There is something about virtual worlds that just feels right. I mean it’s so intuitive. We live in a 3 dimensional world. Why shouldn’t our experience on computers be 3 dimensional as well?
I personally have been well immersed in virtual worlds since early childhood because of my video game habits. I had most of the popular game consoles, but I played virtually every 3D game on the computer up until a few years ago. This is because I stopped playing videos games to focus on my college education and career. I even was a professional game player for Counter-Strike.
So how does it have anything to do with education? Well… can we somehow teach kids in the virtual environment? The issue is that it has to be better than what children are being exposed to in reality. When many children have absolutely nothing, it is an easy argument. Then again, many kids do belong to an educational system that presents it’s own advantages and disadvantages.
This issue is certainly not new. With the advent of second life, it has been an extremely popular topic for many educators. It feels sort of futuristic even though technology exists today. I watch educators in an almost dream like state talk about the future. Many of them leave educational conventions with a sort of euphoria. I’m sure it quickly fades after a few weeks back at the good old school.
Keep in mind that virtual environments have been created in Second Life that are educational. However, they haven’t been too popular. If you don’t know, most of what goes on in Second Life is quite bizarre. Then again if you looked at the internet from a distance, all you would see is chaos and pornography, so it’s fair to say that the Second Life community isn’t that strange.
I believe the problem is that Second Life isn’t designed for education. It’s designed for people to express themselves in an extremely open environment and the current community inside Second Life isn’t the right demographic for institutions to see great response from.
The way I see it is that there needs to be an environment strictly for education. I can envision virtual classrooms where everyone gets a great seat listening to the greatest physics teacher in the world. There will be a virtual engine based on emotion, which will express a teacher’s emotional cues and body language. Virtual representations of real world examples can be instantly shown in front of every student. Each student can interact with the presented objects without any fear of hurting themselves. Students can socialize afterwards and discuss what they learn with other students from around the world.
Sure… there would be a lot of issues. It would be nothing like a personal one on one meeting. Not yet at least. However, the student is learning from the very best. Frankly, I believe that hearing just the voice of a great teacher is better than one on one mentoring with a mediocre teacher. The wonderful part is that it is based on the information age model where it is incredibly cheap to duplicate information to the masses.
I have emphasize that virtual worlds are just so intuitive because it reflects our real lives. This is why we are heading towards more virtual applications, but I’d like to see them a bit sooner. It is also something I am pursing myself. However, I don’t believe it is necessary to have a virtual world to teach every subject effectively. The current web with it’s 2d nature can be a great place to host educational software. However, it would have to be so much more clever because the third dimension is a huge factor.
During the next week, I will try to get a better feel for applications like Second Life. I want to get a good understanding because it simply is the future. We can’t ignore it.
Take care,
Carl Zetterlund
P.S. I’m busy working on other business pursuits at the moment. I hope it will not greatly reduce the quality of my posts, but I thought I’d let you know.
