A line in the sand

And after that, it stopped.  I never finished MUVEnation; work, family, other interests… I couldn’t sustain the reading, blogging, on-line chat, hours in SL… couldn’t find the time and energy I needed to keep it up.  At college we kept searching for educational affordances of SL but we couldn’t make it work, at least not in the context we were working in.  About a year later we packed up our tent and moved on.  SL (or its children) is still there in my imagined but yet to be grasped future of education, nascent but not yet in bloom.

So a few weeks ago I signed up for the University of Edinburgh/Coursera E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC.  The mixture of excitement, expectation and dread reminded me of MUVEnation, so resurrecting this blog seemed proper.

Over the week-end I'll try to get some stuff together...  I've looked at the film clips for week 1, which all strike me as over-simplistic, but how subtle can you get in 10 minutes?  The little reading I've done has spotlights some interesting concepts that all beg more questions.  The Hangout was a game of two halves; juggling talking heads and superheated twittering.  A quick poke about in the forums felt more like old times in Usenet... where to start?

I can already feel the drag of the EDC gravity well dragging me towards a fiery doom... 

How was it for you?

Overview

Collaboration is not easy. We often merely cooperate, distributing sections of a task rather than working together on the whole. It needs practice and as we will be doing more collaborative activities during the course it is important to reflect on the success of the process this time, so that we can improve it next time. 

Objectives

To reflect on the dynamics of the collaboration process 

Christmas and a few distractions later, I’m re-focusing on MUVEnations before the course re-starts next week.   I need to do some catching up, including reflecting on the dynamics of the collaboration involved in our most recent activity – producing a travel guide to a Second Life educational site or resource.  

Collaborating with blue group colleagues turned out to be complicated.  To start with, only one or two other group members seemed to be actively following-up the original blue group thread.  We all seemed unsure how to proceed; put into a group with several seemingly absent colleagues.  On reflection it might have been easier to let groups emerge naturally, allowing the different participants an opportunity to progress at their own pace together with likeminded colleagues. There was an uncomfortable wait to see who else would surface before we reached a decision to push on…  

Was it easy to define objectives and criteria? 

Having decided to make a start, a few of us got together at MUVEnation Island to discuss our plans.  Meeting in-world was interesting, my first real experience of how purposeful activity might be planned and acted on.  I wrote about this at the time in some earlier blog posts, and the logs of these conversations have been posted by Teresa Almeida d'Eça (Tere Short) at http://mvn08.edublogs.org/.   I certainly found it more engaging and immersive than simply participating in IM chat, even though in the end, IM chat was what it was…   By the second conversation protocols for our discussions were already emerging.  I found myself more consciously leaving space for others to speak, confirming my understanding and summarising regularly.  I’m pretty sure the same sorts of patterns were emerging in the behaviour of the others.  I also noticed that I became a little more ‘direct’ in making suggestions for moving forward.  This is probably one consequence of reduced social cues in computer mediated communication (Researchers have been writing about this for a long while… I’m not going to get all academic, but a search on ‘reduced social cues’ and CMC will turn stuff up if your interested.  What I couldn’t turn up is useful guidelines on how to manage purposeful interaction through IM.  I’m sure hey must be out there, and they’d be useful to teachers working in this medium for the first time.

How did you distribute the work? 

Our attempts to work collaboratively were mugged by the intrusion of RL events, first a family emergency that took Sally and I away from home unexpectedly, then Christmas and the aftermath… by the time we got back to SL the group had moved on.  Sally and I continued to collaborate on collecting our information and constructing our guidebook.  It’s funny how the frustrations of CMC collaboration melt away when you’re both in the same room…

How did you feel about your own participation? 

Pretty good actually, apart from the Christmas hiatus.   I feel I got my act together, contributed to the group aspects of the work, and put my guidebook together reasonably successfully.  In constructing our ‘Info Booth’ we went further than we needed to with building and presentation, but I guess that’s the dramaturg  in both of us…   

Where there any problems, or misunderstandings? 

I’d plan things a bit more systematically if doing this again, ensuring that I collect together all my images, text, artefacts, scripts, etc before starting building – but that’s learning.  I’m also left with a lot more questions about building, though I appreciate this was not essentially a building task, just an area I dragged myself off into. The main problem with the task itself was actually getting started – identifying the active group members and arranging a first meeting.  A little more assertiveness early on would have helped, although I also feel that a less directive approach to the organisation of the groups would have allowed the more active students to band together and move ahead more quickly.  Once we actually got going things seemed pretty straight forward, until RL events intervened.  Of course, it’s not clear how our early plans for collaboration would have worked out in practice.

An interlude... Identity of Relative and Absolute

I’m attending the Eduserv Digital Identity Event in London the day after tomorrow and have been putting off writing something on digital identity.  What’s to say?  I have very little clear concept of consistent identity, digital or otherwise.  On a philosophical and frequently experiential level the whole idea makes only partial sense. As the Sandōki says, “Fire is hot, wind moves, water is wet, earth hard…”  That’s about it.  But let’s go along for the ride. 

My recent first steps into Second Life amplified my sense of the relativity of identity.  Uncertainties around identity, anonymity, mask and pretence present themselves everywhere.   Here are my first couple of posts to the MUVEnation forum ‘Appearance and Identity in Second Life’, completed just a few days into the course.  I’m reproducing it here as much for what it reveals about my early experience of Second Life as for the words themselves.  Naturally, it's all relative, but in an effort to do as I'm told…

Situation: I've just started MUVEnation08, a course exploring the educational possibilities of Second Life (at least, I think that's what it is).

Task: “You have now had the chance to make changes to your avatar’s appearance, These changes change the identity of the avatar in different ways. They may also change how you feel about your avatar. To illustrate this many people who have more than one avatar report that they feel differently about their different avatars, and in the same way changes you make to your avatar may make you feel differently about it. When it looks more like you, for example, you may feel more or less comfortable with it. What do those feelings imply about your relation to your avatar?  In your blog, describe your experience playing with your avatar’s appearance: do you feel comfortable with your new appearance or is it going to take more work – share your reflections on this. How do you feel the changes you made to your avatar have affected your digital identity? How do you think your appearance affects your interactions with others and their interactions with you?

Actions: I fiddle about with Bascule, my avatar, in an attempt to make him look more like me. 

Results and Reflections…

Appearance and Identity in Second Life

by Steve Griffin - Saturday, 29 November 2008, 11:42 PM

I enjoyed experimenting with the appearance of my avatar, and the challenge of making it look like me.  I wanted to make it look as real as possible, which meant tracking down a shape, skin, hair, and animations (to give it a distinctive posture and walk).  I discovered that ironically skins are in many ways less malleable than the basic avatar appearance.  In a skin, shape can change, but not the surface, so unless someone produces a skin with wrinkles I’ll have to stay looking younger than my 50 years.  I wanted to put the ‘me’ avatar into something I might actually wear, so I found out how to make a t-shirt that I could put my College logo on.  The process reinforced useful technical skills and a number concepts underpinning the appearance of SL avatars.

Having gone to all that effort, I was very happy to have Bascule’s original appearance saved, and to be able to call him back.  I’ve already got attached to him.

Our physical appearance, both the way we are and the way we choose to be, is a key factor in establishing and projecting our identity.  In everyday life there are elements of the physical self that are fixed, and elements that are changeable, though tailoring, cosmetics and more recently surgery blur the boundaries.  The choices we make send signals that are understood or misunderstood by others as affiliations, values, warnings and requests.

The way we look is often the first impression we make, potentially giving rise to assumptions that shape future relationships.  Ironically, in re-introducing ‘presence’ SL re-establishes the importance of visual impressions in on-line communication where other mediums (IM and various forms of asynchronous writing) have tended to downplay them.  Acceptance in a role is frequently tied up in the way we appear, at least initially, and at least in part.  As immersive as SL can seem, it’s pretty thin when it comes to the subtleties of body language and gesture, voice colour and tone.  Appearance is less easily moderate by behavior, giving it a heightened symbolic importance.  How you look in SL will be taken by many as your principal statement of what you wish them to understand about you and how they should interact with you. If you go into SL to fulfill a particular role, it will probably be beneficial to wear a recognizable costume.  To play Hamlet, it’s helpful to look like Hamlet, at least to start with.  If you see part of your role as challenging assumptions about appearance SL will still give you great opportunities to do so.  Turning up as an Orc on week 5 might be a good starting point for work on stereotyping.  Turning up as an Orc on week 1 runs the danger of being misconstrued… 

In the absolute sense we may be right to dismiss appearance as trivial and preoccupation with it as unhealthy.  In practice, we almost all make judgments about others based on their appearance, as they make similar judgments about us.  My sense is that the relative lack of other clues in SL encourages judgments about others based on a reading of the fundamentals of their appearance, even where IRL judgments might more normally be mediated by other behavioral signals.  Maybe those early judgments will be open to revision, but sometimes not.  I will consider this when teaching in Second Life.

Re: Appearance and Identity in Second Life

by Steve Griffin - Sunday, 30 November 2008, 09:40 PM

I can't claim any special insight here, or especially wide reading around this topic. I'll try to be open about what I feel now, leaving the door open to change my mind in the future.

I studied drama in the past and was particularly struck by the power of symbols. Far from being two dimensional, symbols can frequently be 'n dimensional'... communicating complex meaning that both include and exclude. I do see an avatar as a mask, but that doesn't exclude it from having a complex role in establishing identity, even to the extent of imposing identity on the person behind it. See Keith Johnson's book 'Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre' for more on this. Here's a post reflecting on Johnstone, identity, mask and trance by Phantomias, who writes a blog called Achievement in Mind at http://mindmastery.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/masks-we-wear-masks-we-act/ or take a look at this video clip on Johnstone's website for a more immediate idea of what this might mean. http://www.keithjohnstone.com/videos/KJ_Teaches/Vol_1/4min-hiband.mov. 

An avatar is clearly more complex than the photo we put in our profile, though in my view even the photo we use can be a complex iconic signifier of who we are. In attempting to understand we suck up clues from wherever we can find them. Arguably, in a symbolically sparse on-line environment those signifiers that are available become even more important in the process of constructing meaning. If so, online presence is indeed substantially changed by SL.

Maybe there are people who don't read avatars in this way. This might even be a good thing. Even so, there are plenty of others who will read all sorts of meaning into the face we present to the world. Making allowances for this when teaching in SL would seem like a sensible precaution.

Re: Appearance and Identity in Second Life

by Steve Griffin - Sunday, 30 November 2008, 08:16 PM

Thanks for the pointer to Mark Presney, I think the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants is an interesting one. I wonder though if as the digital natives grow up their behaviour will change, for example using blogs for less emotional and more intellectual purposes. At the moment maybe we're too close to it all. The digital natives are all young, so we don't really know how old digital natives will behave. Maybe adult digital natives would be less hung up on appearance. It would be interesting to talk to some younger SL users about what if anything they read into appearance. Maybe an opportunity for some digital field anthropology! My guess is that someone's already doing it...

I'm sure you're right that meeting unknown SL residents is different to meeting students you already know, although in a funny way I still think appearance has an impact on both relationships. When meeting an unknown resident I am likely to form an early impression that guides how I interact with them, and to be mistrustful if I later detect differences between how they appear and how they act. But maybe I'm just suspicious...

Meeting someone I know in SL who projects a very different image IRL is also likely to leave me feeling uneasy, unless we're clearly in a 'play' situation. I'm not really talking about hair colour and clothing here - but gender, race (maybe), anthropomorphism, personification, extremist sub-cultural affiliation, etc. Maybe this is just the anxiety of a digital immigrant and I need to loosen up?

As I final shot, it's interesting to wonder how anonymity in SL might be used creatively to help free up youngsters who are otherwise constrained by marginalising factors. Here the ability to 'start fresh' might be very powerful.

Post script: I almost immediately went back to the earlier version of my avatar.  Later work on his appearence makes him look even less conventional, and even less like me.  As a MUVEnation student, I'm increasingly attached to him.  When and if I need a professional representation in SL maybe I'll need to think again.  Then again, I may just buy him a hat.

Time, Space and Bascule

There was a meeting of Blue group at MUVEnation island yesterday to work on Section 3 Activity 1 - creating a virtual travel guide. Boudica (Sally), Tere (Teresa), wico (William) and me were there. Sunshine (Mireille) sent apologies. Bex (Bex) from Orange group joined us to see how we are getting along. Tree posted the whole chatlog for anyone interested in the blow-by-blow details. We started by talking about what we’d learnt, and a couple of very interesting points came up. Well, interesting to me!

• There's lots of information is SL, and lots of opportunity for learning - so much so that there's a danger of lack of focus, distraction, or simply missing the point. So, like good teaching in RL, good teaching in SL requires careful planning and preparation. Teachers in SL need to actively guide learners through SL spaces, maybe more so than in RL where most learners usually will already have an instinctual grasp of the physical, cultural and social topography. Where learners are inexperienced in SL, tutoring is probably a critical element of support.
  

I’d not thought about this notion on topography before. IRL learners have all the usual reference points; even in a new situation they have an instinctual understanding of most of the rules. In SL, even the laws of physics are different! Learners who are new to SL will need a great deal of support even with simple things like having a conversation. Blue group is working out protocols as it goes along, with some definite patterns emerging; regular affirmative re-statements, frequent summarising, more direct and targeted questions, more invitations to others to speak, active re-incorporation of others ideas, and generally shorter statements. In this meeting, a potentially chaotic five-way conversation went quite well (probably ‘cos we’re all so clever an’ all…)

• SL is a very 'synchronous' space and generates a real sense of 'presence', experienced 1st hand by the group in this sort of collaborative activity. The group also referred to this at various times as 'solidity', 'realism', 'connection', 'virtual attraction', 'community'. While some of the group have experienced a similar sense of presence in other on-line communities everyone agreed this was a particular feature of SL. This makes SL a particularly 'social' environment, and the impact of social interaction is one of the things SL teachers need to plan for.

I’ve never much taken to IM, unlike Boudica who has a very active IM friendship group (Boudica is increasingly referred to as Bo… a sign of growing informality within the group and maybe the push towards shorter statements! I should explain that Bo and I are married IRL… It’s interesting sitting back to back in the study using IM and trying really hard not to cheat!). My problem with IM is rooted in my terrible spelling. I have good coping strategies as an adult, but most involve drafting and re-drafting, something less easy with IM. Blue Group had a bit of a discussion about how SL might allow anxious students more space, and Bex talked about the possibility of re-drafting IM messages. I realised I’m already doing this a little, and will try to do more. IM is synchronous, but maybe doesn’t have to be instant. Slowing down even a little allows for micro-reflection… and even a bit of re-drafting!

• While some SL Education spaces seem vibrant and inhabited, others seem a bit 'run down' and even abandoned. We speculate that some spaces find it hard to sustain the levels of enthusiasm that led to their initial creation. This is another way in which communities are important - in sustaining and inhabiting the spaces created to support them. A number of questions follow on from this; what is the typical lifecycle of an SL community? Is a space that grows out of a community more sustainable than a community that grows out of a space?

I mentioned this is my earlier posts on this activity. The Three Marks of Existence permeate all 10,000 worlds, including the virtual ones. That impermanence should be a feature of SL is no surprise; though the life cycle of some SL space seems remarkably short – communities that seemed to be thriving 18 months ago seem dead on their feet now… As someone about to jump feet first into the land owning business it would be productive to give this careful thought…

Bo has just read this over my shoulder and told me that she's heard the Internet called 'the revenge of the introverts'... which led me through Google to an intersting 1995 article in Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine:

Traditionally, humans form relationships with other people because of their geographic proximity. But on the Internet people meet other users because they have similar interests regardless of where they physically live. Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and a user of San Francisco's WELL system writes, "It's like having the corner bar, complete with old buddies and delightful newcomers and new tools waiting to take home and fresh graffiti and letters, except instead of putting on my coat, shutting down the computer, and walking down to the corner, I just invoke my telecom program and there they are. It's a place." (Livingood, 1995)

After the meeting, Bex and I played Frisbee. Not something traditionally associated with IM... just unpacking the necessary kit turned out to be quite complicated, though we got there in the end. Bex turned out to be very good at it, while I was continually picking the frisbee out of the river. Bo just watched while sending IMs, reading e-mail and updating Facebook...

Unable to just have fun, we got to talking about educational applications of frisbee throwing - this would certainly be a good way to practice motor control of avatars!

Livingood, J. (1995, April 1). Revenge of the Introverts. Retrieved December 20, 2008, from Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1995/apr/livingood.html

Virtual Quest

Tonight I re-visited Education UK Island to take another look at the Virtual Quests. This resource is housed in a smallish shop unit close by the Education UK reception at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20UK/228/45/22

In which way does this location address educational issues?

This site is very small scale and very simply presented series of wall-mounted instruction cards on how to create Virtual Quests; an approach that offers “a focused method of using Second Life to support learning and teaching and provides the learner and tutor with a framework for exploring and developing subject topics.” There’s an outline of the pedagogical model, additional note cards, and example of a quest, and links through to additional web-based resources on www.sleducationuk.net. Unfortunately, the website itself was off line due to bereavements.

The presentation of the Virtual Quest resource is functional but nothing to write home about (or write a blog about…). However, the content might be! This was the first resource I’ve come across that gives clear practical advice to teachers on how to use SL as a teaching resource. It’s functional, practice-focused, written with learning outcomes in mind and follows a simple 4-stage experiential learning model that will already be familiar to most teacher. The Virtual Quest process itself has clear application in a wide range of learning contexts.

According to you, which is the target audience of the educational events/action taking place in the location?

The activity was presumably written by UK teachers. There’s nothing to confirm this directly, although an inspection of various prims reveals that Chris Eggplant, the avatar in front of the man behind Education UK Island is the owner and creator of the content. It’s in a language that will be immediately recognisable to UK schoolteachers, and teachers working in the Lifelong Learning sector.

Who are the owners of the location and how is it organized (is there a community, group, etc)?

To quote from a note card in the main island office, “Education UK island is a not for profit educational island being constructed in Second Life to provide a ‘safe’ location for U.K. virtual education. We are not a company or an organisation, nor are we consultants looking to cash in on Second Life (we have jobs thank you!), or are we affiliated to any other organisation with a similar name. We are purely a group of UK educationalists who have worked in UK education at practitioner, manager and policy levels for a substantial number of years, who have come together and bought an island and the accompanying resources out of our own money.”

As with Virtual Morocco, I found a number of worrying indications that the initial impetus for this work has wound down – there were random prims scattered around, empty shop units, ‘rogue’ sky platforms, non-functional video feeds… again, it struck me that the site is not getting the maintenance as it really needs. This emerging pattern again makes me wonder about the sustainability of project-based in-world activity.

What resources are present?

I concentrated during this visit on the Virtual Quest resources, which I’ve described earlier in this post. I’m going to have a look around and see what other resources might be available here.

Road to Morocco revisited

I re-visited Virtual Morocco today to complete part of my work on Section 3 Activity 1. We're asked to reflect on a number of question that I don't think my initial post addressed in sufficient detail. Here's a few more thoughts...

In which way does this location address educational issues?

The site gives visitors a range of formal and informal learning opportunities. It's possible to simply wander round and soak up atmosphere, to take a more systematic approach by wearing an info Fez and picking up note cards at key points around the sim, or, as part of a 'lead' learning activity to participate in a guided exploration of Morocco and it's culture, ideally involving the SL presence of someone who knows the real Morocco. I met someone with experience of the real Morocco on one of my return visits who really helped to fill in the fine detail. "In real life, there would be someone offering me mint tea right now. and hordes of children wanting money..."

A teacher could also organise more in-world or IRL follow-up through visits to related SL sites (for example, the Virtual Hajj at http://slurl.com/secondlife/IslamOnline%20dot%20Net/7/62/22) or through a variety of net-based and RL activity. In this way Virtual Morocco could become one element of a more multi-element exploration of a particular topic. I can see this being particularly valuable as part of (for example) a scheme of work addressing issues of cultural diversity, where RL opportunities to access other cultures is limited.

According to you, which is the target audience of the educational events/action taking place in the location?

According to the people who created the sim, Virtual Morocco has two goals, to educate people about Morocco, and to entice people to visit the country. I think it works well on both levels. There's certainly a real sense of atmosphere, and enough information for the curious to follow up. The biggest problem I have is with the sim being unavailable to younger students. I'd dearly love to see some work done with 14-16 year old students in this space.

Who are the owners of the location and how is it organized (is there a community, group, etc)?

This sim was created as part of a project of the Johnson & Wales University, in collaboration with the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism. A student group went to Morocco to study the country and the culture by interacting with it. They came back and built the sim with the support of the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism. There's more information here http://casablanca.life3solutions.com/index.html (which also includes links to some blog posts).

Sadly, I found one or two elements of Virtual Morocco that seem not to be functioning. I wonder if the initial impetus for this work has waned, and if it's getting as much maintenance as it really needs. I've seen the same creeping neglect at a few sites and wonder if this is typical of the lifecycle of many sims. Sustainability is an issue for many RL projects and is maybe an issue for SL projects too?

What resources are present?

The info Fez (a Fez that you wear and which whispers comments to you as you walk through the sim) struck me as a good model of how to guide people through a virtual space. The info Fez is backed up by more conventional note cards, signposted by the same Fez symbol. The environment itself is a great resource, recreating iconic aspects of Moroccan culture. There's some really beautiful tilework... The creators have created playful interactive elements likely to engage both casual and more purposeful visitors - an opportunity to use a windsurfer, to play football (while wearing the Moroccan national football strip), to drink tea, to smoke a shisha, and to shop in the souk...

The Road to Morocco

Boudica (Sally), Tere (Teresa) and Bascule (me) started our work on Module 1 Activity 3 today. We'd individually stuck our hands up in the Group 2 Forum 'Blue' realising we were the only people likely to be active over the week-end. We have two other potential collaborators who couldn't be around, so decided to push on in the hope others would run with it.

Actually, I've done an awful lot of metaphorical running today; the activity grew like Topsy...

Boudic, Tere and Bascule got together on MUVEnation Island; sitting around the campfire for an in-world chat about Activity 1. This was my first real experience of a Local Chat conversation in SL, or at least, my first real attempt at getting something in particular done. It turned out to go rather well. Local Chat lacks the nuance of speech; things have to be said clearly and succinctly, which actually seems to help the planning process. Although we only sat and talked there was a real sense of ‘presence’ that helped the conversation along and, to my mind, made the ‘directness’ of purposeful Local Chat somehow easier.

We quickly agreed to concentrate on practical examples of good teaching in SL, across any subject area. Tere and Boudica suggested some search terms: best practices, interactive learning, problem solving, and creative thinking. We decided to look both in and off world, and to meet back in a few hours to see what we’d got. Reviewing the chat log the meeting took about 45 mins. You can see the whole log, together with Tere’s reflections on the meeting, in Tere’s blog at http://mvn08.edublogs.org/2008/12/14/sl-sally-steve-and-teresa-meet-at-muvenation/

In the end, I got not much further than typing ‘Second Life’ and ‘Best Practice’ into Google. One link led to another… and I was spoilt for choice. At least, spoilt in the sense that there seemed to be a lot of discussion ‘about’ best practice. I had to poke around a bit for Ding an sich examples... sticking to the brief, here are my two best:

At the UK Education Island site I found this nice example of learning and teaching with Virtual Quests. There’s an introduction, a walk-through, and an example of the finished article. There’s also a link to a few more examples on http://www.sleducationuk.net/

One great thing about Virtual Morocco is that you get to wear a Fez! Your Info Fez, available free from the InfoFez kiosk, gives you information about Morocco as you explore Virtual Morocco, finding out about both the history and contemporary culture. There’s lots to find out, lots to do (including bellydancing), and lots of information to collect as you go - so lots of follow-up if you want to. I thought that this was a really good example of the possibilities of learning through exploring in SL. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Casablanca/135/87/27 . You can find out more about the project behind Virtual Morocco at http://casablanca.life3solutions.com/

Asides from these two in-world examples, I found a nice off-world example of key pointers to working in SL from Global Kids, who'd produced 12 note cards highlighting ways to approach learning and teaching in SL. Short, wise, and a bit wacky (so a bit like Tere…). You’ll find the cards in the blog sidebar or can see the original at http://www.flickr.com/photos/holymeatballs/sets/72157601198270790/

At the end of the day Boudica, Tere and Bascule met up again at the campfire to discuss what they’d found and what to do next... talking while the sun went down over MUVEnation bay... We’d done about 4 hours work each, and only got through half the the first activity... still, we're learning as we go...and things are getting interesting...