John O’Connor from the Dublin Institute of Technology won the Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning for his module “Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?”, which used Second Life in teaching Art and Design. He and Claudia Igbrude gave a practitioner presentation on the project.
Add comment June 14th, 2010
Elliott Masie led an engaging question and answer session remotely from his New York home at 6 a.m. local time, following his prerecorded keynote presentation. The quality of the Skype video was excellent. He told anecdotes, reminding us of the power of a good story in gaining an audience’s attention (as in Gagné’s first event in his nine events of instruction.) Like James Clay he warned of the danger of educational technologists overhyping the latest ‘shiny thing’ in technology, estimating that it would take 10-12 years to realise the potential of virtual worlds.
In questions from the audience, Elliott drew an interesting distinction between gaming (and sports) and formal education. Nobody should expect to win a game all the time but education seeks to avoid failure. The challenge of the game includes the possibility of losing. He also advised learning technologists to respect those academics who are reluctant to use technology.
Photographs from the ILTA Photo Gallery
Add comment June 14th, 2010
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EdTech 2009 kicked off with a keynote address by Niall Sclater, Director of Learning Innovation at The Open University. The distance learning provided by the OU has always helped the house-bound, prison inmates and others disadvantaged by time and space to participate in higher education. |
Niall’s talk “Does Location Matter?” showed how the free dissemination of quality-audited, course materials in programmes such as the OU’s OpenLearn and MIT’s Open Courseware have brought the resources used by their registered students to a global audience. Of course, teaching materials are not everything… physical presence on campus gives students all the social and networking benefits of university life which a virtual presence cannot really replicate, at least at present, … and without registering and paying fees the students won’t get a qualification.
Moving beyond the provision of content, Niall looked at how virtual worlds could help deliver a richer and more social experience to students. However, we start with what we know and virtual worlds can end up replicating the structures and limitations of the physical world. In the mid 1990s, Niall and colleagues developed the Clyde Virtual University. It welcomed students with images of a lecture theatre, a library, a café and an examination hall. The library contained links to resources, the café links to discussion boards and the exam hall to online assessment. This imagery recreated the boundaries of the physical university and did nothing to foster collaborative learning. Today, virtual worlds can be created with tools like Second Life and OpenSimulator but our avatars still sit in virtual lecture theatres and search for resources in the virtual library. We can even buy land and build our own home. Perhaps with time virtual worlds will dispense with these metaphors and allow new forms of interaction. Perhaps at that point new ways of teaching and learning to harness these new ways of interacting will emerge.
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About 150 delegates attended EdTech 2009 in the National College of Ireland. Others participated virtually by watching live streams of the keynotes and exchanging comments using Twitter.
Thanks to the NCI photographers for permitting the use of these images. |
1 comment May 28th, 2009
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Second Life is a free, online virtual world imagined and created by its members. This virtual world includes places, people and objects. Members are represented by an avatar or character which they create themselves. Many universities are experimenting with Second Life as an educational tool. |
UCD Library ‘branch’ is at a Second Life location called Cybrary Island, which hosts the virtual version of real-life university or city libraries from around the world. The environment is similar to a computer game, members fly or teleport themselves to the library where they can attend meetings, view presentations and participate in discussions with other members. This may lead to the view that Second Life is only a game and not a serious tool for educators.
UCD library has gained extensive publicity for this innovative project according to the library’s Peter Clarke. However, the future role of Second Life is unsure as it requires considerable resources to maintain and expand. Is the educational return worth the effort involved? Niall Sclater, Director of Learning Innovation at the Open University (and keynote speaker at mach-zehnder modulatorEdTech 2009), reports in his blog post, “What educational question is Second Life the answer to?“ that Open University researchers have found that a Second Life presence helps build a sense of community among participants which in turn motivates learners helping them to learn.
1 comment April 7th, 2009