Discussing the future...from the future.
On October 21st, approximately 1000 digital natives gathered together in Second Life for a presentation by author of "Smart Mobs" and professor of Digital Journalism at Stanford, Howard Rheingold. "The Pedagogy Of Civic Participation", a discussion on participatory media, was conducted entirely online on the campus of NMC (New Media Consortium), a virtual university.I consider myself a digital native, in that I was born in the early 80s, but grew up along with technology. For a few years at least, I knew a non web-centric life of knocking on doors, land line phones, and snail mail. That quickly changed, and I embraced the new trend with instant messenger, emails, streaming media and blogs. That being said, I still find myself almost overwhelmed at times with the constant wave of ever increasing media and information that has become available. While mind boggling, it also seems very appropriate that a seminar on new media should be held in a digital landscape. What are the benefits of incorporating information sharing and learning in a world like Second Life? A summary of Rheingold's response:
The important question about 3D immersive environments is 'What's the appropriate use? What can we do here that we couldn't do elsewhere?". It's possible to stand in front of a classroom, talk and project slides - but not possible to walk you through a cathedral standing in the classroom, or rotate a protein molecule and enable people to move around it in a standard classroom. What can we do in 3D worlds that's uniquely attractive and appropriate to this medium that has some pedagogical purpose to it?A summary of the event was posted today, and includes screencaps, sound clips, and main bullet points from the talk. The issues he brings up are very timely to our in class discussions, and it's unfortunate that we couldn't participate. Maybe next year, IJ Cohort 10 will exist entirely in virtual reality. Although this brings up a whole new issue in and of itself, as I can't imagine what sorts of effects sitting in class next to a wolf, a pixie, or a ninja might have on my education (see screen shots from article).
-Chris Snyder
posted by Mark H. @ 11/14/2006 06:21:00 PM
1 Comments:
Speaking of Second Life, I was on campus Tuesday evening and ran into Larry. He wanted me to mention to everyone that he is thinking of asking Wendall to approve a class that would focus on reporting and be taught in Second Life.
It would be for this coming summer and be taught online so we wouldn't have to come to campus every Saturday.
What do you think?
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