Virtual Classroom Project, Leigh states that he is interested in

efficient use of space and resources; space design that is conducive to inquiry learning and skills training; and [...] every single aspect serving some form of opportunity for learning.

Let’s think about this carefully - “every single aspect serving some form of opportunity for learning.” What this means to me is that Leigh wants his family home to be more than just walls. The physical space here is not designed to be a mere container for teaching and learning. Instead, the space he’s building is a kind of portal where every aspect of its design can lead an inquiring mind to discoveries about sustainability, permaculture design, or the environmentally friendly lifestyle. For example, the solar panels that he’s planning to use and the small wind turbine already in place can lead to an interesting discussion on energy consumption.

Virtual Classroom Meeting (April 14, 2008)

Virtual Classroom Meeting (April 14, 2008)

The shipping containers, the very walls of the house, can lead to a discussion on reusing and recycling.

Virtual Classroom Meeting (April 7, 2008)

The roof of the dwelling and the glass floor panels inside the house can lead to a discussion on the importance of natural light and the need to reduce our dependence on electricity.

Virtual Classroom Meeting (April 14, 2008)

In short, the building itself provides numerous opportunities to discuss our ecological footprint and engage in discussions about the environment and eco-friendly lifestyles. Now, the question is, where would you rather learn about all of this - in a sterile classroom that looks like all the other classrooms around the world, or in a unique family home built upon the principles of permaculture design? Would you rather learn this from a teacher who has to deliver a unit on sustainability or from an individual who is passionate about the environment and whose home and lifestyle attest to his commitment to the environment?

What really fascinates me about Leigh’s prototype is that, in addition to making us think about sustainability and the environment, Leigh also explores the notion of de-institutionalizing or deschooling society. His project revives some of the key ideas of Ivan Illich. During our discussions over the past two weeks, Leigh’s comments about his design led me to re-visit my thoughts on informal education, lifelong learning, and community. Specifically, his ideas and the way he is implementing them remind me of Illich’s notion that institutions tend to dehumanize people and commodify learning. Consider this passage from Ilich’s Deschooling Society:

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value (Illich, 1973).

In other words, our students tend to think that teaching equals learning. Learning and knowledge are commodified and transform education into a process of consumption rather than exploration. In addition, as Illich argues in Deschooling Society, schools discourage other institutions from assuming educative roles and tend to be places of confinement rather than liberating engagement. De-institutionalization, Illich argues, can take place when we recognize that education “relies on the surprise of the unexpected question which opens new doors for the inquirer and his partner.” This kind of inquiry can take place when the instructor abandons what Illich calls “skill drill” instruction and focuses on helping “matching partners to meet so that learning can take place.” Learners, he continues,

should be able to meet around a problem chosen and defined by their won initiative. Creative, exploratory learning requires peers currently puzzled about the same terms or problems. Large universities make the futile attempt to match them by multiplying their courses, and they generally fail since they are bound to curriculum, course structure, and bureaucratic administration. In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern (Illich, 1973).

Leigh’s project reminds me of some of Illich’s alternatives to teaching institutions. Specifically, the family home that he’s building can become a place where those who are “currently puzzled about the same terms or problems” can meet outside of institutional constraints and engage in exploratory learning. It’s a place that supports what Illich referred to as “life of action:”

I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies (Illich, 1973).

After numerous conversations with Leigh and after reading his reflections, I see his virtual project as what Illich calls a convivial institution. It’s an institution that, unlike school, is not based on coerced membership. Instead, it encourages human interactions that are based on autonomy, creativity, and exploration. I also see Leigh’s project as a potential learning web and I’m looking forward to discussing this aspect of his work with him over the next two weeks.

If you’re interested in Leigh’s views on learning and would like to explore his prototype (still in progress), please join us this weekend on the islands of jokaydia (Click here for details).

April 18, 2008 | Filed Under educator-in-residence, jokaydia, virtual classroom project | 1 Comment 

The Virtual Classroom Project

I’ve been thinking about classroom design for a very long time but have never really been able to experiment with it until I found out about Second Life and the virtual building opportunities that it affords. When I first started working on my teachandlearn retreat on the island of jokaydia in Second Life, I realized that, for the first time in my career as an educator, I had an opportunity to create my ideal learning environment. I had the freedom to create any place I wanted. Strangely enough, what I created does not have desks or tables, it doesn’t even have chairs. Instead, it has a hot-air balloon (great for small group conversations), a couple of Japanese tea houses, and a lot of cushions. Oh, and the view, you have to see the view!

Building my retreat helped me reflect on my work and my philosophy as an educator. Deciding what to build and how to organize my space was a challenging process. Even before I started, I knew that I wanted this piece of land to facilitate learning and encourage interactions. Then, I had to ask myself what kind of architecture and layout would most accurately reflect my philosophy as an educator and be conducive to learning and meaningful interactions. So, as I engaged in building my retreat, I kept thinking about the relationship between a physical space and human interactions.

As an educator, I had never had to think seriously about the relationship between physical space and learning. Teachers usually don’t have to think about spaces for learning because they are provided for them. A teacher is always given a classroom, along with a course load and a group of students. A physical place in which to teach is just a given. In Second Life, however, I had an opportunity to create my own space. For the first time in my life as an educator, I had to sit down and think about the kind of space that I wanted to create as both a teacher and a learner. I had to think seriously about the relationship between meaningful interactions among people and the kind of place that best supports such interactions and learning that results from them.

In other words, Second Life, by providing me with an opportunity to let my imagination run wild, to both teach and learn in my virtual retreat, has allowed me to question my assumptions about classroom design. It allowed me to experiment. It was through that experimentation that I have begun to explore the science of building spaces for learning. My experiences with building in Second Life, my interactions with both instructors and learners in this environment inspired me to start a small project designed to engage educators in thinking about, experimenting with, and designing spaces for learning. It is my great pleasure to announce that this entry marks the official launch of my Virtual Classroom Project in Second Life.

Let me explain what the project involves.

Over the next three months, I will invite individual educators to design and build their ideal learning space for use as either a virtual classroom in Second Life or as a prototype for a real-life classroom. These “Educators-in-Residence” will share their vision and expertise by creating their ideal classrooms on a parcel of land designated especially for this project. Each Educator-in-Residence will be given a period of one month and the necessary in-world support and resources to complete the project. As part of the project, each participant will document the process of planning and building through screenshots, guided tours, regular blog entries, and video capture. Once the project is completed, I will conduct an interview with the participant to highlight his or her work and bring it to the attention of a wider audience in the form of a podcast. Screenshots, blog entries, and video clips describing the project and its various stages of development will also be made available online in order to encourage discussions about classroom design both in real life and in a virtual environment such as Second Life. Each month-long residency will conclude with an in-world event to showcase the finished virtual classroom.

Virtual Classroom Project - Welcome Sign in jokaydia

(Welcome sign, The Virtual Classroom Project, jokaydia)

Let me now introduce you to the project’s first Educator-in-Residence, Leigh Blackall (SL: Leroy Goalpost). I am delighted that Leigh agreed to be the first participant. I am confident that his immense expertise in the field of instructional design and his passion for learning will be of immense value to this project. I cannot wait to see how Leigh will engage all of us in thinking about learning and classroom design. Leigh has agreed to document his ideas and his experiences as Educator-in-Residence by sharing blog entries, screenshots, screencasts, and even voice recordings on a wiki page that he has already created for this project. If you’re interested in following his work and the evolution of this project, please take a moment to bookmark the SLurl to the project site on the island of jokaydia and drop by when you’re in-world. You can also follow Leigh’s reflections on his blog.

The point of this project is not to merely observe as one educator designs and creates a learning environment. The purpose of this project is to start conversations about learning in online communities, virtual worlds, and everyday physical classrooms. I believe that the act of following one educator as he attempts to design his ideal learning space should not transform us into passive observers. Let’s engage Leigh in discussions about teaching and learning or at the very least jot down questions to ask him once his project is finished. Let’s remember that the space he is about to build will be his ideal classroom. It may not be your or my ideal space, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot learn from Leigh and the creative process that he has agreed to share with us. Please contribute your thoughts and reflections by commenting on Leigh’s work. Visit him inworld, leave a comment on his blog or his wiki, or respond to his ideas on your own blog. Take the time, in a week or two, to visit the project site. Take pictures. Ask questions. Above all, think about your own ideal learning space … and if you’re interested in being the next Educator-in-Residence, drop me a line.

I am looking forward to this project and believe that it will be of particular interest to not only educators and educational technologists but also institutions interested in exploring learning space design, teacher preparation, and teacher professional development both in virtual worlds and in real life. I intend to record all my interactions with Leigh and reflect on his ideas and his work. I can’t wait to see what he creates and I am sure that he will engage us in many valuable conversations about learning.

Finally, I would like to thank jokay Wollongong for her support and for providing a virtual home for this project on the beautiful island of jokaydia in Second Life. This project would not be possible without her unfaltering encouragement and support.

April 1, 2008 | Filed Under education, educator-in-residence, virtual classroom project | 17 Comments