Virtual World Academic Resources
March 2, 2008 by dmargulis
The following resources were collected in preparation for a meeting of members of the COPPER Carnegie leadership group (involving six colleges) that are a part of the Carnegie Academy’s CASTL initiative http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/general/index.asp?key=21 . Members will meet in a virtual world to explore the educational applications and potential of this technology. These resources may be of value to those looking for information on virtual worlds and games as educational tools.
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Bridging Cultures
Our theme will be “Bridging Cultures,” exploring new teaching strategies and technologies to bridge the gap between the digital culture of our students and the culture of school. In addition, given that the majority of college faculty at most institutions are age 40+, we have a generational gap to challenge us. While we will be focusing on one social technology, that of virtual worlds, there are a range of tools from podcasting, blogging, streaming video, interactive voice and video, computer simulations and games, instant messaging, etc. that can be of use.
There are three individuals who are writing most persuasively about the theme of “bridging cultures” that I can recommend. They include Harvey Jenkins (MIT Comparative Media Studies), James Paul Gee (Arizona State Professor of Literary Studies), and John Seely Brown (visiting scholar at USC, formerly Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation). Here are links to their bios if you want to know more about them.
Henry Jenkins - http://cms.mit.edu/people/
James Paul Gee - http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/about/our-people/gjames.html
John Seely Brown - http://www.johnseelybrown.com/bio.html
Key Resources
The first recommended resource is a short video clip from YouTube entitled “A Vision of Students Today.” It was prepared by a professor and his students at Kansas State and raises a number of issues relevant to the theme above and our work as educators. I’ve watched the video several times and see something new and provocative each time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
Secondly, I would recommend that you take a look at the first six pages of Henry Jenkins white paper “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century” prepared for the MacArthur Foundation. While the whole document is worthwhile, it is lengthy. The first part might make a good handout for faculty. The MacArthur foundation launched a five year, $50 million digital learning initiative in 2006 that supports virtual world and educational gaming technologies as well as other tools. Here’s the link.
If the above link doesn’t work (it’s a long one) go to the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning site, look in the “Library” link at the top of the page and select “occasional papers,” to find the article.
http://digitallearning.macfound.org
Digging Deeper
Finally, here are two additional resources for anyone wanting to investigate the topic a bit more.
1. If you have access to past issues of Change Magazine take a look at (and perhaps make copies for others) John Seely Brown’s article “New Learning Environments for the 21st Century: Exploring the Edge” in the Sept/Oct. 2006 issue. The whole article is applicable, and the second half of it directly addresses virtual worlds and educational gaming.
2. Here’s a link to an online article “The Classroom of Popular Culture: What video games can teach us about making students want to learn” by James Paul Gee on the connection between video games and learning: http://www.edletter.org/current/gee.shtml
Note - Virtual Worlds and video/computer games are often mentioned together although they are somewhat different animals. They share some of the same technology and both can be very engaging, but they can have different purposes from an educational perspective and provide different experiences.
Additional Resources (to be updated over time) :
1. Educational Resources for Second Life: http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki
2. Pop Cosmopolitanism: http://popcosmo.org/ - Constance Steinkeuler, Assistant Professor of Educational Communication and Technology at University of Wisconsin-Madison shares her ongoing research on virtual worlds in this blog.
3. An example of doing chemistry in Second Life: http://usefulchem.blogspot.com/2007/12/camphor-in-second-life.html
