Well, what was bound to happen has happened! After spending 31 years living in the “real” world its expected that one would become bored with the day to day rigors of continuously drawing breath, blinking, brushing 32 cream colored teeth three times per day, using lips, a mouth, tongue and vocal chords to speak, and especially walking, which I’m sure I grew tired of after turning 17! So, with that said, disinterested and browbeaten from the doldrums of daily living, I’ve cast aside this material world and decided to live digitally in the frontier lands of virtual reality!
In this short posting (LOL,
you’ll get this joke later, no pun intended!) I intend to discuss my experience
as a participant in a virtual world along with some of the affordances and
challenges highlighted in the IDT1314 discussion we had in Small Worlds last
week. I will also share my thoughts on the integration of virtual world
activities into curriculum and the potential for virtual worlds to increase
motivation and the quality of student created content.
Personally, I had a
blast designing my avatar and I feel like there were plenty of options when it
came to modifying the contours of his (or should I be saying my?) face, eyes,
lips, nose, and head shape along with choosing different tones of skin,
thickness of facial hair, glasses, and the overall ethos of my visage. Prior to
our tutorial, I wandered around the virtual world, taking a tour of my house,
searching for other people, having a small chat with Angelos, and completing a
few of the Small Worlds missions to earn a little coin and see whether or not
second life gaming is an activity I’d like to incorporate into my weekly
schedule. Given the tone of my introduction (boredom), I also hoped to discover
whether existence in second life would differ from the lifestyle, activities
and routines I cycle through in the here and now. After spending a whopping
whole hour in a simulated space, I’ve tentatively concluded that as a person
with too many hobbies already, I doubt I could find the time or sacrifice
another hobby to pursue a second existence in a non scripted, reality based
virtual world, especially since I love video games and haven’t made time in the
last ten years to play any computer, portable or console based systems that
have a plethora of games a bit more entertaining and engaging than Small Worlds
which I guess, technically is not a game. Gee that was a long sentence…I shall
need to find a way of breaking it up.
Anyhow, as characteristic
of my long-winded nature, I digress…
As much as I enjoyed the
experience of meeting people I’m familiar with in a virtual setting, I did find
the unbounded nature of our meeting (which are usually driven by a set of
publicly aired objectives) and the rampant, uncontrollable conversation a bit
nerve wrecking! I actually found it harder to focus when the chat box was
turned on, which I thought was a bit awkward since I assumed communication
would be aided by the use of this feature. Alternatively, I would also say that
like any system, whether it is figuring out how best to use a new smart phone or
starting an exercise regime, it takes some time to trouble shoot, navigate and
build endurance. I’m sure with time and practice some of the quirks that
bothered Jane and I would become less tenacious and more enjoyable. I also
quickly realized that it would be quite a challenge to catch and retain
everyone’s attention due to the setting of our meeting. The physical features
of each avatar, appearances of random avatar strangers who were not even in our
Ma programme, limitless availability of root beer, coffee, cake, crisps, a
large rear garden with a campfire and a spacious living room with a You Tube TV
all served as huge distractions for Jane and I, and at times even Brian got off
task either in conversation or movement.
Again, I believe
these are all introductory challenges that will be overcome as users become
more accustomed to what eventually will become a familiar space where they
might be expected to follow the rules and procedures that govern what could be
used as a task oriented virtual space for communication and language
learning. Overall, I think Small Worlds
is a wonderful virtual space with great instructional potential and despite the
few criticisms aired on the DTLT forum; I’m convinced that the strengths of
most second life platforms outweigh a majority of the weaknesses.
Now, let us move on to
a brief discussion of the affordances provided by virtual worlds and the
positive limitations of asynchronous communication.
As so clearly presented by
Milton, the language classroom is not the idea environment for language
learning. (Milton and Meara, 1998) I tend to agree with this statement on the
grounds that there exists a mutual understanding that he means the language
classroom is not the idea environment for a students’ sole interaction with a
foreign language. As Milton goes on to discuss further, it takes hundreds, if
not thousands of hours to fully learn a new language and logistically, based on
timetables, course hours, university cost and profit per hour fuzzy math
formulas, along with students needing to balance their work load and other
reasons, its just not possible to spend hundreds of hours in one classroom
during two or three semesters. So of course, one of the wonderful affordances
of second life and virtual worlds is the extension, flexibility (in terms of
convenience and time) and variability (non scripted, uncontrollable interaction
that more accurately mirrors real world communication) of experiences that one
might have in and out of the language classroom.
One of the biggest
problems I and other language teachers encounter is not related to having too
much or too little time to work with students. I’m of the opinion that there is
always too much time in our language
classes. The big mooskhilla (Arabic for problem) is the students are not
presented with the opportunity to use the new language outside of the classroom.
I think its safe to say that the more time you spend in class, the more
the level of boredom and non-absorption increases so adding time is far from an
effective remedy for improving retention. If my students had the opportunity to
practice their English in a virtual world that catered to their interests and
values I think they might spend their time there effectively practicing
communicating in English and perhaps they might become noticeably motivated and
positive about learning.
As mentioned by Milton and numerous others, I agree
that there is a positive set of thoughts and emotions produced when people
think and speak about video games.
To gamers, these virtual spaces are filled with a range of entertaining,
attention grabbing activities. If more curricula, objectives and assessment
criteria were designed and presented in a format familiar to students, these
emotions, along with the zeal that accompanies playing video games, could be
transferred from the spaces reserved for activities associated with leisure,
recreation and entertainment and hopefully this transformation of how students
perceive learning would remove the negative stigma attached to learning within
the static spheres designated for formal education. (Milton
2013, p.3)
Surprisingly, one of
the affordances provided by digital worlds is presented in form of a problem.
Though I can’t say I reaped the benefit of enduring this occurrence during our
tutorial in Small Worlds, Milton introduced me to what I found to be a
perplexing, stress inducing experience as a native speaker in an English language
digital world. According to Milton and Rama, et al, the limitations of asynchronous communication have the
potential of benefiting struggling language learners by providing them more
time to decipher difficult input and construct intelligible output. Normally, delay in response is perceived
as a negative in conversation, whether f2f or not, but within the context of
gaming a higher focus is placed on the development of communicative competence.
I think the study of Emilio (the developing student of Spanish) serves as an
excellent example of communicative competence within a task based second life
simulation. By this study I was able to observe exactly how delays caused by
asynchronous communication were used to a learners advantage. Emilio’s reliance
on emoticons and idiomatic acronyms served as a stalling technique that
provided him more time to digest and decipher tricky input and develop a
comprehensible response. (Milton 2013, p2; Rama, et al., 2012) I believe a portion of the positive effects of real
time oral interaction in second life settings may be attributed to the familiarity
and more natural presentation of multiple environments. In my opinion this reduces
anxiety, induces disinhibition and has the potential to make the learning
experience more interesting and engaging for all participants.
As a way of concluding this
discussion, I thought it would be helpful for my own future reflection and
brainstorming of how to incorporate what I’ve learned though this module into
my teaching by trying to contextualize these arguments, ideas and reflections
to my daily experience as a teacher here in the United Arab Emirates. I browsed
a few resources related to social interactionist theory in relation to task
based competitive environments and held this tidbit as the most valuable and
applicable to my situation. Students need to feel that their utterances hold
meaning and see the effects of their communicative outreaches in the result of
action or a response that aligns to their objectives, desires and assumptions.
(Xin, 2012) To spur interest, create urgency and force communicative
competence, life or death scenarios are common to most task based video games
(sports, first person shooter, MMOG games and so on). I noticed that within both studies (Milton 2013, p.3; Rama, et al., 2012) a live or die approach to
language usage within virtual worlds and second life environments forcefully
required students to apply genuine effort to the digestion and extraction of
value from difficult input. Equal effort was necessary for the construction of comprehensible
output, even when a simple utterance, emoticon or idiomatic acronym was the
most students could manufacture. If I could find a way to incorporate game
based learning and the sense of survive or die urgency that accompanies these
simulations into the learning experiences students have inside and outside of
my classroom, I think this would be tremendously beneficial for
all parties involved.
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