The battle for the metaverse is on with most of the media buzz focused on Meta (a k a Facebook) and their plans to engage us all in their virtual market and meeting place. Already there are companies setting up virtual hubs and universities are also creating their virtual reality campuses which they hope will soon be full of student avatars. Reading about this in an article in Campus Technology, 10 Institutions Opening 'Metaversity' Campuses, took me back about 14 years to the heady days of Second Life and I wonder what we have learnt since then. These virtual campuses are built using EngageVR where you can design your own spaces and make them more or less accessible to visitors and residents. The best way to interact in the metaverse is through VR visors but you can also interact using your computer, though not so immersively. Students and teachers can then meet as avatars in the virtual campus and interact with objects, graphics, diagrams etc with voice communication and the ability to explore different environments together.
The new metaversity at Stanford is described like this:
The metaversity courses will be synchronous, and students can attend whether they are learning on campus or remotely. Each student will receive a Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset for use during their course (courses can also be accessed via PC). Within the virtual learning environment, they will be able to engage with other students and their instructor in VR experiences such as delving into human anatomy, taking a time machine through history or studying astronomy on a spaceship.
Here's a video showing Stanford's virtual learning space using the EngageVR platform.
The screenshots on Engage's site seem almost indistinguishable from the views of business centres and campuses on Second Life all those years ago. Apart from the VR headsets and better graphics I wonder what's new. Most academic experiments in Second Life simply recreated virtual versions of reality with copies of their campus environment complete with lecture halls where avatars could show PowerPoint slides to an audience of student avatars seated in rows. The new VR spaces seem to be doing the same thing. In a virtual world where the laws of physics don't apply and you are free to create any space you can imagine, why do we keep building classrooms and auditoriums? Why is it so difficult to escape the stereotypes?
I really enjoyed exploring Second Life back then in the tech-optimist days of 2007. It was probably ahead of its time but it demanded high-end graphics for a smooth experience, so many users gave up when they realised that their devices simply couldn't cope. Second Life is still going and has a devoted band of users who have obviously enjoyed the experience. What was really interesting about it was you could develop your own fantastic spaces and choose whether they were open to all or restricted access. You could build realistic copies of well-known places or complete fantasy worlds. You could choose alternative identities and take part in very convincing simulations that would not be possible anywhere else. A whole virtual economy was developed with people willing to pay real money for virtual real estate. There was a vibrant cultural life with concerts, art exhibitions, sculptures and fashion shows. I enjoyed exploring new areas of the vast virtual world that was built up and did actually have useful encounters with people I would never have met otherwise. The openness gave enormous opportunities but sadly also threats as the trolls and spammers found their way into the new world. The new VR spaces are much more restricted and controlled but maybe the freedom and creativity of Second Life was its greatest attraction.
If VR is going to be relevant to education it has to contribute something new and offer possibilities that are hard to offer in any other environment. That means more than just looking at 3D models of cars or DNA strings that the publicity films tend to show. There are great examples of simulation applications in areas such as medicine and the opportunity to offer realistic roleplay situations for professional development. However, the need for visors and expensive software means it will probably be accessible only for wealthy institutions and for specific niches where VR can really prove its value. Focus on the really innovative and pedagogically valid uses of VR and skip the reproductions of campus buildings and auditoriums.
Most of us now spend a large part of our time engaged in video meetings with colleagues, students, family and friends and the web is overflowing with advice about how to make these meetings more effective, interactive and engaging. The weaknesses of online meetings have been exposed and discussed with privacy and security as major themes. Many people feel uncomfortable putting themselves on view to so many relative or complete strangers with the risk that someone finds it amusing to take screenshots that could be used later. In tools like Zoom, the meeting host has little or no control over how the participants view the session and there's a risk that some of them spend the meeting gazing at, say, a female student who they find attractive without her being able to stop such unwanted attention.
Some people decide therefore to keep their cameras switched off during online sessions. This may be to prevent unwanted attention or because they are ashamed of their chaotic home or because they don't feel confident or presentable enough to be visible in the meeting. This can be disconcerting for a teacher as in a recent Norwegian article (see Khrono - in Norwegian) where a university teacher wrote about the loneliness of teaching in Zoom to an invisible and generally silent group of students. They were willing to use the chat but did not want to be seen or heard.
At the same time, Facebook have been promoting a tool to help you create a relatively lifelike caricature avatar for your profile. This attracts many users who prefer not to use a real photo of themselves in social media and I wonder if it's time for the return of avatars in synchronous video meetings. About 12 years ago many of us were experimenting with meetings in the virtual world of Second Life. Back then it was still a bit unstable for those who lacked good graphics cards or bandwidth, but we were able to meet and discuss in interesting virtual environments (under the sea, in space, on a tropical island, you name it). It gave an added sense of place to the online meetings rather than the two-dimensional wall of talking heads we have in today's meetings. Second Life is still there and is used by all sorts of enthusiasts, including many educators, for roleplay, simulations and exhibitions. There are also numerous other virtual world tools offering customised environments for virtual exhibitions or conferences and the chance to wander around as an avatar, mingling and interacting with other visitors (see, for example, IMVU, Virtway)
Despite a barrage of hype, Second Life was probably ahead of its time back around 2008, but I always liked the spatial element. I still remember discussions sitting around a camp fire in a forest or listening to an evening outdoor piano concert in a small town by the sea with about 100 other avatars. According to one article a colleague of mine wrote back then, some students felt more comfortable communicating in the virtual world than in a regular video meeting because it was their avatar who was speaking. There are of course very good reasons for meetings where participants must show their faces, but I wonder if some discussions could benefit from a certain degree of anonymity.
Most learning takes place outside the classroom. Of course, the opportunity to meet, discuss and practice in a structured setting is extremely important but the real battle to understand and implement new knowledge takes place in informal settings: at home, in the library, discussing in a cafe or during a long walk or run in the park. But a relatively unexploited learning space is the area outside the classroom and the corridors linking the formal learning spaces.
These spaces in between are discussed in an article by Luke McCrone in Wonkhe, Learning in the spaces in between. Valuable interaction often takes places before and after a class between students and between students and teachers, but only if the space provides a comfortable environment for this. The furnishings can invite groups to sit and discuss, use their digital devices or even discuss with an absent colleague by video. Previously dead areas such as corridors can become collaborative spaces if there are comfortable seats, power sockets, tables etc.
Frankly, the availability of this sort of transitional space should be prioritised. It is a relatively low-cost intervention that could be the difference between student interaction and disconnectedness. Kitted out with comfortable furniture and other amenities at the fringe of a lecture theatre, it has proven transformational. A student clarifying misunderstandings with the lecturer, or a chance encounter between two friends reflecting on an exam are examples of some of the active learning behaviours I have observed.
There is no doubt great potential here but no mention is made in the article about digital spaces. In most universities the digital campus is the learning management system, divided into class or course silos, offering very little interaction between students from different courses to meet and discuss. The discussion forums are seldom attractive spaces for more informal discussions since students often feel that anything written there is likely to be observed and assessed. Where are the digital spaces in between? How can we create them? Can we set up bookable digital group rooms so that students can meet with full video, audio, chat and screen-sharing functionality. How about social spaces that can lead to meetings with students from other disciplines but without the risk of meeting spammers and trolls?
Way back in the heyday of Second Life there were universities experimenting with virtual campuses where such chance meetings and group work were possible. Those spaces were generally restricted with only password access. The technology wasn't quite mature enough then, nor were most users, but the next generation of virtual worlds and virtual meeting spaces could lead to a much more interactive and social virtual campus. McCrone's research will be interesting to follow, but we mustn't forget the digital spaces. The campus spaces are used by many students but the digital space is the only one that unites the whole university. We need to build it for the future.
If we are going to see a rise in online conferences in order to reduce the carbon footprint of educational conferences, we need to find ways of replicating the most positive features of the on-site conference. For most people the best part of a conference is the chance to make new contacts in the informal spaces of the conference: during coffee and lunch breaks, between sessions and during the social programme. Online platforms can already deliver the keynote lectures and we are learning how to run interactive workshops and seminars online using collaborative documents, breakout groups and so on. However the chance meetings in the corridor or at an informal reception are where the online meetings fall flat.
However, a colleague recently showed me an online meeting platform called Sococo that offers a way forward for online conferences. Sococo is aimed at the corporate market but the concept can certainly be developed for academic purposes, either by them or a completely different organisation. Have a look at the video below to get an idea of how this works. Basically you can design a virtual office with a lobby, group rooms, large meeting room and so on. The plan shows where each participant is and you can move to different rooms to talk with someone or have a small meeting. Or everyone can gather in the main hall for a large meeting or lecture. Everyone in a room can then have video and audio contact with everyone else as well as being able to screenshare and chat as in all other web meeting platforms. The difference is that you can invite someone to meet you in the lobby or in a smaller room for more informal contact, or even in a hall or lobby. You can even knock on the door to a room and ask to join the discussion in there.
I particularly like the simple interface with the participants represented simply by coloured dots and names. When you are in a room you can see everyone via their web cameras but the office plan shows you where everyone else is at the moment. The step from the most popular web meeting tools to this one is therefore very small and is therefore more appealing than using a virtual world solution where you first need to create an avatar and then work out how to navigate. I don't think Sococo is designed for large conferences but it would be interesting to try it with smaller gatherings. We could also offer virtual city tours using GoPro cameras. The conference dinner will be hard to accomplish but maybe you could create a number of web meeting group rooms, divide up the participants into random groups and ask them all to have their own dinners in front of them.
Creating a sense of space and interaction is a vital factor as we develop more engaging online meeting environments. I don't think we can fully replicate the advantages of face-to-face on-site meetings but if those become less acceptable this is the only way forward.
In my last post I wrote about how physical learning spaces are being redesigned so that the boundaries between formal and informal spaces becomes increasingly blurred. Spaces can quickly be transformed from social areas to a seminar venue and previously unexploited spaces such as corridors and entrance halls are now used for group work, private study or events. I love the idea of designing spaces to enable serendipitous learning; you're sitting drinking coffee when you hear that a short lecture is beginning a few metres away and you simply can't help listening and being drawn in. Similarly you may strike up a conversation with another coffee drinker and suddenly you find common interests. Admittedly spontaneous discussions between strangers are pretty rare but maybe if the environment is right.
If we can transform the physical spaces to foster socialising or learning then maybe we should examine the digital space. Can we offer a greater flexibility in digital spaces allowing people to mingle or set up discussion groups on the fly? There are lots of tools that already do this to some extent but each tool or platform is a silo relying on all your contacts being members. I often have problems arranging video meetings where some people lack an account with the tool being used or work for an organisation that blocks that particular tool. Do we really have a digital equivalent of the informal learning spaces now appearing on many campuses? Digital cafes, commons areas, squares and parks. I don't think we're there yet but in the last couple of weeks I've found a couple of interesting new digital spaces that promise some new dimensions.
The first is a new webinar tool called Shindig. This seems to raise the bar for more interactive and flexible webinars and I'm very curious to try it out. In a typical session you have 2-3 presenters who lead the webinar and they are seen in larger video windows at the top of the screen. The participants are represented by smaller video windows to form a visible audience in the bottom half of the screen. Each participants can quickly set up their audio and video and there are no downloads or add-ins to complicate things; everything works in your browser. Every participant can ask to speak and can then be invited on "stage" with their video window joining the speaker(s) at the top of the screen. This is possible in existing webinar tools but this seems so much simpler.
The point that excites me about Shindig is that the participants can gather in small groups and "mingle". If you see someone you know you can "sit" next to them and even start your own private video or audio session. Before a session starts this feature can allow for the sort of mingle that is often so interesting at conferences. Group work can easily be organised by simply asking participants to discuss with their neighbours rather than the complicated procedures needed for breakout groups in existing webinar platforms. Add in features like the capacity to accommodate over 1000 participants, social media integration (live streaming on Facebook or YouTube), recording and the ability to open private chats with any participant and you can see why I am so enthusiastic (full list of features here). At present you can apply to arrange an event but the platform isn't yet available for purchase (I assume this will costs a bit). Have a look at the publicity film here.
Virtual worlds had a hype peak with the Second Life boom about 10 years ago but it never really became mainstream as many of us had hoped. However with the advance of virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) there are now plenty of new virtual worlds to build and explore, often superimposed on "real reality" like Pokemon Go and so on. One thing that has been lacking in VR applications is the opportunity to invite your friends to meet you in the virtual space and that's where Facebook's new VR applicationFacebook Spaceshopes to create a niche.
The idea is that when you're in your VR environment, maybe exploring a rain forest or the sights of a major city, you can invite some of your Facebook contacts to join you for a discussion. In the VR environment you should already have created an avatar but if your contact doesn't have an avatar they can appear as a video window instead. The key to this, as in Second Life, was that you could meet people in a particular environment and give a spatial and experiential aspect to the online meeting that is otherwise generally just a meeting of talking heads. You create a shared experience; "remember that time we met beside that amazing waterfall". read more on this in a review of Facebook Spaces on Wired, Facebook’s Bizarre VR App Is Exactly Why Zuck Bought Oculus.
Facebook Spaces could be the next big thing or it could sink without a trace but the main point is that there is an increasing focus on making digital spaces more interactive. This can facilitate, say, socialisation and group work between campus and online students, two groups that up till now seldom interact. Many more tools will come and go but the trend towards integrating formal and informal digital learning spaces is clear. Watch this space.
Iavante operating theatre. CC BY-SA Alastair Creelman
As part of the EFQUEL Innovation Forum we visited Iavante, an extremely impressive simulation centre for training medical staff and students in emergency situations. The centre had clinics, operating theatres, treatment rooms and waiting rooms where students and hospital staff could realistically practice realistic emergency situations with the help of sophisticated computer controlled dummies and real life actors. They even had a street where car accident scenarios could be re-enacted as well as a mock living room for emergency treatment in the home. All these rooms had cameras for filming the simulation from all angles for later analysis. This type of facility is of course very expensive but this type of training can save real lives later since the staff will be able to make mistakes in the simulation and get the chance to improve through practice and analysis.
Teachers are not involved in such life and death situations but it struck me that simulation training could save a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering in the classroom. Student teachers are often thrown in at the deep end and find themselves in front of classes of pupils who do not react in the ideal way no matter how pedagogically sound the student’s lesson plan may be. Students seldom get the chance to work out strategies for dealing with difficult classroom situations. The first experience is when it’s for real and of course there is a high risk that the situation will not be dealt with in a professional way. This can easily lead to students losing confidence in themselves and sometimes to dropping out of the course completely.
That’s why I was particularly interested in another session at the conference from a project called SimAULA. They have produced a computer simulation for trainee teachers to help them deal with difficult classroom situations. The simulation uses avatars in different types of classroom. The teacher can choose different classroom layouts to suit different pedagogical approaches and can plan the lesson using a wide variety of variables. The classes react in unpredictable ways and the students can try different tactics to deal with the situations that occur.
"SimAULA will setup a virtual practicum in the form of a three-dimensional, online world adapted in the context of teaching-learning in school. Both active teachers and teachers-to be will interact with avatars, develop lesson plans, and teach in the virtual classrooms. In order to provide interesting and effective learning activities, this project will focus on the pedagogical side based on the knowledge of teachers and pedagogic and psychology experts to define the behaviour model of the virtual students and create simulations and situations that are both pedagogically and educational sound."
A simulation like this not only gives students the chance to test different strategies but also plenty of scope for group discussion and reflection with the teacher afterwards. Computer simulation in teacher training offers the chance for students to make mistakes and learn without the stress of interacting with real classes. SimAULA show what can be done in this field and I'm sure more advanced and sophisticated simulations for teachers are on their way.
Is paper a more effective teaching medium than speech? Stupid question isn't it? It depends what you write, what you say, how you express yourself and above all what do actually do with these media. That's why I get rather tired of the endless discussions about so-called e-learning. Is it more effective than chalk and talk? Does it lead to better student grades? Again rather irrelevant questions.
Computers enable us to communicate in ways that were impossible a few years ago. The internet is where most information in the world is now stored. Any education that does not make use of these should have a very good reason why not. Computers and the net are the default settings of today's education system just as a chalkboard and textbooks were the default settings of the past. It's not a question of which is better, it's essential that we use the knowledge base and communicative channels that are relevant in today's society.
Clive Shepherd has just written an excellent post on this theme (Is e-learning effective?) and answers the question by showing that there is no single definition of e-learning; you can provide a wide variety of course designs on the net. There is in fact an equally wide range in e-learning as there is in face-to-face teaching.
"To answer the question, we also have to qualify the type of e-learning that we are talking about. Do we mean instructional tutorials delivered for the individual learner? Live group sessions in a virtual classroom? The delivery of online content using web sites, video, podcasts, etc? Collaborative, distance learning like the MOOC described above? The only characteristic these approaches have in common is that they use the same delivery channel - a computer network. In all other respects they are radically different."
The net offers new media and new opportunities for all educators. It's not a matter of which medium is best, it's about using the full pallette of educational media to promote cooperation, communication, reflection and learning. It's not a case of "either ... or ..." it's about learning using the media that are most appropriate for the situation. It could be that the chalkboard is still king for certain processes whereas a virtual world could be the best setting for other processes. We've never had so many wonderful tools to make education more accessible and meaningful to all - let's make the most of this rather than bickering over details.
Whatever happened to virtual worlds like Second Life? I get asked that question quite often since I was an enthusiastic supporter during the high profile years around.2006-8. Virtual worlds (VW) are still used in education but mostly in a small niche often related to role play and simulation. Before the VW boom distance learning/e-learning was far too one-dimensional and text-based. VWs offered immersive environments that encouraged group work, offered participants shared experiences and new opportunities for taking learning beyond the traditional teacher-lead classroom model. Suddenly we saw the potential of taking the distance out of education.
I've just read an excellent article by Sarah Smith-Robbins in eLearn Magazine, Are Virtual Worlds (still) Relevant in Education?, which tries to explain why virtual worlds never quite broke through in education. The main reasons for the failure of VWs are given as:
Economy - cash-strapped universities have cut back on such experimental technologies often because they haven't been able to replace any existing investments.
Steep learning curve - VWs have proved too different from other tools used in education and therefore take too long to learn for most students and teachers.
VW providers unresponsive to needs of educators - VWs like Second Life were updated irritatingly often and often had little or no support for users. Payment for services was often difficult and many universities lost patience.
VWs part of a bigger picture - education is changing thanks to many new technologies of which VWs are just one small factor. Social media are at present the dominant force enabling change.
The main contribution of virtual worlds has been to inspire new ways of thinking about education. Thanks to VWs and a host of other technologies the static, text-based e-learning concept is being replaced by collaborative arenas where learners create and share insights and resources using a wide range of multimedia tools. Virtual worlds are back in the shadows today but the experiments were far from a waste of time. VWs did not change education, just as iPads, augmented reality, cloud computing or whatever are not in themselves going to change education. It's more a question of what we do with all these tools and how we integrate them into teaching and educational practice that will change things. Here's Sarah's conclusion:
"Ultimately, regardless of whether VWs are broadly used, their place in this broader conversation of technology's place in the university and the struggles over maintaining high quality with smaller budgets, the movement that VWs initiated is one that we shouldn't dismiss. Their adoption (or lack thereof) has a wider meaning. Educators know that there is room for improvement and we're dedicated to looking for solutions. A single technology will not solve the issues. However, the meaning behind the enthusiasm for such a tool may help us think deeper about what we're hoping to change and how we can go about it. VWs may not be as broadly relevant in education as many had hoped but that underlying hope is still very relevant."
There's still a great degree of skepticism about the value of virtual worlds in education but there's plenty of activity going on and valuable experience being gained. At Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab they've carried out an interesting piece of research on how virtual worlds can be used to bring about changes in attitude in ways that cannot be duplicated by more traditional communication.
This particular experiment was about people's attitudes to the environmental impact of paper use. One group was given written descriptions of the effects our paper consumption have on our forests and how non-recycled paper leads to deforestation. Another group went into a virtual world and cut down trees with a virtual chainsaw. Despite the graphic details and convincing rhetoric of the written accounts the groups who simply read about the problem did not change their paper consumption after the experiment whereas those who had been in the virtual world really did change their behaviour afterwards.
The research was not about paper consumption or deforestation but about how virtual experiences can have a real effect on our behaviour. This is not the first example of such research but it shows that virtual and augmented reality will be increasingly used for simulations and training as an effective behaviour reinforcer and in many cases will enable us to simulate experiences that would be impossible or extremely costly to carry out for real. Watch the video below for a report on the Stanford experiment and read the article from Stanford Report, New virtual reality research – and a new lab – at Stanford.
It's been a while since I wrote about Second Life and I confess my visits to the virtual world have become all too seldom. I still find the whole concept fascinating but I simply don't have the contacts there that I used to have and I haven't found a reason for going there recently. However I found a short item on the SL blog New World Notes that shows a nice link-up between Second Life and Microsoft's new gesture-controlled gaming system Kinect.
Instead of controlling your SL avatar by mouse clicks you can use your body. Your avatar will imitate your physical gestures (within limitations of course). At present my avatar just stands passively all the time unless I prompt it by clicking on a gesture menu. If I could get it to mimic the way I really gesture this would add to the communicative potential of SL. Since body language and gestures are so crucial to communication maybe this is the way forward to making virtual worlds more compelling places for holding meetings.
Many universities are having to consider pulling out of Second Life if the owners, Linden Labs, implement their decision to charge educational institutes full rates for using the virtual world (see article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academics discuss mass migration from Second Life). Up till now educational users have been able to use SL at a discount rate and as a result there is considerable academic activity there.
Earlier this year the social networking tool Ning decided to make all users pay for the service and this resulted in many networks being forced to find a new free host environment or closing down for good. This is of course one of the risks of using freemium solutions run by commercial players - at some point they may very well decide to charge for the service or raise the rates. It's no real surprise but we seem to think that free will always be free.
Linden Labs would seem to risk losing a considerable and dedicated group of followers if they carry out this price hike. Already some educators are planning to migrate to other virtual worlds but the same questions apply as in the case of Ning. How do you know that the solution you move to will not raise the price later on? Commercial solutions need income to survive and if the free model doesn't meet the profit demands then the price will go up. Solutions like SL cost a lot of money to run and develop so what's so surprising about the company wanting to raise the price?
I suspect that those who are committed to using Second Life and have clear reasons for being there will pay up and continue. Those who are not so dedicated will of course close down or move elsewhere. There are plenty other worlds to inhabit though maybe not as diverse and populated as Second Life.
In my days as an English teacher I never really felt comfortable with role plays. In the days when computers were rather large machines run by nice young men in clean white coats, role plays were the only way of giving students some kind of vaguely meaningful language practice. The trouble was that it was so contrived and artificial that it often fell seriously flat. One slightly embarrassed student pretended to be a tourist asking the way to the nearest post office and the other tried gallantly to be the friendly native with impeccable local knowledge. They both had to include all the "useful" phrases I had tried to teach them and the whole performance was often rather awkward for all concerned.I'm not sure anyone really learnt much from it all.
I enjoyed therefore reading Clive Shepherd's post Why does everyone hate role plays? I found myself nodding in agreement all the way and wonder why I persisted in inflicting this practice on my students for so long. It just seemed to be the right thing to do at the time. Today technology enables us to offer convincing and realistic ways of practicing language and those uncomfortable role plays in front of the whole class are but a memory. Computer simulations can let you practice the same role play as often as you want without your coleagues watching and let you review your performance in privacy..
Virtual worlds like Second Life let you role play "for real" to the extent that you can safely practice situations behind the mask of you avatar. A colleague who teaches regularly in Second Life says that students feel more comfortable speaking English as an avatar than in web meetings where you actually see your colleagues. I've read several articles about convincing and immersive role plays taking place in Second Life in fields like psychology, history and medicine. Indeed the ability to engage in more anonymous but still realistic role play is one of the strongest arguments for using virtual worlds in education. Sometimes the virtual world is more realistic.
I had a nice discussion today about the ever popular subject of free content and people's willingness (or not) to pay for net services. I find it hard to understand why some people go to such lengths to avoid paying for music or films over the net but are quite happy to fork out real cash for, say, extra magic powers in World of Warcraft, virtual clothes in Second Life or special ring tones for a mobile. At auctions people are willing to pay astronomical sums of money for any item associated with Elvis or Michael Jackson but don't want to pay for their music.
The key to price is clearly exclusivity. There is a finite number of shoes worn by Elvis and the market price i high whereas his actual music, being digital, can be copied infinitely and is therefore of little value. Exclusive digital material is rarer and generally belongs to commercially locked environments such as virtual worlds. Magic powers in WoW take a long time and considerable skill to earn and that creates a demand for short-cuts and market forces come into force.
In a world of branding and exclusivity where we are happy to pay enormous mark-up prices for the right brand, I wonder if we can really appreciate free content? If open educational resources becomes mainstream, as I hope, will we still be prepared to pay for some resources and if so what kinds of services could be so exclusive? Or will all digital content become free since it is so easily copied whereas hard copy and artifacts have a price tag?
American PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) has produced an impressive website called Digital Nation. The project aims to showcase how the net has become an integral part of our lives and is reshaping the way we interact with each other. Most of the material consists of video interviews with experts, decision makers and members of the public on how they relate to technology and our increasingly net-based society. As the project progresses more films and other material will be added and this will all be the basis of a TV documentary later next year.
The site is divided into five main sections; living faster (daily life in an on-line world), relationships (friendship and socialising), waging war (training, simulation), virtual worlds (gaming, socialising) and learning. Predictably the obligatory stories about multitasking digital natives appear but hopefully that may be questioned by later contributions. Comments are of course invited on almost all the content. One quirky initiative asks you to write in only six words how the web and digital technology are changing the way you think, work, live, or love. Maybe the Twitter influence?
The idea is to create a digital collage reflecting different perspectives on life in the digital age. It'll be interesting to see how the project develops.
The massive hype around virtual worlds died down over a year ago as the spotlight shifted over to Facebook and Twitter. According to Gartner's newly released 2009 Hype Cycle Report, virtual worlds are stuck in the deep valley of their trough of disillusionment (nice name for a blog that!) as is the supposed fate of all superhyped phenomena. They may have sunk below the media radar but there's plenty going on as a recent short article in the Guardian (Virtual worlds are getting a second life) shows.
According to the article, "membership of virtual worlds grew by 39% in the second quarter of 2009 to an estimated 579 million". This includes all types of virtual world with World of Warcraft, Second Life and Entropia being the most famous. Hardly the trough of disillusionment.
The main point of the article is that virtual worlds are actually earning money in stark contrast to Facebook and Twitter. This income comes from millions of micropayments since members are willing to part with real money to buy virtual fashion, weapons, special powers, real estate and so on. There's so much focus just now on the free aspect of the net that it's fascinating to find an area where everything costs, but not enough that you'd notice. Virtual clothes, bodies and weapons are indeed digital but in the virtual world they are scarce resources, difficult to reproduce and therefore they can be bought and sold. The inhabitants of SL and WoW seem to have bought into the concept of a commercial virtual world and I haven't heard many cries for it all to be free.
SL has suffered over the years for its infamous tendency to lag and crash often due to the fact that all the content is user-created and sometimes an area is too graphics intensive to support more than a handful of avatars at one time. Giving users the ability to freely build and create and then earn money from their creativity is the main strength of worlds like SL but the downside is that this freedom is at the expense of performance reliability. WoW on the other hand has excellent graphics and less lag due to the world being created by the owners and with very little user creativity.
The next stage is the long awaited ability to move from one world to another and resolving the graphics issues. Then maybe the technology will merit a place on Gartner's slope of enlightenment leading to the plateau of productivity.
Ever wished that virtual reality and real reality would get together? Maybe not but it's coming anyway in the form of augmented reality, a technique that allows information from the net to be superimposed on real life views via a cellphone camera.
There's an interesting example of this on trial in the Netherlands where you can look at, say, a street scene with your cellphone and it superimposes clickable links that can give you more information about a building, services or shop. This application allows you to see which properties in your viewer are for sale and details on them (see demo video below). It's basically a clever mashup of GPS, maps, Wikipedia, Yellow Pages and other services and is even clearer evidence that the future belongs to position-based technologies.
GPS isn't always spot-on but the next phase could well be image recognition allowing the device to realize where it is and provide the relevant information. Another potential development, according to an article in the New York Times (Kicking reality up a notch), is to use this technology to superimpose games onto reality. Look through your cellphone window and suddenly the world is full of virtual creatures straight from your Play Station. Indeed Sony are planning to introduce Invizimals (virtual monsters) to the unsuspecting world before long.
Maybe flying pink elephants will be an everyday sight in the future.
Like most people I've got an impressive and ever more bewildering collection of user names and passwords to all the different web services I use. It's not always possible to be consistent because a user name that works for some sites doesn't work for others and therefore you need to invent a new variant that you will hopefully remember when you next log in a few weeks/months later. Just coming up with yet another vaguely memorable user name can cause many minutes of creative thought.
Furthermore all the social networking tools encourage you to paste a nice photo of yourself and once again you're faced with choices. Do I put the same boring mugshot on all my networks thereby showing a consistent identity or do I go for variation and show the full range of my personality? Some people put up very artistic photos of themselves taken from curious angles thus revealing their creative flair. Others even upload pictures of cartoon characters they identify with. The question is how many identities can you maintain on the net? I suppose you can present different images of yourself in different networks. You have have to keep track of which is which.
Now I've discovered several places that ask me to create an avatar to represent myself, the latest being the new Xbox (yes I finally gave in to the pressure and bought it, enabling me to continue playing NFL and NBA). I've already got a couple of Second Life avatars and now an Xbox one too. The more virtual worlds you join the more avatars you need. Should I present a consistent "look" in virtual reality, resemble my "real" self or send forth a diverse range of virtual selves none of which have much in common with me at all? I tried having two different avatars in SL but found that behind them lay the real me and I couldn't really take on a new personality. Some people manage to have completely separate personalities in RL and SL but it must take a lot of concentrated effort to be consistent.
I've just found another interesting new angle on student recruitment, this time using a virtual college fair. A number of schools and colleges in the USA arranged a virtual education fair on 6 November called EducationXpo where students could tour the exhibition area and talk to the college representatives. They could choose to be "represented" by an avatar. Colleges had their own exhibition area to show films and staff could chat to visiting students. There was also an area for students to meet each other and discuss. According to an article in Campus Technology(Dian Schaffhauser, "Schools Take Recruitment Virtual with Online Education Expo," Campus Technology, 11/11/2008) the 12 hour event was more successful than expected and further such college fairs are on the way next year. A film explaining the background to the exhibition is also available at the site. It may not replace "real life" college fairs but once again it's an example of using new web solutions to provide added flexibility to the way we interact with our students and maybe reach groups who would not attend the more traditional events.
I attended a conference in Second Life today. Or rather I eavesdropped on a conference since I generally find that on-line events tend to run in the background when you're at work. Whether you participate via an e-meeting tool or SL it's very easy to hide and do other things at the same time I'm afraid. So I half-listen to the speakers whilst writing e-mails, documents or answering phone calls. I imagine most people do the same unless something very special grabs your attention. However, it does allow you the luxury of being part of an event and hearing some of the content without the travelling and organisation (but minus the all-important networking and discussion).
One feature however did make me think. I sat at my desk looking into a screen where my SL avatar was sitting looking at another screen in SL that showed a film of other people at the real life conference looking at a screen showing someone's presentation. Then one of the presenters at the conference showed an e-meeting on the screen where a presenter somewhere else showed his presentation on a screen in the e-meeting tool.
It would have been fun if the guy in the e-meeting had shown a feed from SL showing us watching the conference watching him etc etc.
The net keeps on opening up new opportunities for cooperation, communication and access to information and it’s easy to get swept away in the euphoria. There are undoubted benefits in terms of increased democracy, better international understanding and access to education. However the same openness and ease of use also offers boundless opportunities to exploit, cheat and spread hate. I read a recent article in the local paper about exploitation in connection with virtual worlds. Workers in poorer countries are employed to produce ready made hero avatars for World of Warcraft and suchlike that are then sold to the highest bidder. The bidders are players with money who don’t like the idea of playing all the tedious levels needed to earn a hero of this calibre. The idea is that you just buy your way in at the top and get someone else to do the “dirty work”. Of course I shouldn’t be surprised, that’s the way the real world works and why should the net or virtual worlds be different? I’ve also found a fun tool called Bambuser that allows you to broadcast video on the net direct from a cellphone or web camera. A chance to share your experiences with friends and family, new opportunities to connect and collaborate. Enormous opportunities in education like live broadcasts from a field excursion. But on the other hand this sort of technology offers new opportunities to break copyright, stalk, spread offensive images and infringe on privacy. There’s plenty of that available on the net already. Even if siteowners tighten up security and delete offensive material there’s always someone with a server somewhere who doesn’t ask questions. But somehow I have that blue-eyed belief that the net should offer us a new chance to build something positive, something better. Virtual worlds should give us a chance to be different and break out from conventions and preconceptions. Your second life could be somehow “better” than the first. Stupid I know but I don’t think I’m alone in this delusion.
