The Battle Between Time and Technology

As I read through the commentary of my peers this week, I felt that a concern that seemed to be prevalent was the idea of time and technology.  How long would it take a student to learn Second Life?  How long would it take a teacher to learn and build in Second Life?  And most important of all, in a world where classes are crammed into very tiny segments of time, where does all this learning and implementing of complicated technology fit in?

I think Jerry said it very well in his posting about our tutorials (Tutorial Review):

Most of us recognize the need to provide more than static text in our course materials.  The challenge is that developing robust multimedia requires additional skills and special software.  The presentation ["Engaging Students with Multimedia for Improved Learning"] was provided by a team of experienced multimedia developers.  I would characterize the skills necessary to develop materials at the level illustrated in the tutorial to be “advanced”.

And that really says it all.  When we are all learning the technology on the side as we try to teach the curriculum, how do we groom ourselves to an "advanced" level so that we can teach our students technology skills also - and how do we do that in time to prepare them for the tech-rich environment they will be facing? 

I think the best any of us can do with this challenge is to put our current time into the pieces of technology we believe are going to be most facilitative to learning and save us the most time in future. 

For me so far, I believe that will be a platform similar to Second Life.  I find it to be the most time consuming on the front end but also the one likely to overcome the most challenges in online learning, particularly those described by Vesely, Bloom, and Shelock (2007): diminished social presence; lack of a sense of community; longer time between communications; and uneven participation.  The pros mentioned in Warburton's writing (2009) - persistence of the in-world environment; shared space allowing users to participate simultaneously; virtual embodiment in the form of an avatar; interactions between user and environment; immediacy of action; similarities to the real world - almost exactly align with the other study's cons in online education.

Technology is everywhere and overwhelming, to the point that with the amount of time we have in a day, it's almost impossible to become expert at any of it.  Many people are just able to say that they know a little bit about a lot of things.  As educators, it may be in our best interest to hone in on the tool that can accomplish the most and put in the time to make it as successful as it needs to be to truly deliver our content. 

The Potential of a Second Life

Despite the excited predictions of some commentators, it is not inevitable that education will rapidly transfer to the virtual.  To achieve a move on this scale still requires us to address how to manage best our virtual identities, improve our digital and cultural literacies, understand more fully the links between immersion, empathy, and learning, and develop design skills that can be used productively to exploit virtual spaces. (Warburton)

I left the readings about Second Life (SL) this week feeling very much like there is exciting work to be done.  It seems quite apparent from these readings, previous course readings and discussion about community in online learning, and my own personal knowledge of what works in education that multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) are the future of online education. 

There seems to be agreement in the education community that there are pedagogically sound reasons for investing in a MUVE similar to SL, if not SL itself.  Warburton cites the following reasons:

• extended or rich interactions
• visualisation and contextualisation
• exposure to authentic content and culture
• individual and collective identity play
• immersion
• simulation
• community presence
• content production
  

Where the articles seem to fall off the bandwagon is in the viability of using SL in the classroom now.  There are many reasons for why SL may prove more of a burden than a blessing currently: technical savvy of teachers and students; difficulty establishing social relationships in a foreign culture; the need to incorporate a 2D platform in addition to SL to convey basic information; length of time to build and participate in SL; cost; and the ability to cross platforms with avatar and content. (Warburton)

Keeping all of this in mind, however, I still left the week's lesson feeling the need to discover everything I can about SL and similar systems.  It is hard to read Petrakou's article or watch a video presentation like the one shared by Phillips and Robertson without becoming excited about what a MUVE can do for students.  Being able to hold conversations and make connections with students across the world or fly into a cell to get an up-close look at its parts are scenarios too tempting for educators to ignore.

I believe this is why the last lines of Warburton's article sound a lot like a call to action.  Education is a slow-moving system, and if educators want to be able to take charge of the potential in MUVEs, we are going to be the ones that have to best manage our virtual identities and cultivate our digital literacies and design skills.  Our students will not be able to benefit from these technologies until we teach ourselves to be comfortable with them and work through their barriers. 

The Presence of Online Teaching

The most important lessons I've gathered in the past five weeks relate to the concept of community in online learning.  As in the regular classroom, if one cannot establish a rapport with one's students on one level or another, it will be more difficult for learning to occur.

Along those lines, the tutorial that I found to be the most helpful was the shortest - but the most packed with ideas for establishing a presence.  Professor Curt Bonk's specific ideas for what to do to establish community in an online environment struck a cord with me.  I found them to be reminiscent of Harry Wong, my guru for advice as a beginning teacher in the physical classroom.  

"Accomplishments, identity, rituals, mission...all these things work together so that you can create a place..." (Bonk)

I loved how Bonk shared concrete methods to help a teacher move toward this highly elusive goal.  I am particularly excited to try the mentoring and awards pieces in my own online teaching, as I believe those two things in particular will resonate with high school students.

Additionally, I felt that Stephanie Trunzo's "Pedagogical Facebook and Twitter" raised some important insights for me as an online teacher.  In my past teaching experiences, I have expected the students to come to me.  The county provides and/or advocates certain platforms for my teaching, and while they are very similar to the spaces that students use already, they often are not as functional, attractive, or "real" as the ones that are prevalent in popular media.  One of the images in Trunzo's presentation included a student comment:

"With all the successful social mechanism models available on the web today, I still find myself amazed that an institution like NCSU uses such a poor tool [Vista] for on-line student interaction." (Trunzo)

What does it mean to a student when they come to school and are expected to participate in a copy of something they are already doing better in their personal time?  And what might it mean to students in terms of establishing community for me to meet them on their own terms rather than making them use my space - especially when those spaces can achieve the same learning goals?  While I know there are many other considerations that go into these decisions (especially for me teaching at a high school level), I was very intrigued by the overall theme and some of the questions raised for me by Trunzo's presentation.

 The other tutorial that made a real impression on me was "Creating Community with Second Life," but that is a topic for another posting...