Fwd: [SLED] Just out! ... Learning in Immersive Worlds: a review ofgame based learning report
Evonne Heyning
~evonne @ AMO~
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kim FLINTOFF <kim...@iinet.net.au>
Date: Feb 16, 2007 5:38 PM
Subject: RE: [SLED] Just out! ... Learning in Immersive Worlds: a review ofgame based learning report
To: SL Educators <educ...@lists.secondlife.com>
HI Daniel, Fred, et al…
Some interesting distinctions you make...
Interestingly, (to me) my PhD research project is entitled "Drama Teacher as Games Master: developing digital games-based process drama as performance"
My goal is to take aspects of process drama, role-playing games and dramatic performance to develop a hybrid model for drama education.
Notwithstanding all the RL issues I'm facing trying to get institutional access to SL - it offers a platform that is not so clearly delineated that it over-emphasises one or other of the components.
I think our old pal Erving Goffman has many useful insights that can be applied to thinking about Second Life - Frame Analysis, Presentation of Self, Interaction Ritual, Behaviour in Public Places - are all touching on the issues we are referring to.
If we start exploring notions of identity in relation to SL we should be turning to Sherry Turkle's old book Life on the Screen, and perhaps Judith Butler's work on gender (as it is performed)... then onto Lyotard (parology), Bordieu (habitus and doxa).... and so it goes... SL accepts the frames of analysis and perceptions shift to suit....
I shift my framing of Second Life very often depending upon my purpose - I love that it can accommodate multiple interpretations..
It can serve as a game world - in fact, I'd say most of the non-academic reportage I've encountered seems to find users referring to "the game"
It can serve as a site for games activity - SL has many users who create RPG type environments and approach their engagement with SL via that frame.
It also serves as an alternative meeting place... a site for meditation and reflection... a social space... a private place... a stage... an auditorium... a picture window... a site for deviance... a site for conformity...
...any action or representation I make inworld has the potential of being simultaneously framed - repurposed - something I referred to in a paper as "simultaneous reversioning" (gotta love a good pretentious turn of phrase!!)
I think debating a definitive functional space for SL is ultimately going to wind back to a position that is based in far more relativism than many are comfortable with...
And what's more - the frames will also be layered - as more users become more comfortable with perceptual position shifts, the more we'll be reading about multiple simultaneous frames in operation... our students can see themselves in a classroom, as well as in a game, as well as in brave new world...
When they discover "alts" they'll start to multiply these perceptions yet again... they can encounter themselves inworld with conflicting or complimentary world views... they can be compliant and rebellious... they can actively demonstrate the partiality of existence... they can live through ambiguity and uncertainty... and they can retreat to the familiar to avoid such complications... or to create even more layers of purpose...
The fact that Second Life defies ready categorisation - perhaps there needs to be a MUVE taxonomy akin to the "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge" - will allow multi-, cross- and inter-disciplinary approaches that have very blurry edges... fuzzy liminality if you will. It will also mean that many will veer away from it because it complicates their perceptions...
...however as Fred has stated, the 3D MUVE is not all there is to games and games-based learning - although being a SL list it could reasonably be expected that people will take as read "digital"... I also use MOO and other non-3D spaces... immersion is more than a visual metaphor... I suspect immersion is more closely related to "engagement", which is so often misconstrued as "fun"....
The world of imagined experience is the world of my real-life classrooms - as a drama teacher I regular draw upon thin air and imagination as the basis for my teaching and learning... I work towards an ideal I call "generative play" - playful engagement in a fictional environment where there is an expectation of contextually relevant meaning-making that is both personal and shared but is not predicated by predetermined nor prescribed content… I'm hoping that Second Life will be yet another avenue for that ideal to be realised…
For the time being, Second Life has the potential to be many things to many people and it can easily find itself included or excluded from many pursuits – academic or otherwise… in the academic realm we often state our paradigm at the outset and then never revisit it throughout our investigations… constant restatement can be useful in the bigger picture – but often we are working within frames that we take for granted because of the faculty or discipline we are involved with … hardly any wonder then, why so many find the postmodern condition unpalatable… it just gets too hard… or can be seen as a reminder of the basic human functions of Deletion/Detail – Scope/Generalisation – Connections/Distortion that we use to make meaning… we have the capacity, if not the will, to be very precise with our linguistic patterning - and we can also find revelry in the constant ebb and flow of unstated paradigmatic shifts…
Vive la différance!!!
Kim Flintoff B.A., Grad. Dip. Ed., M.Ed.
PhD Candidate
QUT Creative Industries: Performance Studies
Sessional Lecturer/Tutor
ECU School of Education and Arts: Contemporary Performance / Drama Education
-----Original Message-----
From: educator...@lists.secondlife.com
[mailto:educator...@lists.secondlife.com] On Behalf Of Daniel Livingstone
Sent: Saturday, 17 February 2007 12:59 AM
To: SL Educators
Subject: Re: [SLED] Just out! ... Learning in Immersive Worlds: a review ofgame
based learning report
Quite so...
In terms of role-play, the situation might not ask you to be someone else,
but might ask you to imaging yourself in a particular situation - as is the
case in the study I was thinking of (a law student having to imagine themselves
as a practitioner in a fictional small town). Meanwhile, when Im in Second Life,
I dont consider myself involved in role-play - though I know that many
people do.
The report is subtitled "A review of game-based learning" by which it means
digital game based learning. Which brings to mind another question... is using
Second Life in education "game-based learning"? I don't personally think so...
but it really depends on your definition!
daniel
On 16/02/07, Bill Freese <ie...@montana.edu > wrote:
> Daniel,
> Why not, indeed? One can easily imagine an exercise in which students
> mentally immerse themselves into an imaginary world by closing their
> eyes and constructing together a mental picture of that world. Much
> of what we see in Second Life is drawn from places imagined before
> the computer was even dreamed of. As for "role play" a number of us
> have chosen in Second Life to play ourselves. It is very easy to
> picture a technologically based immersive situation in which no
> actual role playing is taking place beyond the role playing that all
> of us do in Real Life. If a discussion of immersive worlds is to be
> restricted to three dimensional virtual environments, supported by
> computers, in which participants adopt roles other than their own
> lives, it would be best to state that definition clearly up front,
> because many other possibilities exist. If such a definition has not
> been stated, I don't think it can be assumed.
> Bill Freese / Bill Friis
>
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~inKenzo~ Evonne Heyning
AMO Studio New Media Los Angeles
skype: amoration
www.amoration.org
emails: evo...@amoration.org has been less stable, evo...@gmail.com or ink...@gmail.com are reliable. xox
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