« Barry Joseph: Comparing Apples and Oranges in Virtual Worlds | Doug Thomas: Under the Surface of Virtual Worlds »
Tuesday 29th April 2008 9:53 am
The Affordances of Virtual Worlds and 21st Century Learning Environments
Connie Yowell asks: What can we learn from young people about why they find virtual worlds so appealing?
An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action. This term came to mind as I read through Barry Joseph’s post—Comparing apples and oranges in virtual worlds. The recent simulcasting of an extraordinary speech by Kofi Annan into four different virtual worlds certainly provided an opportunity to think about virtual worlds and how young people use them. I came away from the event most struck, perhaps, by the size and quality of the discussion held in Whyville. Over 180 young people attended the event in Whyville, creating streams and streams of thoughtful chat discussion. Quite extraordinary really. What is it about the norms, practices, adult roles and other such affordances of this space that is so appealing and engaging for young people? More importantly perhaps, is if we cast aside our adult expectations and standards, what it is we can learn from young people about why they find this virtual world such an engaging learning space?
These are the kind of questions that form the basis of MacArthur’s grantmaking in Digital Media and Learning. What can we learn from young people about how to use digital media to support learning? What do young people have to tell us about the shape and future of learning environments in the 21st century? As research begins to emerge and as we observe the extraordinary engagement of young people in virtual worlds such as Whyville, Quest Atlantis and others, we have begun to form a tentative list of the kinds of affordances we see in environments that support learning. So far, we see the greatest engagement in those environments that allow young people to pursue a need to know, to share, to produce, to make their thoughts and productions public, and to develop a specialized language.
These are just a few tentative ideas that are emerging and are offered here simply to stimulate discussion. We think they are useful because they focus on the experience of young people in these environments rather than on the technology. In the posts that follow, I have invited a few of our colleagues to share their thoughts on the affordances of virtual worlds.
Category: Civic-Engagement, Credibility, Ecology-of-Games, Identity, Race-Ethnicity, Unexpected
Like this post?
- Email this page using tell-a-friend, or
- Save it with one of these social bookmarking tools:
, or - View author profile for Connie.
Comments
Pitzer College
http://aljean.wordpress.com
Posted on May 2 2008 8:32 PM
My students and I spent a semester thinking (and making videos about) why we did and did not like “Learning on YouTube”: http://www.youtube.com/mediapraxisme.
Interestingly, they pretty much decided (probably with my initial inclinations) that they liked to be entertained there, but it wasn’t so successful for education, although they did believe education would have to better take into account their viewing and listening practices. This “tour” of their videos on education is a good start to some of their analysis:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2OKySxBrZUQ.
Idit Harel Caperton, PhD
President, World Wide Workshop
http://www.Globaloria.org
Posted on May 1 2008 4:40 PM
Connie, you wrote above:
“So far, we see the greatest engagement in those environments that allow young people to pursue a need to know, to share, to produce, to make their thoughts and productions public, and to develop a specialized language.... [these environments] focus on the experience of young people in these environments, rather than on the technology..”
I believe that learning environments that engage children and youth in new-media production, innovation, self-expression and exchange of ideas—must also focus on the technology that afford these types of rich experiences—rather than on technologies that afford just exchanging strings of texts and information.
Moreover, MacArthur folks may need to look deeper at those engaging media environments that intertwine social technology development, with tinkering and building interactive stuff that require technological fluency and interactive media development among the young people of the 21st century.
Connie - you must not forget to include these types (of programmable social environment for learning by tinkering and building games and sims) in your “tentative list of the kinds of affordances we see in environments that support learning.”
To be provocative, I volunteer here the vision that these may be engaging and supportive of some of the best kind of learning out there!
Idit.