I went to the link Esme gave us from Virtual Worlds Review and decided to look into worlds.com. Unfortunately my middle-aged eyes did not see the age of the news about this site and I believe this is a relic from the early days of virtual reality. I was excited because I read that this company received a patent (the first) for a scalable 3D server technology. But that was WAY back in 2001.
So I downloaded the client and moved around a bit in it last night. This morning I got in bright and early, but had trouble signing in (it didn't like VISTA) and then my poor avatar wasn't actually moving, but sort of floating like South Park cartoon characters do. I thought I had VIP access for a week, but I can't seem to really go anyplace but Ground Zero and an Auditorium. I saw one or two people there in my probably 4 hours of trying to fool around with it. I was only able to choose from characters they provided in the Avatar Gallery...what I really wanted to do was go to the Animal House...but at this point who knows what that it...probably not a Toga Party like I thought ;o).
From the VRW site comes this quote: The Worlds.com heyday may be over now, but it's worth a visit for those interested in the history of virtual worlds. In many ways, this entertainment-related collection of worlds perfectly encapsulates focus of the first wave of virtual worlds in the mid-1990's, with its merging of dotcom boom hype and giddy utopianism. Moving through these worlds now is like visiting a museum. A very weird museum at times (the "Sadness" and "Glee" worlds are particularly trippy!), but an interesting peek back in time. Being the historian that I am I may have to come back and see if I can find any of these old places. I feel though that this place with its small window or big window/poor resolution just make me pine away for Second Life with its high resolution and creative power.
I read and loved Dickey's article on virtual worlds and distance learning and especially how brilliantly she ties constructivist learning theories and scaffolding into her conversation of online ed. MOOs provide an environment that supports constructivist learning by allowing for the emergence of knowledge-building communities. That alone helped me to better understand the value of Club Penguin. In my mind I was "stuck" on the "lookism" aspect and was negating the making of meaning together. Then upon reading further I was better able to understand situational learning, which Emily sort of eluded to earlier in her post on the movie 1776. Situated learning include[s] authentic context and activity, access to expert modelling, multiple roles and perspectives, and scaffolding and mentoring.
As I proceeded to research academic articles relating to virtual worlds and construtivism I came across an article from the International Journal of Social Sciences called Utilizing Virtual Worlds in education: the implications for practice. The authors have a succinct description that helped me: In constructivism the learner is believed to construct their own understanding of content. Through this construction of knowledge the learner creates direct connections and meaning. In order for learning experiences to be beneficial to the learner within a constructivist methodology, the instructional experience must be authentic and intentional. Simply put, the instructor must provide learners with compelling problems that engage students not only in the adventure of the virtual world itself but additionally into a deep inquiry and analysis of a meaningful and authentic problem that students can relate to and that meets the lesson objectives.
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