Tuesday 5th May 2009 12:34 pm
Virtual Worlds: Emerging Trends for 2009
MacArthur grantee Global Kids reflects on six trends in virtual worlds around learning and philanthropy.
By Barry Joseph
As RezEd enters its second year of funding from MacArthur, we thought it would be helpful to outline several trends we have seen emerging that affect learning and virtual worlds.
Trend 1: Media Tired...
The press grew tired with its love/hate relationship with Second Life, the preeminent virtual world in the public sphere, moving from wide-eyed adoration to cynical disdain. Recent signs, such as cnet’s ”Second Life Strives for a Second Wind” and Gigaom’s ”Second Life Starts to Grow Again,” suggest the pendulum might be swinging back.
Trend 2: ...Educators Inspired
In the meantime, educators have been as productive as ever in their innovative uses of virtual worlds. While once primarily found in the halls of academia, reports now come out regularly touting the educational impact of virtual worlds in K-12 and informal learning institutions.
Trend 3: Tear Down the Walls
While we are still far from achieving a state of interoperability amongst virtual worlds, allowing an avatar to move from one world to another, virtual world/Web 2.0 integration has continued full force. New worlds like the New Zealand-based SmallWorlds.com allow users to bring their social networks and social media into their virtual world. This advance promises a new array of educational opportunities, as the possibilities for participatory learning increase.
Trend 4: Few Points of Entry
Entry points for learning institutions are few and far between. Although there are a few standout examples of learning institutions partnering with commercial developers (WhyReef comes to mind, the site created by Chicago’s Field Museum that received 40,000 visitors in ten days). More often, however, large commercial worlds are more interested in top-down, cause marketing, like Habbo Hotel’s new green-awareness campaign.
Trend 5: Roll Your Own
In response to the lack of entry points, many institutions and enterprising educators are making their own. For example: Raph Koster’s Metaplace, the highly anticipated web-based, virtual world creation platform, invited educators into its closed-Beta last fall. Quest Atlantis at Indiana University is moving beyond the U.S. to scale in classrooms around the world, which itself is built atop the educator-friendly Activeworlds. The Immersive Education Initiative launched the Education Grid, built atop Sun Microsystem’s Project Wonderland. IBM launched its proof of concept project The Virtual Forbidden City.
Trend 6: No Holy Grail in Sight
While far from the holy grail of virtual worlds, all eyes are still on Second Life. And Second Life is in a state of flux. In the past year, nearly every major leader has stepped down or left Linden Lab. In January, Philip Rosedale suggested in an interview that we would soon see the end of Teen Second Life. This led to speculation about the creation of a new educator’s grid. Just this month Linden Lab announced a new technology to allow organizations to run their own private Second Life grids, behind their own firewall.
RezEd will explore these and other trends this June 10th - 12th at the first RezEd conference, held within the Games, Learning and Society Conference.
RezEd.org, the online hub for learning and virtual worlds, has just entered its second year. It was funded through the first HASTAC competition, building on Global Kids’ prior work in virtual worlds made possible through support from the MacArthur Foundation, and continues now through support from a recent MacArthur grant.
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