Tia Carr Williams

In 'Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds', Jack M. Balkin predicted that MMORPG technologies will soon be adopted for non gaming enterprises, leading to a more diverse future for virtual worlds:

'As multiplayer game platforms become increasingly powerful and lifelike, they will inevitably be used for more than storytelling and entertainment. In the future, virtual world platforms will be adopted for commerce, education, military, professional and vocational training, for medical consultation and psychotherapy, and even for social and economic experimentation to test how social norms develop. Although most virtual worlds today are currently an outgrowth of the gaming industry, they will become much more than that in time.'

Many virtual worlds already defy strict categorization as games, serving more as extensions of reality than escapes from it. Edward Castronova has defined two memes at work within virtual worlds: virtual worlds as play spaces and virtual worlds as extensions of the Earth. He posited that official knowledge of each world's status as 'open' or 'closed' could help closed worlds guarantee their users' rights to play by protecting them from the interventions of Earth law. While it may be a useful exercise to define the open or closed qualities of MMORPGs, the worlds know as 'social virtual worlds' actively resist this type of binary classification system by maintaining deep ties to the offline world while still functioning as play spaces. In this paper, the author discusses the ways in which the cultures of play in social worlds differe from those found in gaming worlds and provide several examples ofhow these cultures of play rely specifically on constant reference to the offline world.

Absolutely, Second Life is a multiverse environment, along with Entropia, There, Habbo Hotel, ad infinitum.

While the term 'multiverse' is commonly accorded to explorative science, it can be seen as easily attributable to what is occuring in these virtual elaborations, borne not from matter, nor constrained by time or space.

Arden is  an unusual educational development which could be accorded the term 'Edutainment' but has components of virtual world and game included.

Arden from the Synthetic Worlds Initiative

The Synthetic Worlds Initiative is constructing a synthetic world, Arden, based on the works of William Shakespeare. When launched, Arden will provide users with a fun experience that also immerses them in the narrative, language, and culture of the world's greatest writer. It will also serve as a laboratory for research on macro-level social phenomena, and the impact of the technology on those who use it.

 From a recent yahoo article: "There is not going to be one metaverse, there's going to be a multitude of them out there," said Corey Bridges, a Netscape veteran and co-founder of The Multiverse Network Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif. His company is creating a program that will give access to multiple online worlds built using its technology, much like Netscape's browser gave access to multiple Web sites, kickstarting the Internet boom of the 1990s.

The technology will include the option to make avatars portable between different worlds, providing a middle road between MTV-style walled gardens and a wide-ranging "metaverse" like "Second Life." "Once you can move from one virtual world to another, the growth we have today is going to look pretty stagnant," said Gartner's Prentice.

Recommended reading:

Metaverse Manifesto by Orange Montagne

The Metaverse Manifesto is a statement of how digital realities have become the only realities. The book is an indispensable guide to new media and the emerging phenomenon of the 'Metaverse'.

With the Metaverse Manifesto, Avatar Orange Montagne states the mission of the new creative breed he calls reality creators. They reject and then supercede established media and recycled culture. The core of their revolutionary actions is focused on creating immersive places.
Destroying 'fictions', they create spaces that include the viewers themselves, viewers that had previously been locked out of the media they perceived.

Written by Orange Montagne, a pioneer explorer in the concepts of 'digital being', with this Manifestio the implications of user generated content are shown to extend much further than they do today, up to the point of describing the very realities we now inhabit.  Volatile - impulsive- written during a time of revolution and struggle to define the spaces called 'virtual worlds'.

Gina,

Yes, there is a serious amount of loitering with 'good' intent going on in SL currently. Not a lot to do just yet, but Im working on a couple of ideas to change that.....

I cut my own teeth, as many of my generation, on 'Space Invaders' and later, 'Pong", which demonstrated to me the addictively competitive component of games, even to best one's own scores, let alone others on the scoreboard!

Lately, I have explored 'Runescape', another enjoyable time sink (I'd still be playing now if I didn't have a living to earn).

What I've observed first hand, is the sense of being absorbed into an environment that has it's own rules of engagement, laws of exchange and interaction, economy and diversity. When these elements offer up a new vista of experiencing virtuality in counterpoint to our relative reality, we have a juxtaposed concurrence of mental models, real v virtual. Now, I appreciate that's taking the 'high road' somewhat, but it bears discussing from the vantage point of enabling young minds to grow sociable skillsets in environments that are contained and safe, where they are the governers of how, what and when such exchange takes place.

Watching my own son spend many a long day invested in 'Splinter Cell', a highly successful game of dubious merit, imho, I wondered what benefits he was deriving from it, if any. The repetition drove him to distraction when he wasn't able to navigate a level but nevertheless his sense of accomplishment when he did was apparent.

I believe there is something to be attributed to these 'milestones' of accomplishment, albeit derived from a game. So rarely are we praised or rewarded in daily life, that I can certainly see the appeal of quick wins that offer a sense of 'I can'.

Clark Quinn, in his book Engaging Learning (Pfeiffer, 2005), points out that the same elements that make learning highly effective are also the ones that make up highly engaging experiences. And that modern computer games, being highly engaging, share those elements: clear objectives, a relevant frame of reference, challenging, interesting and interactive.

Quinn says, "Doing good engagement is hard, as is doing good education. Doing both together is even more difficult, but even if the effort is double, the product is more than doubly worthwhile.

Hard Fun. Quinn goes on to say that "Learning can, and should, be hard fun." Serious games, when done right, are hard and challenge the learner. When the player fails, they learn something about why, are motivated enough by the story to try another approach, and ultimately get rewarded in a fun way.

Deep Learning. Highly engaging learning games also work because they have the potential to assist in deep learning. Dr. Merrilea Mayo of The National Academies has presented it this way:

• Learning by doing: Players make decisions that have consequences; they actively participate in the game environment.
• Learning by experimenting: Players can safely try out multiple solutions, explore and discover information and skills.
• Life-like learning situations: Virtual worlds can provide environments that respond the same way the real world responds, allowing the player to transfer knowledge and experience between the two.
• Believing in abilities: Rewards and levels in games foster the belief you can achieve goals. This generates a positive attitude towards overcoming obstacles and increases the player's success rate.
• Clear objectives: Well-defined game goals allow players to make more progress toward learning objectives.
• Team learning and skills: Multiplayer games allow for group problem solving, collaboration, social interaction, negotiation, etc. Players learn not only from the game, but from each other.
• Learning without limitations: Game environments naturally transcend barriers of language, geography, race, gender and physical abilities. Players who are self-conscious in real life because they are "different" have no way of being set apart online.

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How can we verify the potential skillsets that are identified in the above statements?

What sort of ways can we effectively measure 'before and after' states that might clearly indicate learning has occurred?

What different types of games have you personally had first hand or observed experience of that might cause you to be able to believe that adaptive skillsets are being demonstrated?

Video games are particularly expensive to build say the Federation of American Scientists, a prominent Washington-based group, which issued a report last year calling on the departments of Education and Labor, along with the National Science Foundation, to pay for the development of “serious” games.

“I think there’s more enthusiasm around gaming for learning than almost any topic I’ve ever seen,” says Roy D. Pea, an education professor at Stanford University. He adds, nevertheless: “This is a very big hunch. Lots of research questions need to be addressed.”

“I think there’s more enthusiasm around gaming for learning than almost any topic I’ve ever seen,” says Roy D. Pea, an education professor at Stanford University. He adds, nevertheless: “This is a very big hunch. Lots of research questions need to be addressed.Rather than just learn how to use technology, students in today’s Web-dominated environment need to learn how to prioritize and manage a dizzying array of information coming at them through Web sites and e-mails, how to think critically about what they find, and how to use multiple media to communicate well, among other skills. Educators, scholars, and policymakers have yet to agree on what those new skills should be, much less on how best to teach them.

“We still have a lot to learn about supporting a whole range of digital-literacy skills,” says Margaret A. Honey, a vice president of the Education Development Center Inc., a Newton, Mass.-based research group, and a co-director of its Center for Children and Technology, in New York City. And, she says, new research in that area could provide a lasting payoff.

“Technologies are always changing,” she says, “but skills of discernment don’t change.”

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This is an extract from an Education Week article. What it brings into sharp focus is the knowledge gap that needs to be filled by educators who seek to fulfill their students learning needs revolving around their digital savvy.

I welcome the commentary from our esteemed assembled contributors to this conference to help us all understand how they have experienced both the barriers and opportunities in introducing learning games to their teaching environment and, as Professor Pea articulates, where do we optimally need to focus our attention and intention?