The
dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads
you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called
"truth."
Dan
Rather
Lately, I’ve been looking at
the point in time and space where Second Life (SL) and Real Life (RL)
intersect. (Significant Other accuses me
of becoming too existential and worries when I refer to SL before RL.)
This time, I’ll be writing
about education in RL being facilitated by SL.
For my two loyal readers
(and Significant Other), who may fear that I’m about to once again test the
boundaries of my senses. Be not afraid
for I had help with this topic.
I decided to write about
SL’s educational potential after several discussions with a good friend of mine
inworld. Her name is Augusta Carolina
Maria von Nassau or Augusta to her friends. (Attempts to develop a diminutive for her
have been met with withering looks which have kept me in my place.) We met in the 1920’s
Berlin sim in SL and became fast friends despite what Augusta sees as my
Marxist deviancies. (Significant Other,
always trying to ascertain the motives of inworld friends for hanging around
with me, feels Augusta uses me as an example of her charity work, looking after
someone who obviously shouldn’t be roaming around untended in RL.)
In between our political
jabbing, I have come to know a lot about Augusta and her motivations for coming
and staying inworld. Today, I’ll share
some of her thinking about the role of virtual worlds like SL in education as
well as a little about herself.
But, I have some other
reasons for talking about virtual education.
A lot has been happening in RL lately relating to virtual reality (VR). There’s the virtual headset, Oculus Rift and its recent acquisition
by Facebook.
Something has to happen there.
(Either that or Mark Zuckerberg will be looking for a new job!) SL
Go,
while I have reservations, shows that someone is still willing to make
investments in SL. Finally, we still
have to see what happens with Ebbe
Altberg, Linden Lab’s new CEO.
IMHO, the promise of virtual
reality still has to be delivered.
Novels such as Snowcrash and Reamde by Neal Stephenson gave glimpses
of what the Metaverse could be. VR 1.0
was comprised of SL, there.com, Inworldz, and World of Warcraft to name but a
few. Could we see VR 2.0 arising from
its predecessor’s ashes with these new investments in hardware and
software. Will SL return to the cover of
Businessweek?
So, for all these reasons,
now seems to be a good time to talk about SL and its potential for RL education
purposes.
Back to my friend Augusta.
In RL, she’s been teaching
high school world history for fifteen years.
She also does one twelfth grade course in Twentieth Century history.
Augusta came to SL in a somewhat
interesting manner. (OK, at least it was
interesting to me.) Required to maintain
a steady stream of professional development, she was participating in a
consortium of courses run by NorthTIER. Three summers ago, her RL son-in-law
encouraged her to try one on either gaming or role play (RP). One of the
courses was conducted in SL. She took it
and was hooked.
The assignment Augusta
undertook was to write a lesson based on SL that she could use in
teaching. She used the sadly now defunct
Versailles sim as her entre inworld.
Augusta was impressed by the
high level of realism in the RP. In
December of that year, she was laid up by surgery for five months in RL. She used that time to immerse herself in
SL. Augusta tried a few sims and ended
up, as she puts it, in Jo Yardley’s 1920’s Berlin. For Augusta, Berlin was a real community with
flexibility in the characters that could be created.
Inworld, Augusta’s avatar is based on a RL
woman, Augusta
Carolina Maria von Nassau-Weilburg, a cousin of the first
Dutch Nassau ruler. (One thing I’ve
learned about Augusta, she doesn’t cut corners on her research.) Upon arriving in Berlin, she listened a lot
as her character developed initially.
Her avatar is a noblewoman
of diminished means, yet still proud and aristocratic. (Even when hanging around with proletarians such
as yours truly.)
While conducting her
research, Augusta found that it wasn't uncommon for women of many levels of Weimar
society to come to Berlin for demographic reasons -- lack of men after
WWI. (For those who aren’t as well read
as Augusta, lots of us guys got killed back then especially in the losing
countries.)
Augusta felt she needed to
really justify why her character was inworld and found that under the Weimar government,
many landed noble families lost much of their land, were fined, and had no more
legal advantages. Although the people
who lived in estates still saw the nobility as having a legitimate function
when the Weimar government started faltering.
They were effectively impoverished too -- they had nice things, but no
liquid assets to speak of. Young women
of Augusta's generation (like her own RL grandmothers) wanted a different life
and didn't want their parents to arrange their marriages and all that.
From this arose the woman
whom I know inworld as Augusta Carolina Maria von Nassau. Few inworld, especially outside of 1920’s
Berlin have put as much thought and work into their avatars. (I can only imagine what her RL lesson plans
are like.)
While I conduct my
interview, Augusta and I are sitting outdoors at the Café Elektric in 1920’s
Berlin. I ask her about what RL lessons
can be learned from SL.
She replies that as a
history teacher, she have more depth when teaching the Weimar era. Her students know about the Nazis and the
Holocaust, but their knowledge tends to jump from WWI to WWII without
considering what happened in between.
My next question is if she sees
inworld as a laboratory?
Augusta replies emphatically
in the affirmative adding there are people who are making it happen. She
mentions Spiff Whitfield
who has a sim that he uses in New York state that is a rebuild of Anne Frank's
house in Amsterdam and he is also working on one that is set in the medieval
era.
Continuing, Augusta says
that she has seen wonderful sims here that are based on literature -- many are
in Linden Endowment for the
Arts
(LEA) areas.
Regarding Spiff's site, for example, Augusta
explains it has tasks the students have to run through -- it's very
multidisciplinary and a great way to really get into the Holocaust and support
the book at the same time.
But, there are issues with trying to use
virtual worlds in RL education as Augusta explains to me. First, she won’t take teenagers in. Perfectly understood and I agree with
her. Next, administrations are leery of
new technology. Then there are overburdened
colleagues without the time for SL’s steep learning curve. Finally, SL’s reputation doesn’t help. (Augusta’s son-in-law was floored upon
discovering how much time she spent inworld when he tried to recruit her into
World of Warcraft.)
As our interview draws to a
close (Both our RLs are calling for us.) I ask Augusta about her future with SL
and in experimenting with its educational potential.
Augusta thinks for a moment
before replying. She then says that she
would like to spend more time in 1920’s Berlin.
Augusta would like to be more involved with the education groups inworld
and their events. She recently gave a
tour of Berlin to one such group and enjoyed it immensely.
In RL, Augusta wants to participate
more actively with societies for technology in education at the state and
international levels. She hopes to submit an article to a RL journal on how to
use SL to enhance content in teaching.
Augusta’s goal is to become a force for bringing the kind of
experimental education offered by SL forward.
Finally, Augusta will return
to blogging! Her intention is to alternate
between her own fictional accounts of life in 1920’s Berlin with educational
reflective pieces. She’s recently added
Twitter to her toolset to help expand her reach.
Our interview ends and I
thank Augusta for her time and candor.
Coming away, I can’t help
but think about this woman and all she does.
While Augusta never complains when we meet about being a teacher, I know
that sadly in my country we do not respect or reward teachers as we should.
Yet, despite that, teachers
like Augusta continue to educate our young people and strive to find new ways
like using SL to do this. We don’t
deserve women and men like her.
I would ask you to please
read Augusta’s blog and
follow her on Twitter. Her handle is @Augusta_vN . Not for her sake but for yours. She has a lot to say.
I also think about how thin
the fabric between SL and RL is becoming and how maybe someday, there won’t be
a distinction any longer.
I want to thank Augusta
again for her friendship and for putting up with me during our interview.
I’ve included a few pictures
of Augusta from her personal portfolio.
Except for the picture of us doing the interview, all the rest have been
done by photographers more talented than me!
Don’t forget to drop by 1920’s
Berlin and visit with Augusta and the others! (They throw some great parties in that
town! Not that Augusta would know
anything about these.) Just remember to
wear period costume please!
As always, I’m grateful to
all inworld for their kindness and time in stopping to talk with a stranger who
was passing through their lives.
My Twitter handle is @webspelunker. Please feel free to follow me and I’d be
happy to follow you.
We’re remembering the people who were with us then even if they may be
gone now. 
