What do you want from educational virtual worlds?
As I've posted before, virtual worlds for kids are here and more are on the way. Many are meant to be places where kids can have fun, hang out and not worry about "learning stuff" (even though I'd argue that there is still much to learn in these spaces.) While that's all well and good, I can't help but think about the potential for virtual worlds designed to be used by educators to facilitate learning. For many, however, virtual worlds + education = boring wasteware kids will never want to explore.
I disagree. I've spent the better part of the last ten years creating books and graphic novels that engage young learners while sneaking in a little learning while they weren't looking. I'd like to do the same with virtual worlds. If I were creating an educational virtual world for K-8 learners, I would make sure it had:
- an engaging storyline that hooked players in from the first screen. Story is everything! If the world doesn't have an overarching storyline that pulls students the way a good novel does, then the world is dead already. (okay, that's the end of my pitch for the need for quality writers in vws.)
- allow players to join up in smaller groups of 4 or 5, to work together - we do this with in-class activities and many mmos are based on the 5 person party hierarchy, so there's no reason why it won't work in an edu vw
- challenges and activities that not only tap into higher level thinking, problem solving and reasoning but also affect the virtual world the students are playing in. If they use their knowledge of gears and pullies to irrigate the farmers' crops, then those crops should be blooming the next time students log in
- the ability to work with students from other schools on activities - think Flat Classroom the mmo
- a blog or journal element that allows students' work/findings to be posted outside of the game world - on the school website or class blog
I can think of much more. But for now, I want to turn this question over to you:
What features/content/whatever do you want to see in your ideal educational virtual world?
Post your ideas and suggestions below and let's see what we can come up with together!
I disagree. I've spent the better part of the last ten years creating books and graphic novels that engage young learners while sneaking in a little learning while they weren't looking. I'd like to do the same with virtual worlds. If I were creating an educational virtual world for K-8 learners, I would make sure it had:
- an engaging storyline that hooked players in from the first screen. Story is everything! If the world doesn't have an overarching storyline that pulls students the way a good novel does, then the world is dead already. (okay, that's the end of my pitch for the need for quality writers in vws.)
- allow players to join up in smaller groups of 4 or 5, to work together - we do this with in-class activities and many mmos are based on the 5 person party hierarchy, so there's no reason why it won't work in an edu vw
- challenges and activities that not only tap into higher level thinking, problem solving and reasoning but also affect the virtual world the students are playing in. If they use their knowledge of gears and pullies to irrigate the farmers' crops, then those crops should be blooming the next time students log in
- the ability to work with students from other schools on activities - think Flat Classroom the mmo
- a blog or journal element that allows students' work/findings to be posted outside of the game world - on the school website or class blog
I can think of much more. But for now, I want to turn this question over to you:
What features/content/whatever do you want to see in your ideal educational virtual world?
Post your ideas and suggestions below and let's see what we can come up with together!
Tags: educational, virtualworlds, wishlist
7 Comments
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Comment by Trevor Meister / Lehnerd Euler on April 30, 2008 at 12:51am - I totally agree with your take on how to make Virtual Worlds engaging learning spaces. I have been working on the space...and am now transitioning in to the hard part. My goal is I think very similar to yours, create a place with a story line that engages, but requires some "work" to root out some of the story.. It would be ideal if the "work" addressed important learning outcomes, or higher level thinking skills in a way that does not seem artificial. I really like the example of irrigating the farmers field. Just in the short time I have been building I have actually run into many situations where I had to use coordinate geometry formulas to properly place objects, or trigonometry/pythagorean theorem to build a mathematically correct object ie an equilateral triangle. Trying to build the five regular solids, (other than the tetra hedron and cube - which are basic prims) taught me more about solid geometry than I learned in any mathematics course ever. It would be a shame not to provide students with that same opportunity for discovery. I look forward to you dropping by sometime to take a look. If you have any ideas for an engaging story line for the space, I will do what ever I can within range of my abilities to try to create a supporting environment.
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Comment by Liam ODonnell on April 30, 2008 at 7:52am - Trevor, never thought that actually building the world itself would be a great way to teach mathematic concepts. Instead of presenting a fully formed world, it'd be great to challenge students to finish the environment by building structures, roads, etc. Not only would students be putting on the "epistemic frames" that David Williamson Shaffer talks about in his book How Computer Games Help Children Learn, but they would also have a fantastic sense of ownership and investment to the world itself. I'm sure this investment would prove to be a solid foundation for other forms of learning in the world.
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Comment by Troy McConaghy on April 30, 2008 at 10:52am
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What do I want from educational virtual worlds?
I want a Dynabook (in the Alan Kay sense), or perhaps A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (in the Neal Stephenson sense). kthx
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Comment by Trevor Meister / Lehnerd Euler on April 30, 2008 at 11:23am
- I wonder how close curriculum embedded educational VW spaces built around Croquet (with its smalltalk/Squeak base) and slightly more powerful OLPC devices to interact with them would approach the Dynabook concept. (I haven't read The Diamond Age...but am looking forward to doing so..)
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- Alan Kay was/is involved with both Croquet and the OLPC, but the true Dynabook doesn't exist yet.
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Comment by Liam ODonnell on April 30, 2008 at 4:11pm
- Troy, you sent me scrambling to google for for Dynabook and Alan Kay - fascinating stuff! Thanks for adding to my knowledge. I'd also love to see a Young Lady's Primer (perhaps with a more equitable name) in the hands of every learner. One of my favourite elements of that tech was the fact that there were live actors (ractors) portraying the characters that Nell met in her education. It got me thinking that it'd be great to a vw scenario where students could create their own learning quests for their fellow students and then take on the role of npcs in the quest - in a way becoming ractors themselves. Maybe the primer isn't so far away after all.
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Comment by Liam ODonnell on April 30, 2008 at 4:13pm
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To save others from googling, here's some links on Dynabook and Alan Kay:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook
And the Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age
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