BlogDale

I’ve been mooching around Second Life lately, now my machine can cope. Although I’ve been on the WMNET island for ages I’ve done the least building and my patch looks rather unimpressive. Bare, too.

Thing is, apart from the nagging doubt that I didn’t ought to be building things in a Second Life until I’ve finished building the place where I and family live, I wonder at the structures some of my fellow denizens are setting up. Sure, it’s good practice to pass this creativity and the skills required on to others and I salute that - but the elaborate buildings I’m seeing onscreen are - um - buildings. Beautiful, often unique, buildings. With walls.

I tentatively showed spouse SL last night and it was she who pointed this out; that was when the penny dropped for me. Apart from the aforementioned reasons, this might have been why I have been so slow to develop a vision for my patch on the island. I didn’t know what I wanted to make my learning space resemble. I was thinking of reproducing various buildings, from 1970s concrete and glass schools to a sci-fi building from a Brian Aldiss novel (I think it was). But no - Karen’s right, it’s a learning space and the form of it should follow the function.

Do I need chairs to sit on in an online environment? No. Do I need a whiteboard where I can assist learners with resources that can be changed and delivered at the press of a button? Probably, although it might take some other form.

Do I need a means of assessment to make sure they “get it”? Yes. Am I going to feed back to them and help them along their learning journey? You bet.

Do I need a wall to hang my resources on? Nah. I need to have lots of stimulating resources though, that can be changed quickly.

Why should a virtual learning space resemble the real-world enclosures by which we are confined? Surely we have a chance to redefine learning spaces…

So my part of the island is unlikely to have a building on it (there’s a token gesture underwater) but it will be a learning space. At the moment it has a virtual Sloodle classroom on it (standing in the bounds of the blue box puts you in the classroom) which, in time, will link to my school moodle so that I can test how the two online environments work together.

Shame I have to do real work too. These reports are late…