educational uses of virtual worlds
In my section of EN201, we’ve been talking about intellectual property, copyright, and sampling, and now, we’ll be focusing on Henry Jenkins’ Convergence Culture in preparation for their research papers on knowledge communities, lovemarking, grassroots creativity and transmedia storytelling. I used Constance Steinkuehler’s “Cognition and Literacy in MMOGs” as a model for research that puts, to quote from Scot’s rhetorical criticism assignment, “theory and artifacts into dialogue with the hope of animating and extending our understanding of both.”
One of my students smartly asked how a MMOG could be educational.
So, since we’re talking about Jenkins’ work, I’ll post part of a talk he gave in Second Life and let him speak to this:
Also, for more info on Second Life, I point you to one of my favorite programs of all time, CBS Sunday Morning.
Great find. Are you planning to discuss this with your students?
Comment by Scot — March 18, 2007 @ 3:12 pm
Already done.
There were a lots of confused looks in the audience, but that’s understandable regarding the way in which video games are seen by the majority.
What seemed most interesting was that Harvard and Global Kids used Second life for than simply fun/playing a game.
Also interesting was that a few people “clear $200,000 a year” making and selling things in Second Life.
I’ve been thinking about holding class within Second Life for a while now, but I’d like to take the summer to experiment first. And although, it doesn’t use the most advanced graphics, it is a bandwidth hog, and we only have the slowest SBC DSL connection (768k?). And, although it is free, I have to consider students with low-speed connection and older computers trying to enter Second Life from home.
One application I that I do think would work is with online universities. K. taught writing course for Axia (now a part of Phoenix), and all students required (I believe) a broadband connection. But these courses were asynchronous for the most part; however, having office hours in Second Life would be an option.
Comment by Rick — March 18, 2007 @ 9:36 pm