The changing Web

This is number 4 in the series of blog posts entitled 'Shaping Education for the Future.' Yesterday's post can be found at this link.

The web is constantly changing. Social media - often referred to as Web 2.0, or the participatory Web - is shaping up to be one of the most important tool sets available to support the promotion of change in education. Almost everyone, it seems, is using some element of social media in the planning, development, delivery, management or evaluation of teaching and learning. One of the greatest changes (and challenges) for education over the last few years has been the proliferation of user generated content. My own students create a lot of their own content during their study, usually in the form of podcasts, videos, wiki and blog content, and are encouraged to share these publicly online to gain additional feedback. Doing this, they tend to engage more deeply with learning, and find themselves collaborating more and learning from each other, as a result of using Web 2.0 tools. Essentially, Web 2.0 enables them to take more responsibility for their own learning. They like to share their ideas, and they enjoy playing their part in the production of knowledge. Learning is changing, and their experience is being shaped by the participatory Web. The Web is constantly changing, but it is also a change agent.

We need to acknowledge that 'Web 2.0' remains a contested label for new and emergent properties that are found on the Web. It is a complex network of dynamic resources that we all acknowledge is constantly changing to adapt to the growing demand for entertainment, communication and access to knowledge. Debate focuses on whether the emerging social applications constitute a sea change or revolution in the Web (cf. Van Dijk, 2002) or simply another phase in its relentless progress. Personally, I find myself in agreement with Brian Winston (2003) who views the Web as a facet of gradual evolution rather than symptoms of sudden revolution. Essentially, the Web has become more social. As with most other technology innovations, Web 2.0 applications have grown out of the need for people to connect together, share experiences and knowledge, enhance their experiences and open up new possibilities in learning. Social software is software that enables people to both read from, and write onto web spaces. It truly is the ‘architecture of participation’ (Barsky and Purdon, 2006) and demands active engagement as a natural part of its character (Kamel Boulos and Wheeler, 2007).

Web 2.0 tools include popular applications such as blogs, wikis and podcasting; social networking sites such as FaceBook and LinkedIn; photo and videosharing services such as Flickr and YouTube; familiar utilities such as RSS feeds, social tagging (e.g. Delicious, Diigo), microblogs such as Twitter, mashups (e.g. geotagging). Web 2.0 has spawned concepts such as folksonomy, ‘Darwikianism’ and the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ (Kamel Boulos et al, 2006). Also, we need to pay attention to the growing power, ubiquity and utility of the mobile phone and the central role it is already playing in enabling ‘anytime anyplace’ learning for students.

More is becoming known about the effects the changing Web is exerting upon teaching and learning. We know of some of the benefits and the limitations it brings to education and training. But there are still many questions to be answered. How for example, does this architecture of participation help to scaffold remote learners and how can it promote quality learning outcomes? What is the extent of the capability of social software to encourage a culture of sharing and collaboration? How much will Web 2.0 applications help to shape the education provision of the future? What roles will online games and mobile, personal technologies play in developing the skills young people need to study independently? These are questions we are beginning to address in some of our current research. More on this in future posts on this blog.

References
Barsky, E. and Purdon, M. (2006) Introducing Web 2.0: Social networking and social bookmarking for health librarians. Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association, 27, 65-67.
Kamel Boulos, M. N., Maramba, I. and Wheeler, S. (2006) Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BMC Medical Education, 6, 41. Retrieved 14 April, 2008 from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41
Kamel Boulos, M. N. and Wheeler, S (2007) The emerging Web 2.0 social software: An enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and healthcare education. Health Informatics and Libraries Journal, 24(1), 2-23.
Van Dijk, J. (2002) The Network Society. London: Sage.
Winston, B. (2003) Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. London: Routledge.

Image source


The changing web by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Multiple identities

Who am I? What is my online persona? Do I present myself as the same in every situation? What do I change about me when I find myself in an unfamiliar context? How do I act differently when I'm in a reduced social cue context such as text based communication? These and many other questions are currently being addressed by researchers who are interested in the study of digital identity. It's a growth area of research for at least one very good reason. Digital identity affects us all, no matter what our age or social-economic background we come from. Technology mediated communication and pervasive computing affect everyone in the Western industrialised world. Without it we couldn't pay our bills, access information or travel distances. We rely on digital media for learning, business, entertainment and a host of other daily activities. Without knowing it, when we interact with these technologies, our behaviour changes. But there are many questions: Is my behaviour dictated by my identity? Or does my identity change because my behaviour does? Does my identity change when I am on Facebook? Do I modify my speech or the way I present myself when I'm speaking on the telephone, or on Instant Messaging, or Skype, or a webcam link? When I post up a blog, how different is that style of writing to the style I would use in say, an e-mail? Or a collaborative environment such as a wiki? And does my Second Life avatar bear any resemblance to my real life persona at all?

Dave Birch thinks there is huge scope for individuals to maintain multiple identities in cyberspace. In an interesting piece called Put your game face on, Birch points out that anonymity can enable people to reveal as much or as little of their true identity as they wish, and that this kind of false identity maintenance can lead to questionable or even dangerous behaviour. This has obvious implications for child safety.

And what of the image above? Well, yes, the pictures above are of me on my Flickr site (with a little image manipulation too, for this blogpost), and some are of me with famous British entertainers such as Matthew Kelly and Johnny Ball and well known American authors and educators such as Steven Berlin Johnson and Marc Prensky. You're probably thinking now that I spend my time seeking out celebrities to have my pictures taken with them. But the truth is, I was at the same events, got talking, and it was nice to have a picture taken to mark the occasion. All except Matthew Kelly that is. We spent time at university together and we are old friends. Together, we once did a psychology field experiment where we walked Matthew (he was already famous then) into several shops unannounced, to ask for change for a £20 note, and then observed the behaviour of the shop assistants. They changed considerably, even to the point where they broke shop rules by handing over change for a £20 note when no purchase had been made. If they couldn't get the cash register open, they were opening their own purses and wallets to hand over the change. Most interestingly, when asked a question by the unknown person, the shop assistants were all observed to answer Matthew Kelly instead. Their behaviour definitely changed. We did a control experiment with two unknown people and were almost thrown out of shops or largely ignored. My explanation for this behaviour was based on Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory in that we forced them from front stage (professional rule bound role) to back stage (relaxed and informal role) so that they broke their own rules because they had been pleasantly surprised. This celebrity effect is just one way we see changes in behaviour. If someone famous walks into the room, we stare. Or we purposefully don't stare. Either way, our behaviour is being modified. Whether or not this causes us to adopt different identities has yet to be established. But this we do know - everyone is capable of acting out multiple identities - to suit the changing environments and shifting contexts modern life presents.


Multiple identities by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Digital literacy 3: Crossing the divide

Transliteracy can be defined as being literate across a number of platforms. In essence, it is the ability to be able to create content, organise, share and communicate across, and through, a variety of social media, discussion groups, mobile tools and other services that are commonly available. This assumes that we communicate differently depending on the tool we use. When I give a co-present presentation (face to face), it is qualitatively different for me and my audience to a remote presentation I give through Elluminate or Adobe Connect. It's not just the experience - I also behave differently, and manage my impression in a different way. I have argued in previous blogposts that the way we represent ourselves (using avatars, user names etc) varies for many depending on what medium we are using. I represent myself differently in Second Life to the way I represent myself on Facebook, because each environment prompts a different response from me. In LinkedIn, I manage a professional version of my online persona, which evaporates when I'm on Facebook. On Twitter I am a bit of a mixture. Sometimes I like to have a bit of fun, and at other times, I'm deadly serious. I have also discussed the idea that each tool has its own particular set of affordances which enable or constrain particular ways of using it. In many ways, however, although these tools are different, they all have a common purpose. Thomas et al (2007) put it very well:

"From early signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV and film to networked digital media, the concept of transliteracy calls for a change of perspective away from the battles over print versus digital, and a move instead towards a unifying ecology not just of media, but of all literacies relevant to reading, writing, interaction and culture, both past and present. It is, we hope, an opportunity to cross some very obstructive divides."

So for Thomas et al, the argument over whether media are different - for example whether digital will replace paper - is spurious. It's more important for us to recognise the significance of each tool, and how they can be used effectively in all their variations, and also in combinations. Ultimately, transliteracy should be about using whatever media and communication tools that are at our disposal, and also being able to discern which tools will be the most effective and appropiate in any given context. Do we learn better watching a Youtube video or reading a text? Are we better at presenting our ideas in pictures or as a podcast? I know my answer to that, and it may be different to your answer - we all learn differently.

Students today use a variety of tools to create and share content, and it's vital that they are able to do so in a seamless manner. It's important that students spend more time thinking about what they are learning and less time thinking about how to navigate around a website, or how to save a file. This is one reason why many students are more at ease using an external wiki than they are using an institutional Learning Management System. It's also the reason they choose to use Facebook rather than the institutional e-mail system when they want to send each other messages. But students do use all of these tools, and the trick is to ensure that they are comfortable with each, and have the requisite skills to exploit each tool to its optimum value. This is why transliteracy is becoming increasingly important as a digital literacy. It will assume even more significance, as more of us become our own broadcasters, publishers and directors.

Reference: Thomas, S., Joseph, C., Lacetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S. and Pullinger, K. (2007) Transliteracy: Crossing Divides. First Monday, 12 (12), 3 December 2007.

Image source


Crossing the divide by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Expelled: Woodbury's Second Life Silencing

Occasionally this blog hosts guest posts. Today, Tim Handorf writes about the experiences of one university in Second Life.

We all know that Second Life, the virtual reality world that has become basically indistinguishable from our increasingly unreal physical worlds, is a powerful tool for learning. In fact, it's pretty much a powerful tool for everything, considering the small but growing number of Second Life millionaires. The fact that there are, as of January 2010, 18 million registered Second Life users demonstrates the power of the virtual world to connect, educate, and enhance our daily lives in an almost revolutionary manner.

But, of course, as is true of the "real" world, Second Life does not come without its problems. Most recently, the brick-and-mortar university Woodbury was booted off Second Life —thousands of students were affected—by the virtual world's moderators, a company called Linden Lab. What's interesting is that Woodbury was torn down from the site for the second time, the first time being in 2007

What's even more fascinating about this whole scenario is that Linden Lab did not specify, really, what terms of agreement Woodbury had violated, although this was the accusation. Linden Lab has remained largely silent in the press, a silence that has infuriated many. What Woodbury University is so upset about is the suddenness of the Second Life ban. In a matter of minutes, the virtual university was destroyed, some professor and student accounts were blocked, and thousands of dollars and years of time were essentially thrown away.

Although Linden Lab has not been forthcoming about the problems with Woodbury, users and the media alike speculate that it has to do with the university's too lenient openness. For example, the university's buildings were largely student-created, and it has few restrictions on who can associate with the campus. A supposed result of the university's openness was its attraction of users known as "griefers", usually young or middle aged men who vandalize Second Life property, like placing swastikas in different places. Apparently, because of its acceptance of various people, Woodbury had become a hotbed of these "griefers."

While it is understandable that Second Life moderators would want to control activity that denigrates the efficient functioning of a world rife with useful applications pertaining to the real world, it seems that their measures were a bit too extreme. After all, Woodbury University had fully utilized the educational tools that Second Life provides, and students and professors alike had reaped many intellectual rewards from the process. The university paid good money for it, too. The prime culprit in this debacle, I believe, is the unwillingness of many in the Internet community to fully embrace transparency. Linden Lab should explicitly state their reasoning behind the banning of Woodbury and the two institutions should work out a compromise that doesn't leave so many in the e-learning community without a resource to turn to.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Tim Handorf, who writes on the topics of online college rankings. He welcomes your comments at his email Id: tim.handorf.20@googlemail.com.

Image source

En masse, online

This post is a continuation of Wednesday's post entitled: Virtual Clans

Still other virtual clans are emerging from the cultures surrounding online leisure activities such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), strategy games and transnational special interest groups that meet en masse, online. In massively multiplayer online gaming, the ‘clan’ (sometimes referred to as ‘guild’) is the name used to describe a group of individuals who play competitively against other clan groups. One very popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, has millions of adherents who compete seriously on a regular basis in guilds with strangers they become very familiar with but never meet face to face. MMORPG clans who engage with war games sometimes name their virtual clans after real or fictitious military divisions or armies. They may further identify themselves as members of their clan by creating uniformly themed avatars (their digital altar egos) to represent themselves within cyberspace. World of Warcraft even introduced digital tabards which could be adjusted electronically to show unique features that identify a particular guild. Members then purchase their own for their avatar to wear, thereby identifying more closely with their virtual kin group.

Furthermore, virtual clans often develop their own closed newsgroups and e-mail listings to keep their geographically distributed members informed. In MMORPGs, clans can identify themselves further by developing their own virtual territories, building businesses, and earning virtual currency (Childress & Brasswell, 2006). They can be fiercely competitive and often take immense pride in their achievements at the expense of rival clans. As virtual clans become larger and more organised they also tend to become more hierarchical, even electing their own leaders – clan chieftains, and developing their own unique ‘tags’ which can be used to visually identify themselves as clan members in text communication.

In Second Life, a 3-D multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) which at the time of writing has reached in excess of 8 million subscribers, there is a distinct differential between those SLifers who own land and commodities, and those who are simply ‘visiting’ and making use of these commodities. The traders and the consumers are a reflection of real life, so in effect, in-world experience mirrors our observations of real life. The use of avatars is a departure from real life with many SLifers participating in the practice of gender swapping. Even more strangely, some SLifers employ avatars that represent themselves as animals of all kinds, some common, some exotic. Still others choose to present themselves as fantasy figures, such as characters with Anime cartoon features, or aliens, wizards, pixies or fairies. Yet the clear distinction in Second Life is between the traders and those who purchase. The SLife tribe thus has at least two distinct clans, and it is highly likely that others will emerge as Second Life and other MUVEs become better established.

Tomorrow: The Tribal Web

Reference

Childress, M. D. and Brasswell, R. (2006) Using Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games for Online Learning. Distance Education. 27 (2), 187-196.

Image source

Latest MUVEs

Several articles have been published recently on the use of MUVEs in education. My mate Steven Warburton's article appeared in the British Journal of Educational Technology earlier this year. He takes a critical approach to the evaluation of Second Life as a learning environment. Here's the abstract:

Second Life (SL) is currently the most mature and popular multi-user virtual world platform being used in education. Through an in-depth examination of SL, this article explores its potential and the barriers that multi-user virtual environments present to educators wanting to use immersive 3-D spaces in their teaching. The context is set by tracing the history of virtual worlds back to early multi-user online computer gaming environments and describing the current trends in the development of 3-D immersive spaces. A typology for virtual worlds is developed and the key features that have made unstructured 3-D spaces so attractive to educators are described. The popularity in use of SL is examined through three critical components of the virtual environment experience: technical, immersive and social. From here, the paper discusses the affordances that SL offers for educational activities and the types of teaching approaches that are being explored by institutions. The work concludes with a critical analysis of the barriers to successful implementation of SL as an educational tool and maps a number of developments that are underway to address these issues across virtual worlds more broadly.

Warburton S (2009) Second Life in higher education: Assessing the potential for and the barriers to deploying virtual worlds in learning and teaching. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (3), 414-426.

Another good friend of mine, Palitha Edirisingha and his colleagues at the University of Leicester, have also published an article on the potential pedagogical power of Second Life. Although it's a small scale project, the findings may yet be far reaching, particularly around our understanding of social presence in 3-D virtual environments.

This paper reports findings of a pilot study that examined the pedagogical potential of Second Life (SL), a popular three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment (3-D MUVE) developed by the Linden Lab. The study is part of a 1-year research and development project titled 'Modelling of Secondlife Environments' (http://www.le.ac.uk/moose) funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee. The research question addressed in this paper is: how can learning activities that facilitate social presence and foster socialisation among distance learners for collaborative learning be developed in SL, a 3-D MUVE? The study was carried out at the University of Leicester (UoL) within an undergraduate module on Archaeological Theory, where two tutors and four students took part in four learning activities designed to take place in SL within the UoL Media Zoo island. The learning activities and training in SL were based on Salmon's five-stage model of online learning. Students' engagement in SL was studied through interviews, observations and records of chat logs. The data analysis offers four key findings in relation to the nature and pattern of in-world 'socialisation' and its impact on real-world network building; the pattern of in-world 'socialisation' stage in Salmon's 5-stage model; perspectives on students' progress in-world through the first stage of the model—'access and motivation'—and perspectives on their entry into, and progress through, the second stage of the model—'socialisation'—and the role of identity presented through avatars in the process of socialisation. The paper offers implications for research and practice in the light of these findings.

Edirisingha P, Nie M, Pluciennik M and Young R (2009) Socialisation for learning at a distance in a 3-D multi-user virtual environment. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (3), 458-479.

Related links:

Kamel Boulos, Wheeler and Toth-Cohen Designing for Learning in 3-D Virtual Worlds

Kamel Boulos, Hetherington and Wheeler An overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical education

Watching the MUVEs

Recently, psychologists have been getting quite excited about multi-user virtual environments. Several studies have drawn the same conclusion: that people behave similarly in virtual worlds using avatars as they do in real life. Yee et al (2007) showed that the closer two avatars were together, the less they faced each other directly, and 'eye contact' was reduced. They also reported that two characters of the same gender kept greater distance than two characters of opposite genders. Friedman and his colleagues (2007) found that a robot avatar that was programmed to walk up to people in Second Life caused them to back away to maintain some kind of personal space. Others have discovered that real world group processes such as persuasion and influence can also work similarly in virtual worlds. Eastwick and Gardner (2009) have even detected elements of racist and other distasteful behaviours in MUVEs. Anything it seems, that happens in real life, can be found also in Second Life and other 3D avatar driven environments.

Christian Jarrett, writing in the June edition of The Psychologist (a British Psychological Society Journal) documents these and similar studies to show why psychologists are getting excited about MUVEs. He says 'The fact that people behave in virtual worlds in a way that reflects real life is exciting news for psychologists because it opens up the medium as a way of conducting large-scale social studies with relevance to the real world - projects that might otherwise be impossible or prohibitively expensive to conduct.

Jarrett makes an interesting distinction between Second Life and some of the more popular MUVEs such as World of Warcraft. WoW has game objectives he points out. This may be the reason it has so many more adherents than the somewhat sterile and therefore underpopulated Second Life. Well I wish him and his colleagues a lot of luck. They may have to wait some time to meet up with an avatar in the ghost town that Second Life is becoming.

References

Eastwick, P. W. and Gardner, W. L. (2009) Is it a game? Evidence for social influence in the virtual world. Social Influence, 4, 18-32.

Friedman, D., Steed, A. and Slater, M. (2007) Spatial social behaviour in Second Life. In C. Pelachaud (Ed.) Intelligent Virtual Agents 2007, Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Jarrett, C. (2009) Get a Second Life. The Psychologist, 22 (6), 490-493.

Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F. and Merget, D. (2007) The unbearable likeness of being digital: The persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. Cyberpsychology and Behaviour, 10 (1), 115-121.

Image source

My e-learning philosophy

My professional career has been somewhat checkered. I first started work as a technician in media and technology back in 1976 when things were a lot less sophisticated than they are now. I entered into the world of academia when my interests in learning technologies grew beyond how they worked and I became interested in how they could be harnessed to support and enhance learning and teaching. Being a student at the Open University gave me some insight into what people go through when they are studying at a distance from their parent institution. It has helped me to create new experiences and activities which exploit new social media and give students interactive opportunities.

In a recent Skype interview with Gary McCafferty we talk about how my career has developed and I discuss my philosophy on e-learning. We talk about how social media is being used to support distance learners and create dynamic collaborative environments. The entire interview covers a range of other topics including backchannels and Twitter, digital natives and immigrants, the semantic web, social tools and academic rigour, learning technology affordances and constraints, a critique of institutional VLEs, e-portfolios, online submission systems, blogs and wikis, Web 3.0, One Laptop Per Child, mobile phone technology and Second Life. I also discuss issues surrounding usability, accessibility, social presence, peer networking and the future of learning technology.

Being there

Well, I finally managed yesterday to get some time to complete a proposal for a workshop at ALT-C 2009. I co-authored the abstract with Tara Alexander, who is in the Faculty of Health and Social Work here at the University of Plymouth. I won't spill the beans on the workshop topic just yet, but it is ironic that, if it is accepted, and we both travel for several hours all the way up to the University of Manchester to present it, that most of it could be done remotely without us, or any participant, actually being there. People will be able to participate for most of it sat at home on their Internet linked computers if they choose. It's nothing new. I have been delivering remote classes for over 15 years and so have others. But I still find it interesting after all these years that people still want to come together face to face to do workshops, seminars, participate in lectures and demonstrations, and generally network in a co-present manner. This despite all the issues of travel pollution, rising fuel prices, travel delays, terrorist threats, stress and anxiety, and so on.

People still have an innate need to meet together face to face, and just about every survey and study I have read on the subject reports that face to face is still valued as the richest social experience. Well - of course - you reply. Yet I wonder just how long this might last, with emerging technologies increasingly mimicking and even replicating co-present experiences.

Second Life has its detractors, but the majority of SLifers I have spoken to talk about the 'other worldliness' and addictive interactive nature of the multi-user virtual environment saying they love it and invest a 'lot more time on it than they should'. Millions of people play almost obsessively on massively-multi player online role-playing games (MMORPGS) such as World of Warcraft and interact socially on another plane. My own children spent an inordinate amount of time on MSN and Bebo talking to their friends in the evening, even though they have spent all day at school with them. We are a technologically mediated society, and I could go on, and on, and...

Here's a question: Is Western industrialised society becoming a world in which we are reluctantly substituting our favoured forms of communication for synthetic versions? Are we migrating to virtual forms of social interaction because we don't have the time or space to meet personally anymore? Or is it simply the case that we are learning and practising new communication skillsets as we increasingly spread our lives ever more thinly across so many spaces and technologies?

I'm looking forward to going to ALT-C again this year - I will be there physically, but I will also be there virtually through my blog, Twitter, Flickr, Blip.tv, Crowdvine... through my iPhone...

The embodied self

Continuing with my post-publication commentary on my new book, the edited volume entitled: 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', today I feature Chapter 5 by Hugh Miller and Jill Arnold: 'Identity in Cyberspace'. I remember when I read the first draft of this chapter, thinking, wow - this has a real incisiveness about it. Hugh and Jill have done a very thorough job exploring the multiple virtual worlds we find ourselves drawn into, such as Facebook (for the 'flat' representations of self) or Second Life (where our avatars are 3D and mobile). They are very much concerned with the psychology behind the way we re-create ourselves when we venture into these imagined worlds. They write:

Our own research has shown that the psychology of identity and self presentation on the Web is best understood in terms of how people draw on those same signifiers of who and what we are as are used elsewhere: use of photos, claims made of achievements, hobbies, geographical origins, etc. We argue that when people enter into cyberspace they bring with them expectations, challenges, and vulnerabilities from every day life experience and the experience of managing an identity in various circumstances, and here was just another mode (or exciting new theatre) to explore and to play out being oneself (p 58).

Miller and Arnold are here arguing that the self we project into cyberspace has all the components of our real life self, but that there is the potential for fantastic or even outlandish new representations of that self, within the affordances of the virtual environment. This of course, implies that all of the outworkings of people's avatars (the gender bending, species swapping, age reassignment, fantasy representations and so on) lay inert within the person's psyche, and are enlivened (or made possible) within say, Second Life as the environment gives them licence and utility. I would be interested to hear people's views on this interesting perspective (do you agree with it?), and how such ideas might be applied to learning, whether formal or informal....

The New Mii

What is so fascinating about avatars? How is it that our digital identity can be so fluid and flexible, and yet it can become something that is so vitally important to us when we venture into a digital environment?

For the uninitiated, The word Avatar comes from the ancient Hindu (Sanskrit) word 'avatara', of which the original meaning is 'incarnation'. In recent years (ever since it was first repurposed in 1985 from the Ultima Games set) the word avatar has become synonymous with the digital representation of an individual's identity. The avatar is now 'you' in another, technology mediated format. It can take the form of a 'buddy pic' on Twitter for example, or can be a sophisticated 3D rendering of your persona.

I was reminded of the function and purpose of the avatar when we recently introduced the Ninetendo Wii to our family over Christmas. The kids love it. We adults love it. It can become addictive if you let it. The Wii is quite simply a revolution in home entertainment and gaming experience. And the Wii demands that you create your Mii - your Wii avatar - so you can start playing the excellent 3D games it supports. Many discussion groups and web pages have sprung up to inform this activity (see for example the YouTube video on how to create a Penguin Mii) and it can be quite a creative process.

So you create your Mii based on how you want to appear on the screen as you play games. What choices do you have? Well, they are very wide. Similarly to other 3D virtual environments such as Second Life, you can create facial shapes and expressions, features, genders, ages, heights, body shapes, and adornments. You can of course, also have several avatars, for different purposes. Your first impulse is to create an avatar that represents you accurately. That's what I did, and then I soon got bored. So just for fun, my wife and I created a 'little old lady' avatar with her hair in a grey bun, whom we named 'Hilda'. It was hilarious to watch Hilda beating the tar out of other computer generated avatars half her age during a Wimbledon tennis match. I also have another avatar called 'Fat Barry' who is overweight, unfit, balding, and completely useless at just about everything. He is my complete antithesis of course! I always use his avatar to play my wife at golf, because if she doesn't win, my life is over.

But putting the entertainment and fun to one side for a minute (I know - these are important components in learning!) there is a serious side to avatar creation. Your avatar, according to some theorists, is an extension of you. So perhaps this is why so many people treat it so seriously. I have encountered some extremely impressive and elaborate avatars in Second Life, most of whom bear no resemblence whatsoever to their real life creators. It is of course a licence for pure fantasy, but there is a serious purpose behind it. I have posted previous blog posts on this subject including It's only me, and Multi-me, and I am increasingly interested in the issues faced when we 'distribute' our presence across several media and virtual environments simultaneously. I will write more about my own thoughts on avatars and digital identity over the coming year, and would appreciate any comments and dialogue with those of you who are interested in developing this subject further in the context of education and training.

We are not lost

We have a 3D immersion cinema here at the University of Plymouth. It's a converted planetarium, which among other things, is now used to research some of the principles of virtual reality. I take visitors there just so they can experience the 'Wow!' factor. But how far down the road to full immersive experiences in education are we? We have handheld devices such as the Nintendo Wii, and sites such as Second Life which offer us a semblance of immersive experience sans the headset devices and much vaunted VR systems we heard so much about in the 90s. VR headset versions are being used in a variety of learning contexts such as military training, but how effective are they? And do we actually need them anymore? Popular fiction writers dwelt on the capacity of virtual reality to inspire, excite, terrify and bemuse, as in the Michael Crichton novel Disclosure:

He brought the headset down from the ceiling and started to place it over her eyes.
“Just a minute.” She pulled away. “What is this?”
'The headset has two small display screens. They project images right in front of your eyes. Put it on. And be careful. These things are expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“A quarter of a million dollars apiece.” He fitted the headset over her eyes and put the headphones over her ears.
“I don't see any images. It’s dark in here.”
“That's because you’re not plugged in, Louise.” He plugged in her cables.
Sanders stepped up onto the second walker pad and brought the headset down from the ceiling. He plugged in the cable. “I'll be right with you.” He said.
He put on the headset.
Sanders saw a blue screen, surrounded by blackness. He looked to his left and saw Fernandez standing beside him. She looked entirely normal, dressed in her street clothes. The video was recording her appearance, and the computer eliminated the walker pad and the headset.
“I can see you,” she said in a surprised voice. She smiled. The part of her face covered by the headset was computer animated, giving her a slightly unreal, cartoonlike quality.

Crichton painted a picture of a high cost, graphically rich, and exotic multi-media based technology into which users could mentally immerse themselves, and into which social interaction and interpersonal communication were embedded. It was a technology where the edges between reality and fantasy were blurred and where the interface between human and computer faded to grey within the mind of the user. Crichton's story was the unadulterated fiction we would expect, particularly with large cash advances and a Hollywood movie deal in the offing. This set of possibilities became the central theme for the cult movie series 'The Matrix' in which the boundaries between reality and virtuality were blurred. How does VR work on the mind so well, deceiving people into believing they are having some kind of 'real' experience? And do we need visors anymore now we have Second Life, the Wii and other apps which can 'fool' us almost as well...?

The media expert Derrick de Kerckhove sheds some important light on this question in his book 'The Skin of Culture'. de Kerckhove relates the story of a colleague who was visiting the wilds of Ontario, with an Alonquin Indian guide to look after him. At one point, he turned to his Indian guide and suggested that they may be lost. 'We are not lost', replied the guide, 'the camp is lost!'. This disconnect in cultural perceptions of space was not lost on the colleague, who realised that in his world space was fixed and he was a free agent wandering around it. His guide saw a different perspective, where the only fixed point was himself, and the rest of the world flowed by as he moved it under his feet. This is the exact same principle employed by VR systems to fool the individual into thinking s/he is moving around and encountering objects when in fact s/he is fixed in space.

This principle will sustain itself as the virtual experience in all its guises continues to perplex. But what it will look like is probably still beyond us.

Resident evil?

Well good grief. There is plenty follow up to the digital immigrants and natives debate. Where? I hear you ask... Well, James Clay over at e-Learning Stuff has just posted up a commentary entitled 'Are you a resident or a visitor?' which addresses the debate from another perspective (read it and you will know). He includes some really useful links to other recent postings by Josie Fraser, Andy Powell, David White and others (you know ... the usual suspects) on the topic of natives and immigrants.

I must admit, this alternative distinction 'visitor' and 'resident' offers a view of behaviour in that 'other place'. I suspect though, that the 'residents' and 'visitors' tag may have been transmitted directly from the Second Life realm, and at present, my SL avatar Loudli Singh still refuses to dance....

We blog like mad

It has been an interesting and varied day here at ALT-C 2008. We culminated the day with a live radio broadcast for Sounds of the Bazaar, hosted by Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser. Mark van Harmelen and George Roberts were interviewed, as was George Siemens. I presented my Hooked poem and George also added one for the cultural corner section of the programme. We had a live in-world Second Life screen on the go as well, and there were around 100 people watching, chatting, and enjoying the wine and snacks on offer.

Several dozen of us are now assembled downstairs in the bowels of the Leeds University Student Union building for the Edubloggers meeting which is due to start imminently. There is much talk about all things social software, and the noise is drowning out the music on the speakers... and we are all blogging, Flickring and Twittering like mad things.

It's your F-ALT

The preparations for ALT-C are nearly complete and we will all gather once again for our annual edu-knees-up in Leeds in a few weeks time. But running parallel with ALT-C this year is the Fringe ALT (or F-ALT). F-ALT will be serious fun, that is, fun with a serious undercurrent. We have been allocated space just off the main venue at the University of Leeds to conduct a number of events including WTF sessions on Microblogging, Second Life, Learning Objects, shoes, beer and all the other pressing concerns that reside in the tortured mind of the contemporary learning technologist. I hope to pitch my hat into the ring with an outrageous rant on the merits of EduPunk. (Well, Jim Groom is following me on Twitter, so I think I have something to say...)

F-ALT will also feature its own awards (The F-ALTies) where prizes will be awarded in a number of areas of activity, including: an award for the worst acronym for an e-learning project, the 'Not a Learning Object' prize and an award for the most pretentious blog post of the year (I am in the running for this one I think).

It will be a gathering of the clans for those learning technologists and academics who can stand the pace, and who don't mind laughing at themselves and poking fun at the establishment. I hope to see you there...

5 get a MUVE on

Well we did it. And it worked. Last time I was that nervous was when my (first) wife kept me waiting at the altar for 20 minutes over the odds, while her chauffer searched for a place to park. We are still married 22 years later, don't worry. Today was a technological success, where we linked 5 people together using Elluminate and managed a slightly flakey audio system in a very large and echoey hotel ballroom in Kuala Lumpur. I also did a successful in-world demonstration of Second Life for the LYICT Conference delegates here in Malaysia.

Graham Attwell (Pontydysgu) moderated the panel session from his eyrie in Bremen, Germany, whilst David White came in from Oxford to talk about design issues in SL, Helen Keegan spoke from Salford about augmented reality and mixing SL and real life, and Steven Warburton, who was in London, gave a presentation on the barriers to collaboration and participation in MUVEs. They all got up at a sickeningly early hour to participate due to the time zone difference. And it couldn't have gone any better, thanks to stirling support from the local technical team here in Kuala Lumpur.

Thanks to all concerned, for making this a memorable and enjoyable experience. A lot could have gone wrong, and I was a little worried about it, I admit. But is shows that you can take risks and it sometimes pays off. Next time, perhaps we will use Second Life as the presentation platform. When we have plucked up enough courage....

SL in KL through Elluminate

There has been a change in strategy. I'm a little disappointed we can't use Second Life to do a Second Life panel - it would have been a challenge and quite risky due to technical limitations. So probably a bit 'adrenalined' (is that a word?). But the guys have made a sensible decision to use Elluminate instead, as it requires less bandwidth (we only have 2Mb ps in the hotel conference venue) and the audio and streaming media systems are superior and will be a little less prone to problems.

I'm looking forward to doing this session on Monday, at 0700 BST, but I'm not looking forward to the travelling. It will take me 4 hours to get to Heathrow and then there's the flight - it will take 19 hours to get from London to Kuala Lumpur, and that's before I get to passport control, the baggage carousel, customs, the taxi rank....

Anyone want to go in my place?

SL in KL

This is going to be quite a challenge, but we don't back down from them do we? I will be chairing a live demonstration and panel of Second Life in Second Life at the IFIP ICT and Learning for the Network Generation Conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday (7 am GMT). The panel session will feature several friends from our previous bash at Online Educa Berlin last November. Steven Warburton (Kings College London), Graham Attwell (Pontydysgu), Helen Keegan (University of Salford) and David White (University of Oxford) will all be presenting as their avatars - and very colourful they all are too - and we will be using the JISC Emerge Island as our venue. I will appear as my new and improved avatar also - and although there are many technical issues to contend with and several things that could go disasterously wrong, we are going to take the risk and push the technology to see what it can do...

You are welcome to join us in world to take part and quz the panel as we explore some of the pedagogical, social and psychological issues that arise when Multi-User Virtual Environments are used for formal and informal learning activities.

Larry Snotter makes a MUVE

I thought it would be fun to give Larry Snotter another outing, so here he is, once again, in all his glory...

Tragically, trainee chat room Wizard Larry Snotter has become addicted to Second Life. His avatar, a disturbingly thin blonde woman with a twisted smile, has begun to dominate his life. His irritating little friend Nobby (himself a reformed Internet addict), takes it upon himself to help Larry to quit…

LARRY: You don’t understand Nobby. I've got to keep going back. I don't belong here in RL. I belong in your world – in Second Life. It's the only place I've got... friends.

NOBBY: Friends who don't even text Larry Snotter?

LARRY: Well, I expect they've been.. hang on, how do you know my friends haven't been texting me?

Guiltily, Nobby produces Larry’s SIM Card.

NOBBY: Larry Snotter mustn't be angry with Nobby -- Nobby hoped if Larry Snotter thought his friends had forgotten him... Larry Snotter might not want to go back into Second Life, sir...

LARRY: Give me that. Now.

Nobby frowns sadly, then runs out the bedroom door. Larry desperately chases Nobby, dashing headlong down the stairs and into the kitchen. As Larry races in, he finds Nobby standing on the bench top, waving his arms. Larry’s personal computer floats into the living room, hovering 8 foot above the parquet flooring.

LARRY: (Horrified) Nobby... Please... No...

NOBBY: Larry Snotter must say he's never going back online.

LARRY: I can't. Second Life is my home.

NOBBY: (With a tragic expression) Then Nobby must do it, sir. For Larry Snotter's own good.

Nobby snaps his fingers. The computer plummets to the floor, and smashes, sending shards of glass and pieces of plastic flying.

In a fit of rage and grief, Larry turns Nobby into a toad.

Plymouth Rocks

Well, now that the dust has settled on this year's Plymouth e-learning Conference, it is time to reflect. The verdict was that Plymouth rocks! It seems from the many positive comments we received that it has been a great success. 80 delegates attended the event today, to hear Professor Mark Stiles give a keynote on the tensions between institutional and student control over learning. Over 25 papers, demonstrations and workshops were also presented (Jackie Sitters, above, presents a paper on wikis in higher education), featuring Second Life, blogs, wikis, webcasting, handheld and mobile technologies, and there were lunchtine demonstrations by BlackBoard and our own home grown Leatning Technologist team. The latter was something of a triumph, because the LT team were able to present a neat version of the Nintendo Wii surface hack, which impressed a lot of those present.

Left is a picture of the final plenary where Ray Jones (University of Plymouth), Helen Keegan (University of Salford), Mark Stiles (University of Staffordshire) and I took part in a panel session. We answered questions from the delegates on the semantic web, plagiarism, sustainability and the future of e-learning, as well as revisiting issues such as ownership and control, formal vs informal learning and transparent vs opaque technologies. We are already planning next year's event which will take place over two days, on 23-24 April 2009. There will be at least two keynote speakers, a social event and conference dinner. Some photos from the day are available for viewing on Flickr.