Jess’ E-Learning Blog

Okay, so this is completely unrelated to my e-learning subject… but I just had to mention it. To anyone who has ever experienced Hello Kitty overload, go visit this poor, poor husband’s Hello Kitty Hell. It’s so unbelievably wrong that it’s amusing. The Hello Kitty Paper Shredder is my favourite, laughed for ten minutes

Despite the couple of negative aspects to SL that I mentioned last time, I do think have a few positive points about what I have experienced so far.

Firstly, the prompt box in the top left corner is helpful (even though it takes awhile for the image to download through my connection). I really like it when the prompt disappears after you have completed the action because it is a smoother interaction. Instead of me having to stop, find my mouse, move to the next slide and then continue again, i can just keep walking while I read the new slide.

Secondly, I think that it is very good that I have to move around on the islands to complete the tasks in the tutorials. This means that I have practice at working the controls and understanding how my avatar moves on the island, which I desperately need - I think I’m used to the joystick on my brother’s xbox and the arrows on my computer do not provide the same flexibility of movement. 

Third, I think that the Communication island has been set up in an interesting way. The learning isn’t merely a ’do this, do that’ manual to communicating, but actually has a plot line (fulfil the prophecy by stopping the island from erupting). Also, the learning is done through practical activities, where you have to demonstrate use of the skill before you complete the task, which is great because you know that you know how to do the tasks. 

I’m just going through the orientation to Second Life, which I’m planning to evaluate in terms of its e-learning experience. Flying is interesting on my laptop; the page up and page down buttons control vertical movement. I have to hold down the Fn button to access my page up and down buttons. The problem occurs when I hold down the Fn button and then the up or down arrows … and wonder why my screen is suddenly really bright or really dark!!! Because the page up and down buttons aren’t on the up or down arrow buttons (where I think it would make more sense) - the screen brightness is! ^_^

Another negative aspect I am noticing is that my download speed doesn’t seem to be fast enough. My visual is coming in images, rather than a flow of movement, which made it hard for me to control my flying and driving in the movement tutorial.

Nope, my real life officially is not busy enough, so I’m joining Second Life to complicate my life to a satisfactory level ^_^ Okay, I’m really joining Second Life as a part of my E-Learning assignment. I’m not sure if I’ll stay or regularly visit Second Life after my assignment is complete - it depends on how hooked I get (too much online activity is baaaaaaaad and I might have to resort to cold turkey in order to ‘cure’ myself).

So far, I’ve only completed the preliminary registration for Second Life. I’m waiting to download the software until I have free downloads tonight - my brother and I are reaching our limit early this month *blushes*.

But, while I wait, just a quick note on the registration. They ask a few personal questions which need to answered in order for you to join. Questions like full name, date of birth and country of birth. I understand that the date of birth is required to prevent people over 17 from accessing the teen area of Second Life. I fully agree with that as a safety precaution, but I’m not very happy with providing personal details on the Internet. Call me neurotic, but I have a thing for protecting my real identity and keeping it at least slightly separate from my avatars. I don’t feel comfortable having my details on the Internet, ready to be hacked and carted away. That’s just me.

I just finished a learning preference questionnaire called VARK, which stands for the four different types of learning measured: Visual, Aural, Read/Write and Kinaesthetic. The questionnaire said I had a preference for aural, with a mark of 8, with visual and read/write at 6 and kinaesthetic at 5. I had done something similar to this at the beginning of last year and I was very visual, and my aural was low, so I was surprised by the results this time. I guess it goes to show that preferences change as we are exposed to more and different types of learning.

I decided that I’ll base assignment three on Second Life, mainly because I do not know much about virtual worlds or online gaming as a tool for learning and because I think that it could be a really interesting way of structuring learning. So, in preparation for joining Second Life, I was reading the FAQ page when I found two points that really formed the crux of why I was interested in Second Life: creativity and ownership.

I think that both of these factors are important in facilitating motivation and interest in online activities. A problem with e-learning that I have experienced is that there is so little ‘real’ interaction which demotivates me.

But Second Life has the opportunity for learners to have so much control over their environment, actions and learning. Individuals can create their own avatars, but also create their own environments and can direct their own experiences. Individuals can also own their own plot of cyber-space (for a fee) and can create their own environments. Individuals in Second Life are greatly empowered. It is this empowerment which interests me and which I believe can motivate individuals to learn.

 An interesting point brought up by Ryan Watkins is that learners need to have ‘e-learning readiness’ if e-learning is to be successful. He makes the point that learning at school is primarily low-tech and highly face-to-face, making the transition to high-tech and low face-to-face in e-learning difficult, which does make sense.

However, the this is balanced by what school students do outside of the classroom. Last month on the train to uni, I heard a couple of school kids - I’d estimate year 8 - talking about the best way to build a computer, adding such-and-such graphics card, hooking this up with that, buying memory cards from this shop, etc, etc. Add this to the startling amount of ten year olds I know who know more about the Internet than I do, and I don’t think that there is a problem with the working knowledge of school students in regards to high-tech or low face-to-face tools.

I think that if there was a problem in acclimatising school students to e-learning, it would be actually accepting and understanding the ways in which learning can be embedded into the technologies that they already know. For me in my e-learning subject, the largest hurdle has been understanding how tools I already know or use can be used in new and different ways. It has been difficult to open my mind to the vast amount of possibilitieswhich technology can give. If there is a problem introducing e-learning to school students, I think that it would be breaking the moulds by which they define learning and the tools by which it can be done. 

I was just reading a post by Suemin about the negative aspects of virtual worlds and left the following comment :) 

“I agree with you about recruitment, how can you be sure that the applicant hasn’t hired someone to act as them in the interview? An interviewee always has to act a bit when in an interview, but the scope for ‘acting’ is so much larger in a virtual world. And what happens if a brother or sister hijacks your avatar and runs rampant: The actions of your brother or sister are going to be attributed to you.

I have to disagree with you, however, about the high cost. Sean mentioned that video conferencing is actually more expensive than buying and maintaining a place in a virtual world, like Second Life. And while training and upgrading soft/hardware costs are definently necessary while operating a virtual world, they are also necessary for things like videoconferencing. Same thing for the OH&S; if you’re in front of a computer all day, does it matter if you’re typing a report or talking to your boss in a virtual world?”

^_^ VICTORIA ^_^

In answer to your interest in the group assignment about our ‘blogging for learning’ companies all being IT companies… some IT companies don’t like it when their employees blog. According to Zawodny, an employee at Google was actually fired in 2005 - mere weeks after he was employed - because he was blogging about his work at the organisation.

Also, there are companies who are not in IT who use blogging as well. For instance, General Motors have blogs for each area of their products. While this is a purely corporate blog and therefore has less learning capability for the organisation, it is an excellent PR tool and can be applied as a learning tool for customers.

However, I think that in general, an IT company would be more open to using e-learning tools because they would have a greater understanding of and appreciation for technology.

There was a guest lecturer at my last e-learning class, Sean Fitzgerald, who discussed the use of virtual worlds as learning tools, particularly the virtual world of Second Life. Once I knew what Second Life was and saw some of the ways in which learning was occuring in Second Life, I realised something … … I had blogged about the possibility of this a few weeks ago!!! Okay, so Maple Story is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, from memory…) not virtual world, but the concept of learning online in an interactive, social manner is the same.

Learning in Second Life is more advanced than I expected it to be. While I expected there to be social aspects to the learning, which there was, I did not expect the level of interactivity with the world itself. For instance, I did not expect to be able to view the creation and progression of a tsunami from under the water.