Educational Gaming Commons

Who is Cory Onderjka, and why should you browse through this amazing silde show? He's the former CTO from Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, and IMO, he's more than just a techie, he's got a handle on the future.

Don't let the 168 slides daunt you; they are all short and sweet. I love this presentation style!

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We had our largest lunch gathering yet today for our monthly brown bag discussions. We spent the majority of the time looking at a virtual world called ProtoSphere by Proton Media. This is the only virtual world available built from the ground up for education and training. We had faculty members from various colleges discussing collaborative opportunities utilizing class projects within ProtoSphere, where different course sections would be responsible for things like designing the learning environment, implementing the environment and evaluating the learning outcomes.

We are currently in discussions with Proton Media for a PSU-specific instance of ProtoSphere. We'll continue to post updates to the EGC blog as talks move forward. Look for an announcement regarding the next brown bag lunch for May (probably the final week of May sometime).

I just came from Spanish class and I wanted to write about our experience this morning while it is still fresh in my mind. Our objective today was to learn more about Mayan Culture by exploring the Ruta Maya, a recent addition to the Chichén Itzá Archeological site on Visit Mexico island (sponsored by the Mexican government) and to practice some discrete grammar points that are related to our language studies, namely comparisons and the preterite and imperfect tenses. The students received an information sheet which detailed a walk along the Ruta Maya with visits to four pyramids. In addition, I noted that there were a number of fun things to do in the area, such as swimming near the watrerfall, scuba diving, hang gliding and riding a zipline through the rainforest canopy. The students were to visit four pyramids, read the notecards, do one fun thing and complete a written assignment in Spanish using the targeted grammar points.

I soon found out that I had neglected to mention the fact that that there were also free horse rentals available. A number of students converged on the horse rental barn and soon were exploring the Ruta on horseback. O.k., I said to myself, here is a cultural lesson- a teachable moment. In Mexico, it is very common to rent a horse for a ride on the beach, so I urged the students to walk the horses down to the beach. As I was ruminating on the fact that, yet again, Second Life had provided an authentic experience, the students discovered that they could fly with the horses. Soon the sky was filled with flying horses. For the next twenty minutes or so, we found out that, yes, horses can climb the pyramid steps, yes, horses can hang glide and even get on the zipline platform. I am fuzzy on whether or not they successfully rode the zipline on horseback.

So, in my best professorial manner, I suggested that the students should stay focused on our objectives and remember that they had to complete the written part of the assignment as well. One of the students said, well, can't we write about the horses? Well, what I really had in mind was some explanaton of the archeological site, but then again, why not? What mattered was the use of Spanish.

I am still analyzing the experience. I told them at the end of class, "I am so blogging about you today,"
but what is the lesson here? I was very prosaic in my lesson plan; I had visited the island, ridden the horses and it had never occurred to me to fly, let alone climb the pyramids and hang glide on horseback. Maybe I just don't get it; I get hung up on the authentic experiences and neglect the creative possibilities. It is as if the students had made paper airplanes out of my lesson plans. I need to think about whether or not that is bad. O.K., yes, they probably got carried away, but they were so in the moment, it was a joy to observe. Second Life is about encouraging that creative fervor, that crazy "look at what I can do" spirit that is cetainly missing from most standard classrooms. I am looking forward to reading their written assignments and seeing the results of the turn class took today. Just maybe Mayan culture and the Spanish language can be learned on a flying horse...

We plan on holding our next virtual worlds lunch on Thursday, April 24th, in room 209 of the IST Building. The last couple of gatherings have led to a wide variety of discussions around technology, policy, and education in not only virtual worlds, but also gaming in general.

On the 24th, I'd like to take some time to demo a virtual world specifically dedicated to education and training called ProtoSphere. You can learn more about it by visiting the Proton Media website.

We look forward to seeing you on the 24th!

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is a online, open access academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is a transdisciplinary journal that engages a wide spectrum of scholarship and welcomes contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that intersect virtual worlds research.

We would like to take this opportunity to invite collaborators, reviewers and contributors to participate in the development of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. We are thrilled to announce our first open call for papers. We will accept essays, papers, original research, interactive online exhibits with accompanying detailed descriptions, and other forms of scholarship on a wide range of topics on an on-going basis.

A week ago, Spanish language students teleported from the now familiar Hacienda Segunda Vida to the Al Andalus Caliphate Project, a sim that covers two islands and re-creates the largest historical site in Andalucía, Spain, the Alhambra. Basically, the Alhambra was the palace and governmental center of Islamic power during the years of the conquest of Spain, from about 711A.D. to 1492. The actual buildings are in Granada and command a large hilltop with gardens and intricately carved buildings with fountains, receiving halls and hundreds of rooms.

The Al Andalus sim, is a magnificent example of Second Life's ability to provide a setting, an atmosphere and a spirit of place. As I led students on a guided tour of the major parts of the Alhambra, I was struck by the authentic feel of the surroundings. Of course, there is no such thing as an exact copy of the original, but this sim is certainly faithful to the design of the Alhambra in many ways.

To get ready to visit, students visited the web page for the Alhambra in Spain and learned what it looks like and what the buildings represent. I also connected the Alhambra to the students' own experiences by noting that our American author, Washington Irving, spent some time living there when the Alhambra was in disrepair, and wrote a book of stories about his experiences called Tales of the Alhambra.

While exploring the buildings, the students visited a Mezquita, or mosque. They were instructed to take off their shoes before entering and the women put on veils, (which were conveniently located in a basket by the door), to show respect. The students were subdued and respectful during their visit and came to a better understanding of the place of Islamic culture within the Spanish tradition.

I teach in the School of Humanities and this type of experience is exactly what we want our students to have. But was it real? That depends on your definition of real. Perhaps to participate in Second Life, you must choose to "willingly suspend your disbelief," as Samuel Taylor Coleridge described one's approach to fiction. Having gone through that process of agreeing not to disbelieve, then we, at least for the time, believe. In exchange for our believing, we find ourselves participating in an internal, emotional way to the stimuli around us. What I am saying is that, though the Alhambra sim is not technically real, it does have an emotionally real aspect, and we give our permission for that to happen.

On our Spanish Chapter test a few days later, I included a page-long reading on the Alhambra in Spanish and followed with a series of questions on the reading. Approximately 98% of the class read the passage and answered every question correctly. In Second Language pedagogy, we call this kind of series of activities related to a lesson, "scaffolding." Nesting activities together provides a firm scaffold to support students when they risk reading, writing, or speaking a language. Second Life has an important place in that scaffold for student learning.

Thank you to everyone who made it to our second brown bag lunch this past Wednesday in the IST Building. We're exploring a new location for April's meeting and will post the information once it is finalized.

We covered a lot of topics on Wednesday, including:

• Are educators sucking the fun out of games when we try and create game-based learning experiences?
• Is it feasible to create a multi-disciplinary team of faculty at PSU to examine virtual worlds and work towards funded research opportunities to run experimental research projects?
• How can PSU provide physical infrastructure for faculty members who would like to use, for example, Second Life, Sim City, World of Warcraft, and other gaming software in Penn State lab environments?
• Creating a system where faculty work with designers to create lesson plans or modules around an existing game

I hope everyone came away with some new things to think about and new ideas to experiment in the classroom or in a research setting. I look forward to continuing the discussion next month!

Just a quick reminder, we'll be having our second brown bag lunch this Wednesday in room 209, IST Building, 11:30-1. Late comers welcome.

I am amazed that our Teaching Spanish in Second Life group now has 51 members. We have been meeting monthly for five months now. As I am preparing the agenda for our meeting next Tuesday, I have been reflecting on the way that Second Life has opened up these possibilities for collaboration. With voice chat, we are able to speak with each other about language learning, literally from all over the world. Last month we had members from Mexico, Germany, Italy and the U.S. all online together as we toured the facilities of the Glendale Community College (Phoenix, Arizona) Spanish program. Calisto Encinal has built a beautiful interactive building for Spanish instruction. He even has a working bathroom, for those necessary moments. Oh no, Hacienda Segunda Vida doesn't have a bathroom...
Our agenda includes: getting our students together with native speakers for voice chat; sharing our office hours with all our students so that they can visit other faculty; sharing techniques and inventory. For example, Calisto gave us all a device that sends the students up into the sky for small group work. They stay on their pods in the sky until the instructor brings them down. They seriously look like they are sitting on pegs in purple cereal bowls. They can see other groups in the distance, but can't hear them. It is a great device when you have a whole class working on a project in small groups. One fact of working internationally is the clock. We generally have our meetings at 8:00 pm EST, but realized last time that our members from Germany and Italy were up in the middle of the night to attend. This month we are meeting at 8:00 am EDT, to accommodate their schedules.
I am also looking forward to the SL LAnguage '08 conference on May 23rd on EduNation. I went last year and heard speakers from many countries talk about the challenges and opportunities of teaching in SL. I had a proposal accepted, so this year I will be speaking on "Coordinating the Physical Classroom and Teaching from My Virtual Hot Tub: Hybrid Spanish Classes in Practice." The conference will run for twenty-four hours and each presenter will speak two times. More on that as I see the schedule.
All the best from the Hacienda,
Flora

Yesterday, I made a presentation on Second Life pedagogy at the Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies Conference in Baltimore. As I was preparing my materials for the conference, I discussed learning Spanish in Second Life with one of my students, whom I'll call Tory. Tory has really enjoyed the experience of learning Spanish in Second Life over the last two semesters. What she finds most exciting, is the active part of the learning process. She says that she is learning Spanish and actively using it at the same time. It is true that we often want to teach students everything about a language (as if it were an object), and then they have little opportunity, especially outside of the classroom, to actually use it. Then Tory said something very interesting, "After all, we learned our first language actively. The best way to learn a second language is to be active in that language." Language pedagogy theorists have noted this for a long time, but I thought it was significant that Tory was able to see it from her point of view. Second Life does provide active learning, not just for Spanish, but for many disciplines. Think about it, did you learn to drive a car by reading a book, or because someone explained it to you? (I do have to say, however, that our second daughter swears she learned to parallel park by getting instructions over the phone from a friend...I never understood how that was possible, although she can parallel park better than I can.) Seriously, I think Tory is really on to something. This generation of college students, generally speaking, really responds to doing. Second Life makes available a rich, constantly changing, interactive, immersive environment for our students to experience.

Best wishes,
Flora