Resourcing Online
February 22, 2010
With Second Life
As I was visiting a language class in Second Life this week, I was privately IM’ing a person from India who had helped me get to the right area for the visit, listening to the avatar teacher talk to a group of international avatar students, watching the local chat to see what was being input there, and listening to sounds coming from outside the classroom we were in, it was amazing to me the coming together of so many resources and wise use of online tools to help people learn one specific topic (speaking English).
The teacher not only had some moving visuals, but as she mentioned terms she thought might not be picked up well audibly by students, she typed the text of the words into chat so they could have the vocabulary reinforced. She did this without missing a beat in the conversation. Students could use the chat to ask questions or clarify as well. YouTube links, site links, sound files, and image files were instantly available to students that they could also easily save for study later. It was a very social, reinforcing atmosphere for learning.
With OERs and OCWs
I’ve always been a believer in providing people with resources and tools. In our course this week we talked about how that is happening online with some major initiatives toward making efforts to organize and make available all the content, resources, and tools out there – particularly Open Educational Resources (OER) and OpenCourseWare (OCW).
They ranged from the average person at Squidoo where “everyone is an expert on something” to the professional resourcing offered by MERLOT. Below are some sites that stuck out from this week:
• Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com/
• MERLOT http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
• Connextions (from Rice University) http://cnx.org/
• MOOM (The Museum of Online Museums) http://www.coudal.com/moom/
• Tufts University’s OCW: http://ocw.tufts.edu/
• Penn State Live (professor’s anatomy quiz website) http://live.psu.edu/story/9593
LGYoder's Blog 
I have to admit that I am somewhat skeptical about SL and the effects it can have on a person. I am sure that there are some nice things about meeting virtually in person with others, but the things that worry me is when a person can create a totally separate person that they embody when they go into SL. I don’t know this for sure, but I wonder how many people really act the same way in SL as they would in the real world. Do people really act like themselves or do they try to become someone totally different and live out different fantasies. The latter is what worries me. If children start using SL at a young age, what are the moral consequences for how they act in SL compared to how they act in real life? Do they act more mature and more socially responsible in SL, or are they more immature and are they more likely to act in a way that they wouldn’t normally act because they don’t have the same social responsibilities?
Just thoughts, I don’t really have any answers. You bring up an interesting way that SL is being used, and if it is being used for educational purposes, that is great. I just fear that there are other uses that will cause problems.
What think ye?
Justin, you are right – lots of potential for problems though t is restricted to adults (though it is impossible to be sure) so I don’t think we are talking about formation issues in children so much. I think more than some of the trust issues, perhaps, are the ones around the steep learning curve for not just how to move around and what to do, but figuring out the cultural norms of SL, make it’s ongoing use uncertain. It takes a great deal of investment of time, energy, and resources. I’m not sure what the future holds for it, but in the meantime, “me thinks” it’s quite the sandbox and testing ground for a lot of innovative experiments and observations of in elearning as well as virtual social communities and interactions.