Technology & Learning - April 2008 - (Page 16)

EMERGING TECH The Next Dimension Searching for education application in the virtual world. We’re only beginning to understand the benefits to student learning when they’re introduced to virtual worlds. The earliest baby boomer remembers donning funny glasses to watch 3-D movies in the ’50s or visiting Disneyland to see a holographically generated Abraham Lincoln deliver his Gettysburg Address. Computer games are equally familiar to us. Who hasn’t played the virtual version of solitaire? And no doubt you’ve dabbled with simulations from Oregon Trail to SimCity, and the avant-garde is already exploring EVE Online and Second Life. What’s new is the merging of these technologies to make possible new kinds of collaboration—even in education. “Interesting things are happening now,” says Michael Roberts, a researcher at Palo Alto Research Center. “We’re just seeing the merging of the Web 2.0 social networks with virtual environments. People are actually building things together in a social sense.” Before, people playing online 16 | www.techlearning.com games would enter and experience environments constructed by specialists. “Now,” says Roberts, “people are building the environments themselves. Lots of people are present and constructing, placing objects, moving things around, building buildings.” It is, as they say, a whole new ballgame. Business has already entered this new environment. For example, IBM has a sales center in Second Life and Toyota markets heavily in virtual worlds frequented by young people. Sun Microsystems is building its own collaborative world in which employees can do all the same things they might do in the office, from working together on projects to chatting at the water cooler. “The cost is very high right now, even with the so-called free ones,” says Roberts. “If you want to produce the assets and code to run these things, it is very expensive. But I think we’ll see an expansion of free or low-cost environments, and the cost of creating your own will come down with time.” And as the cost comes down, the chances grow that virtual worlds will work in education. NASA, in fact, announced plans recently to create a virtual world for students that would enable them to do all sorts of things from tinkering with reactions in living cells to practicing operating and repairing expensive equipment to experiencing microgravity. PARC’s Roberts sees all sorts of educational applications. Elementary school students might examine or create objects in playful settings. Middle and high school students might create all sorts of examples of concepts in physics and math. Collaborative virtual worlds afford students the opportunity to look inside things and see how they work. “It’s a counterpoint to the consumer culture that just wants to sell you a new thing,” Roberts says. “You buy it and it does what it does, and there is no way to repurpose it. Part of our job is to create things that do come apart and are programmable in some way. For example, you could never take apart a nanotechnology device in a real world, but you could in a virtual world.” —By Michael Simkins Michael Simkins is co-director of the Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership at Santa Cruz County Office of Education. http://www.techlearning.com

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Technology & Learning - April 2008 Contents New @ techlearning.com Editor's Desk News and Trends Digital Age Assessment: Part 2 Anytime, Anywhere Learning Caught on Video Cover Story: Plan and Deliver Cutting Edge in Carolina Product Guide Reviews Best of the Blogs What's New LOY Profile Series

Technology & Learning - April 2008

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