Virtual Worlds and Education
From Skyrim to School
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| Lance |
My son Lance (12 year old) LOVES video games!
He spends hours (he would spend even more if I would let him) exploring interactive worlds like Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and building entire virtual worlds in games like Minecraft. The entire time that he is doing this he is interacting with his friends, and people around the world, via onscreen text or voice interaction. It is easy to think of this as just another kid playing video games.
What I realized the other day is that he is not just playing! He is learning from these virtual worlds and learning how to interact, in new ways, with people. In essence, xBox 360 is preparing my son (and thousands of others) to learn in 3D virtual environments. Perhaps it is time that education capitalizes on this?
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| Exploring a mountain range in Skyrim. Fully interactive and highly detailed. It would take hours for your character to walk from one side of this world to the other. In that time you would interact with people, environments, and geography. Think of the power of this type of immersive tool! Think of the simulations and observations that students could participate in. |
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| Map of Skyrim. Lance knows the geography, weather, and politics of this place like the back of his hand. He can even direct you to specific people's houses. What if students could explore the real world or historical sites in this way? |
A Google Search of Virtual Worlds and Education produced 9,070,000 results! This tells me that people are trying to figure out how to use virtual environments in education.
"Over 400 universities and 4,500 educators participate on the second life educators list." (Calongne, 2008)
Some benefits of Virtual Worlds in Education (Antonacci, DiBartolo, Fritch, McMullen, Murch-Shafer, 2008)
- "Virtual worlds’ persistence allows for continuing and growing social interactions, which can serve as a basis for collaborative education."
- "Virtual worlds give users the ability to carry out tasks that could be difficult in the real world due to constraints such as cost, scheduling or location."
- "Virtual worlds can adapt and grow to meet different user needs."
This quote really summarized the benefits for me:
"These students were so immersed in the learning experience that they did not realize they had accomplished the goals of several classes in a single term. Virtual environments are stimulating, creative landscapes. When virtual worlds are populated with the right mix of content and discovery, students remain long after class ends." (Calongne, 2008)
"These students were so immersed in the learning experience that they did not realize they had accomplished the goals of several classes in a single term. Virtual environments are stimulating, creative landscapes. When virtual worlds are populated with the right mix of content and discovery, students remain long after class ends." (Calongne, 2008)
Here is a little mental exercise for you to try:
In keeping with Calongne's suggestion (2008) let's think of the benefits first. Forget all the reasons that you think it will not work (many of these were shared during the Cloud Party discussion).
- Describe a Virtual World that would relate to your subject area. What would the world look like?
- How could the students benefit from interacting with this environment?
- How could the students benefit from interacting with each other in this environment?
- How could you structure activities to make sure students were focused while in environment (e.g., scavenger hunt, construct an object, explore and make observations, etc.)?
- What advantages could this platform hold for you?
A Virtual World MOOC (Best Practices)
David W. Deeds' Slide Share (a Slide Share site for a High School Teacher that actually used 3D environments with his class)
A Teacher's Guide to Using Virtual Worlds in Education (A Best Practices presentation and testimonial from a student)
Tapping virtual Worlds for Education: Futuristic Paths or Realistic Directions? (Case Study of one class that used virtual environments)
A taxonomy of Virtual Worlds Usage in Education (Really good scholarly article summarizing and synthesizing 90 current articles)
Perhaps some day, if we capitalize on this rich new tool, class will happen while sitting on a virtual version of Saturn's Rings. Perhaps students will interview a virtual Napoleon while walking across the battlefield at Waterloo ("So Napolean where do you think things went wrong?"). Perhaps students will interact with the avatar of people from all over the world learning from them and their interests ("Why are you moving like that Vanity Fair?"). Perhaps we will not be limited in the number of Field Trips we can take each year because we could take a Virtual Field Trip everyday!
Lance is ready to experience virtual worlds. Are schools ready to make this exploration educational?
Lance is ready to experience virtual worlds. Are schools ready to make this exploration educational?
The quote you share here about students learning and taking in so much, they don't even realize the amount of material they cover is huge. Forget about the students that "know how to play school" in the traditional sense; a virtual environment may just be the key to engage those students we have trouble getting to. It's adapting education to what students don't typically see as an educational arena. The potential to engage these "lost" learners is overwhelming.
ReplyDeleteThe problem now is that gaming and education are not two things that one would automatically think of as going hand in hand - but is that how it should be? Gaming inspires competitiveness and teamwork and these are things I think a virtual environment can offer in a new light to the education realm. Education is being redefined and no one has clear picture of what will work and what won't - I argue that to make an impact on our students we need to explore, fail, learn, and grow; a virtual world provides a safe environment for all of that to happen.
There is a whole body of research on gaming in education. That is fertile soil for another blog post some time. Connecting gaming and virtual worlds is a logical link and it capitalized on two promising practices. It also capitalizes on what the current generation of students are doing on a daily basis.
DeleteI like your points Christian. I look forward to being there as education explores, learns, and grows.
Or even an entire course. Coming up in our eLearning series: "Gamification, Virtual Worlds and Alternate Reality in the Classroom"
DeleteBefore our cloud party I honestly never would have thought have including virtual worlds into the classroom. After doing some reading and attending the cloud party I see how virtual worlds can be included in the classroom. There are several benefits to incorporating virtual world into education. The number one benefit is, I believe, is the engaging factor. Students love these types of environments. I see students all the time playing things like Minecraft. Including more virtual worlds into the classroom would definitely get students, especially those who may typically not enjoy school, excited and very engaged. The hard part is how to make that connection to the content. As educator it is our job to figure out an effective way to incorporate more virtual worlds (and technology in general) into our classrooms.
ReplyDeleteThe Quest Atlantis educational virtual world that we piloted at my elementary school as loved by students. The teachers thought that the curricular choices were rich and amazing in breadth and variety. Some examples: students had to make choices about developing and area and making choices that would impact fish and wildlife; in another students could "visit" ancient pueblo peoples of the Southwest and discover how the lived in a virtual setting. In all settings students interacted with geography, characters in the world, other avatars (from all over the world), museum displays, and were exposed to reading material, which they needed to read to accomplish purposeful tasks. If a writing assignment was required, a story character (played by a teacher) would coach the student to improve work before points could be earned. Kids were working very hard to level up, completing simulations with real-world value, and researching and writing, though it felt like gaming--almost all the twelve kids we asked to try it out (for several weeks) stuck with it. There were countless worlds and lessons. The kids we tested were up for trying whatever we let them. The only thing that was difficult was keeping up with the grading/checking of their work within the game, especially when it did not relate directly to curriculum.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Mark! Great resources, too. Thanks.
I would LOVE to take a look into Quest Atlantis! The examples you provided sound amazing and so I am interested in how these worlds were made. I'll have to do some more research on this one!
DeleteOkay- looks like Quest Atlantis has been renamed or upgraded to Atlantis Remixed- same concept (I'm assuming) and I have requested an account....so excited to start exploring. I'm already seeing a world I can use toward the end of the year!
DeleteIt is Atlantis Remixed now. We registered as teachers, and we were able to get into the curriculum pages. I'll see if my old password works to see if I can get onto the curriculum pages. Don't know if it's still free. Indiana University and Quest Atlantis asked us if we would pilot the program, so there was no charge. I didn't think that there would be a charge, even if we weren't piloting it.
DeleteIt has a really great social/ethical slant. Let me know what you think if you get a chance to try it out.
I have never once thought that virtual worlds or online gaming had much value...I think there are too many stereotypes and stories about people who lose themselves in a non-reality and are unable to function outside of it. However, Mark, your post, and the readings we've had this week have really begun turning my head in the other direction. It's easy, now, to see many benefits from a virtual world-- walking the land of foreign places, meeting new people and discovering history within your browser. I had even hoped, that when creating my own space on Cloud Party that I might be able to make the boyhood home of Paul Erdos (a mathematician), so students could engage with "him" and ask math questions- like a tutoring service! Really, the possibilities are endless as long as we have the patience and know-how to accomplish our ideas.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see if this part of technology will really "make it" into teaching. We have so many people who are reluctant to engage in eLearning with their students that virtual worlds seem improbable.
I think that it could catch on but I do think that there have to be advancements in the technology for it to really work for teachers who might or might not be tech savvy. I talked about some of the initial things that I think they could do to make it more friendly in my post but I really do see a future in this. I look at school funding and how our representatives are treating schools and see eLearning as the future. I’m not sure how it is going to turn out, but I believe that there will be a many ways that eLearning will take place. While I am not a huge fan yet of this kind of learning I do believe it has a future.
DeleteI too think that it would be great to incorporate this into our daily classroom to some degree. But I did have my Art/Photoshop Club try it this past Friday and they too struggled with this particular type. For several reasons, one being the mini laptops didn't support it very well at all and it worked very slow, if at all; two being that they are very unfamiliar with this specific virtual world, several of them became very curious though after I discussed about my past nights experience with our class in my first exploration of the cloud party. Definitely something that I think we as a club may explore and see if we can make a connection to our education here in OHLSD.
DeleteFull disclosure: I have never fully embraced the gaming aspect of education and have dismissed it as kids playing. However, after reading this post and articles, I am changing my tune. I realize that I am becoming the dinosaur and that I need to be more open minded to various types of learning. Mark makes some great points, that students are learning to build, work collaboratively, and interact in formats that are going to be a very large part of our future. Students that are working in these “games” are truly learning 21st century skills.
ReplyDeleteThe more that I look at the resources, and the more I let my guard down, the more I can see how productive this type of learning could be. My personal comfort level in building these worlds is low, but if I could locate and work with worlds that are in existence, the sky would be the limit. I could envision students being able to participate in Jean Valjean’s escape in Les Miserables. Students could walk the streets of Maycomb, Alabama with Jem and Scout Finch. Students could enter the realm of The Hunger Games. I am on board. Where do I sign up?
Great ideas mr Hageman. If only you thought of those when we taught together. The only issue would be constructing those worlds- we would ahve to spend a lot of time doing that in the summer or planning. But it would be pretty cool to host student discussions. I would like to know how to make the rooms a little more safe from some of the scary elements of the online 2nd life community... so the big worry is keeping it professional and monitoring it. But i would love for students to explore the world we would create.
DeleteCool that you are coming on board - I think it is such a new concept, you are not alone in the population that will question and at first be uncomfortable with this type of learning.
DeleteI'd like to think that a program will be developed that this type of virtual learning will have templates and give you a starting point for your lesson. There's no way that teachers would have the time to learn and build all the virtual world settings that it would take to have impactful teaching in world. Think about this, what if you somehow had a virtual world linked to your LMS? So when your students are in Schoology or Moodle, they have a link to their virtual world class right there. Pretty cool I think!
Great job presenting the information. It is very interesting and very unique. To create a world where kids could explore and be motivated to participate in the setting of a story would be pretty cool. Maybe my AP Us History could have a meeting in the Constitutional Hall in Philadelphia, or at the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis and sit around the table discussing options. The possible are cool...
ReplyDeleteI thought that our exercise this week was one of the most interesting that that I have done. It really made me step out of my comfort zone because I have always looked negatively on these types of places. My brother was big into this when he was in high school and I always thought it was very weird. While I still have my apprehensions about it because I also believe that it limits human interaction in an extreme way. While I know that all technology does this I think these world do it in a more extreme way.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I do think there is merit in the idea that you can reach students using virtual worlds. I also think there is merit in using something like this to reach students who are at risk and who struggle in the “typical” classroom. However, I think there are some genuine problems with this when I look at this kind of a world through the special education lens. The first is the reading problem this kind of program poses. When I was in the room, I felt very overwhelmed with all the things that were going on and then trying to type and read everything. Many of my students would have major problems with reading all of the discussion threads that were going on. The other things is that I know I was more focused on flying than sitting there. I feel like students would struggle with staying focused and I did not really see a way to monitor this other than the “away” feature which I feel like they would find a way around. I think that if they were to incorporate voice and video that it could solve some of these problems. I know that normally I am all on board but on this one I am more hesitant because I look at my students and don’t see them being successful in this type of environment. I like the idea of what it could be but feel things need to be put into place in order for this to be successful.
Very Nice Job Mark! I love that you were able to relate this to your home life, my son just turned 7 and both he and my almost 4 year old are very much interested in technology and if we can make their learning connect with that in any way … they are excited! I am unsure of how he learned Minecraft so well without me even knowing how to start but think that he would probably like this kind of setting as well. Knowing how off task I was able to become that night when we were exploring definitely lead me to picture what it would be like for my students when they were introduced to it. As with all things though, once that initial exploring and learning was completed...being on task would be a lot easier and I would be less interested in seeing what all I could make my avatar do and instead complete certain tasks or create a 3D world for myself.
ReplyDeleteI struggle with making a connection as well as many of my colleagues have expressed but do think that there is a place for it somewhere and believe that it would hit home for many of our students that like to explore, learn and communicate with others this way. As I do agree that some specific students would struggle with this set up, and some would be completely off task - there would be a great amount that would really be excited and engaged and as Mark stated, before they know it...learning.