Clare Atkins,
Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, New Zealand
clare.atkins@nmit.ac.nz

Atkins, C. (2007, Jun), Here Be Dragons: Reflections on a Second Life Journey. Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology Vol. 5, Issue 1. ISSN 1176-4120. Retrieved from

PREFACE

This paper presents my personal reflection on Second Life and its potential for changing the way in which we all think about, talk about and work in an educational environment. It makes no pretence of being carefully and rigorously researched, that will come later. Instead it is intended to promote a thought provoking debate from which we can all learn and progress. While I agree that there are as yet no clear and tested models for the effective use of virtual environments, nevertheless I have become convinced that we as educators ignore the possibilities that they offer at our peril. Dragons and sea serpents may well be lurking at the edges of this virtual map, scaring all but the most intrepid explorers from venturing beyond the currently charted pedagogic territory but without our Columbus or Captain Cook we risk being confined to the old world while others discover the new.

 1. BRAVE NEW WORLD

At 5pm on Friday May 25 th I attended my first academic conference of 2007. I had registered two weeks before, been required to pay no conference fee and watched with increasing anticipation as keynote speakers were announced, and the programme, published on the Conference website, expanded to several streams. I cursed as one presentation was scheduled for 4am but relaxed when it became clear that not only would the conference proceedings be published but that audio and sometimes visual, records of the presentations would be available. I wondered how many of the sessions I would be able to make and whether it was worth trying to stay up for 24 hours to try and make them all! I registered at the conference desk, received my goodie bag, was directed to the displays by educational retailers, the poster exhibits and the tours. I attended presentations, networked with old friends and made new ones, and ended the conference attending a roundtable discussion while listening to the audio stream of another presentation and conducting several private conversations with other members of the audience.

You will have spotted by now that this was no ordinary academic conference but was the Second Life International Best Practices in Education Conference ; the first academic conference to take place entirely within a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE). Although I had been an active Second Life resident for 7 months and was already committed to exploring the technology for education, attending this conference alongside 1300 educators from around the world, was in many respects a defining moment for me and for others. Technology in Education blogger, Ryan Bretag expressed something that many of us felt when he wrote the following day, "There are those rare occurrences where in the moment, you can feel a change, you can feel a complete shift. The past 24 hours I bore witness to that rare moment where you literally witness the shift happening in front of you and know things are never going to be the same from this point forward" (2007).

2. THE MATRIX

Fifteen years ago, in the science-fiction novel, Snow Crash , author Neal Stephenson described one vision of how the Internet might eventually evolve into a virtual reality universe. On June 23 2003, Linden Research, Inc. headed by CEO Philip Rosedale, launched Second Life (SL), a first and quite deliberate step towards realizing that vision. Advertised as being a “ 3D online digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents” and one in which initial basic accounts are free, Second Life was not the first nor is it the only MUVE. However, certain characteristics have set it apart and since late 2006 it has gained increasing attention from the mainstream media.

Firstly, in comparison to most other similar environments SL is not a game. It has no rules systems, no points to score, no dragons to kill or ranks to achieve, unless of course they have been ‘imagined and created' by SL residents themselves. Such role-playing areas do exist and often represent some of the most incredibly detailed and beautiful creations currently to be found in Second Life. Rather, SL offers residents the opportunity to create the spaces, the objects and the experiences that they choose and while some of them choose shopping malls, sex parlours and nightclubs, they are by no means as ubiquitous as the media sometimes suggests.

Secondly, SL supports an active economy conducted in Linden dollars which can be bought and sold for US$ on the LindeX, the Linden currency exchange. The currency rate fluctuates with demand and allows residents to both trade inworld and to convert any profit from their trading into the ‘real world' as US currency. This has resulted in several governments expressing interest in taxing such income as several real world companies now make substantial incomes from these operations. One particularly profitable activity in SL is the trading of virtual land and real estate speculation has created Second Life's first real world millionaire, Ansche Chung .

Thirdly, many real world organizations are taking Second Life very seriously. Reuters maintains an office and reporter inworld which is becoming an authoritative source of news for Second Life residents. Amongst many others, the Danish bank, Saxo Bank is intending to offer financial services to Second Life residents, both IBM and Microsoft have a significant presence, Sweden has opened an embassy, Adidas, Toyota and Harcourts NZ have created virtual presences: the list goes on and on even though not one of them has yet identified an effective business model.

3. LEARNING THE WORLD

I first came across Second Life in October 2006, having been intrigued by media reports. Having braved the rather chaotic SL orientation, I found myself, or I should say my avatar or character found herself, at loose on the mainland with nowhere to go! My first instinct was to use the Search function to look for some interesting events and fortuitously I came across something that immediately hooked me in to the very special nature of Second Life.

I teleported to a large outdoor auditorium which rather resembled a Roman amphitheatre, apart that is from the enormous movie screen on one side and the strange assortment of avatars in the audience. I took a seat next to a rather large wolf with wings and turned on my movie stream. The auditorium's screen filled with the live stream from Africa of the UN Conference on Climate Change. I was spellbound; not only at the opportunity to watch this, after all I could have found the stream eventually on the web, but at the chance to discuss what I was watching with others from around the world. The wolf turned out to be from Canada , another from the UK . I had no idea who they were but the discussions were interesting, intelligent, immediately relevant to the context and completely spontaneous: even as we spoke I was considering ways in which I could utilize this environment and these experiences into my teaching.

Since then I have spent many hours (yes, Second Life is very time-consuming) ‘learning the world'. I continue to explore and learn; how to build, how to script, how to buy and sell my creations, how to buy, sell and rent land, how to interact with, and how to create Second Life communities, how to create appropriate learning activities for my students. I have gained a little expertise in some areas and become aware of how much I have to learn in others - in many respects it has been one of the most learning-intensive journeys of my life and of course it continues! At times I have berated myself for wasting so much time in what could be seen as ‘just play', at others I have been astounded at the creativity and imagination that surrounds me, or been inspired by the quality of debate that I have been able to participate in and the friendliness of fellow academics with whom I would not normally have made contact. I have learnt to avoid the casinos, the free sex clubs, the nude beaches and as in real life, I accept that they exist but am very rarely reminded of the fact. I have been to parties, danced the night away (a Second Life night lasts an hour and there are 4 of them in one real life day) attended classes at the Academy of Second Life and made some wonderful friends. I am gradually becoming a fully-fledged Second Life resident.

That last point is important - at least for anyone who wishes to provide students with real learning possibilities that maximize the potential of using a virtual environment. The question is often asked, of me personally and on the SL Education mailing lists, “how is teaching in Second Life different from using other forms of e-learning technology?” The questioner is almost always someone who has yet to enter Second Life or who has only dipped a virtual toe into the virtual water (which ripples beautifully by the way). I have yet to see or to find an answer that will satisfy them. I have my own answers, of course, but they are answers that only really become understandable to those who have committed themselves to ‘learning the world' and who are willing to explore new pedagogies and leave the classroom behind.

Before I understood the importance of this, I would sometimes seek to answer such questions in a variety of ways. One obvious difference comes from the deep engagement that people experience with the Second Life world. I would try to explain by describing the sense of emotional engagement that has developed between me, and my avatar, Arwenna Stardust, and between us and the Second Life communities in which we interact. I am Arwenna, and she is Clare. Yet, in some strange way Arwenna exists independently and is much more than just a handle - catkins_in_nz or brown_eyed_girl could disappear without trace and I wouldn't notice, but what happens to Arwenna matters to me. Consequently the experiences that she has and the things she learns are effortlessly integrated into my own awareness.

Another answer to that question concerned collaboration, and I would attempt to describe the satisfaction to be derived from helping someone achieve a more desired appearance, or build a new roof, or inviting friends round to speed up the planting of a garden or perhaps just consulting with someone on the best positioning for a house or a fountain. These simple things help to create not only a sense of community but also a sense of place and a sense of belonging. Discoveries and learning made with others are continually reinforced by seeing the concrete outcomes of the collaboration in the context in which we interact.

Nevertheless, I knew that I couldn't explain how teaching and learning in Second Life would be different, I just knew that it was. I have come to the conclusion, confirmed by one of the conference presenters John Jamison, that no amount of talking will ever convince someone who has not confronted the dragons; who has not at least begun to ‘learn the world'.

4. STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND

One of the specific areas of learning that my Second Life journey has taken me to has been a much closer examination of the characteristics of what Sword and Leggott have termed the Ne(x)t generation (2007); those growing up in constant contact with digital media and technology. These are the students whom Tapscott (1998) identified as having very different characteristics in terms of how they think and learn including such shifts as, the move from linear to hypermedia learning, from instruction to construction, and from absorbing material to learning how to navigate and how to learn. For these students the ‘sage on the stage' or ‘teacher as expert' models have little relevancy - rather, it is suggested, they learn best by exploring and mining their environment for the nuggets of information or knowledge that they need at the time or perceive as useful for the future, filling their metaphorical pockets with galaxies of sand grains.

At the SLBPE conference, John Jamison's presentation provided some interesting insights into the observable differences between these types of learning. Discussing his experiences with introducing educators into Second Life he identified a number of differences between those who could best be described as wanting to learn in the expert-led mode and those most comfortable in the self-learning mode. For me, the defining characteristic was his description of what happened once they had completed their initial tasks. Those most comfortable in ‘expert-led' mode would wait patiently until the next set of instructions came along while the self-learners were immediately exploring, getting lost, stuck under bridges, attaching boxes to their heads - or another of the many hazards that Second Life can hold.

Lohnes and Kinzer(2007) have also observed this approach to learning:

One student in the study provided an interesting contrast to the others. Roberto, a rising junior at a liberal arts college in the Southwest, was "the laptop kid," and he openly described multitasking in many of his classes. This use of technology fits with his personal philosophy of teaching and learning: Take from the class what you need. Roberto was very active in many groups on campus, and he regarded this participation as integral to his college life; he saw it as a learning experience, and he appreciated the flexibility of being in charge of his own learning experience. So, he said, if a professor is talking about something that he already knows, he feels comfortable maximizing his time and experience by taking care of other business via e-mail or the Web…

In such a situation, creating the environments and contexts for exploration that can reveal useful, relevant and usable content becomes an educator's primary responsibility. It is possible to use Second Life to construct learning environments in which exploration, navigation and knowledge mining are natural activities: it is determining the most relevant and useful content that is difficult.

5. SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH

Douglas Adams' dolphins spent a considerable amount of energy trying to persuade the world to save itself, before they decided to save themselves and send mankind one last indecipherable message. I am sure there will be as much energy spent in debating the merits or otherwise of Second Life's educational potential. But for me I am happy for the moment at least to leap with the dolphins and attempt to view the world from their perspective for a change. I will take notice of Prof Gilly Salmon speaking about the SEAL (Second Life: Advanced Learning) project at the University of Leicester at the Eduserv Foundation Symposium in London in May 2007. She commented that:

Second Life is an example of a Web 2.0 application that is unknown to most educational providers but excites and engages the learners of the future. SEAL is building communities of learners, teachers, technologists and creative practitioners to work together in the Second Life environment to ‘free up' existing mindsets and construct advanced approaches to learning based on possible, probable and preferred models. - to ensure that changes made to learning technologies in the future are acceptable, engaging and beneficial for student learning. (Salmon, 2007)

For the last forty years, educators have been facing dragons, trying to equip students for an unknown future but at least they had some charts to go by. Educating in virtual environments will be like swimming with the dragons, uncharted, scary, but worth the risks... and as for Arwenna, she just wears her dragon on her sleeve.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to my colleague and fellow dragon-rider, Aaron Griffiths, whose blog has been an inspiration and whose comments on this paper were invaluable.

My thanks also to my colleagues at NMIT for their discussions, debate and support.

REFERENCES

Adams, D. (1984) So long and thanks for all the fish. Pan Books, UK .

Lohnes, S., and C. Kinzer. 2007. Questioning assumptions about students' expectations for technology in college classrooms. Innovate 3 (5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=431 (accessed June 22, 2007).

Salmon, G. (2007) A second guess at the future. Proceedings of the Eduserv Foundation Symposium, May, London . http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/symposium/2007/presentations/salmon (accessed June 22, 2007)

Sword, H., and M. Leggott. 2007. Backwards into the future: Seven principles for educating the Ne(x)t Generation. Innovate 3 (5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=389 (accessed June 22, 2007).

Tapscott, D. 1998. Growing up digital: The rise of the Net Generation. New York

Copyright © 2007 Clare Atkins
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