Last week Sim and I popped along to the Children in Virtual Worlds conference held at University of Westminster. The event was primarily to investigate how under-thirteens are using Virtual Worlds (VW) and to showcase the BBC’s well anticipated Adventure Rock. The conference also included several extremely interesting presentations by Aleks Krotoski, Dianne Carr, Marc Goodchild, Seth Giddings and Adrian Woolard….

Our interest in children’s VWs stems from both the work we’re currently developing with schools, as well as Twofour’s recent launch of MyCBBC, a safe social network site aimed at 6-12year olds. The focus of the event was the research undertaken by David Gauntlett and Lizzie Jackson into Adventure Rock that was presented at the conference. The research identified the different “types” of players that they found in the trial of Adventure Rock (Click Here), 90 participants took part in five schools across Scotland and Wales.

Understanding your target audience from a development perspective is pivotal. As we begin to expand into the realms of VWs for younger audiences, this type of research is essential to the design of affective applications to engage with as many different player types as possible. Click here to view research.

Worth noting, Adventure Rock differs from the traditional definition of a VW or MMORPG, as players don’t interact, play or socialise with other players inside the environment, instead they communicate via a moderated website. For the purposes of the Adventure Rock research, a virtual world was defined as an online space where:

• You can move around
• You can have an impact on the world
• There are benefits from network effects (other online users add to the experience – it couldn’t just run off a CD)

This area of research certainly bears out my own research into Player Motivations. Gauntlett and Jackson’s work has some significant similarities to the player motivations of adult users of MMORPG’s identified by Bartle and Yee. The area that is now ripe for research is the extent to which a child’s motivations transform over time, and how dependent this change is on the particular virtual environment.

It also raises questions around these player traits: how do they translate to the real world environment? For example, Is a fighter player a fighter in real life? And can we use this technology to encourage a different player type in the classroom? For example, can we change a fighter into a nurturer? Fascinating questions!

As Spring bends into Summer, I too am gearing up for a new cycle at work – I’m on the home stretch of the Becta job which has been fascinating, exhilarating and very informative. Becta’s new strap line is ‘Leading Next Generation Learning’. Judging by some of the well informed… and well connected guests at the recent series of seminars they’ve just hosted, they are right to pitch themselves at the heart of the education agenda. Is there a school in the UK that doesn’t now understand the essential need for ICT in support of learning, teaching and management? It’s embedded at the very heart of things now, whether it’s used for texting parents to tell them their kids are bunking off, or being used by five year old roaming reporters practicing their speaking and listening skills. There isn’t an area of school life where technology isn’t breaking new ground and making more and more things possible – I love it! But then I always have. I was a keen Desktop Publisher in the mid-eighties and so creating audio visual documents or ‘TV’ is just a more interesting and more dynamic step on from there – training people to understand that ‘do it yourself’ TV has the same impact as DIY magazine publishing is not easy mind – but that’s another story.

I think one of the key things I’ve learnt over the last few weeks working with Becta is how many opportunities there are for ICT to improve people’s lives, whether its reducing the effects of rural isolation or creating more engaging learning journeys for otherwise hard to reach students. It can also really add value to the teacher-pupil relationship, as well as reducing the reliance on the chemistry that often underpins them. I know if I’d had had access to a world of online resources, I’d have stayed engaged far longer than I ever did in the dusty and musty classrooms we were taught in.

With news that the Government is to put more money into tackling dyslexia, and early literacy intervention, it seems like a good moment to talk about the ‘Literacy Island’ in Teen Second Life. The project, designed to support struggling readers at KS3… is being piloted by Stoke Damerel Community College in Plymouth, and is a joint initiative between Twofour and the Plymouth Local Authority.

The build we created has a Treasure Island theme to it, spacious enough to accommodate several in-world events, and to allow the roll out of the weekly lesson structured tasks.

Teen Second Life is a secure environment for 13-17 year olds. The benefit of creating, as we have, a closed island in this grid is that access can be regulated and students can be brought in with access only to the island. This obviously helps manage content in a safe environment and allows teachers/authorised adults to guide students through the content contained within.

The benefits of using an immersive environment such as Second Life goes much deeper than mere novelty. With the rapid increase of ‘casual’ gaming opening up the computer games market to a greater range of ages, online gaming and Virtual Worlds is becoming increasingly targeted towards younger audiences. There are currently 158 online games or Virtual Worlds launched and in development specifically designed for children. Coupled with the fact that in families with school-aged children 76% have access to a PC and around 80% have access to a games console, this shows that children are becoming more adept in the use of virtual environments and web 2.0, and so more open to eLearning.

Obviously the worry is that merging the act of learning and ‘games’ might detract from the educational content, but this is a very limited view of the potential of this technology. Some would say that ‘serious games’ is a contradiction in terms, however with the narrative driven structure of computer games balanced with the increasing level of procedurally (and user) generated content, creativity, logical progression, literacy, and any number of specific specialisms can benefit greatly.

Welcome to the brave, new, virtual world of learning.

Spending some time browsing articles on new technologies currently being created (a fun evening in). I came across the following two articles; Alice Taylor’s video post on the eye tracking for WoW from De Montfort University, over at her blog Wonderlandblog. And Adam Montandon’s video post on his cyborg technology, both have similarities and complement each other extremely well.

Firstly eye tracking, what the? Well the creator goes on to explain in the YouTube comments:

Mode changing works by the eye tracker detecting eye glances, in this case a glance off the screen. So, a flick off the top gives you one mode and so on. The cursor changes to show what mode you are in, e.g pair of feet for walking. However, WoW takes control of the look of the cursor so it doesn’t quite work. This was originally designed with Second Life as the testing platform, but we designed it such that could be used with other games. WoW was the first we tried and it works well for a start.

What I found extremely interesting was the uses and impact of the technology as the creator also identifies:

True… although, it is really designed for users with severe motor impairments, such as those with spinal injuries, cerebal palsy, motor neurones disease etc.

This kicked my brain into gear and I remembered Adam’s project the “Eyeborg” which allowed a colour blind artist (Neil Harbisson) to see colour! The Eyeborg is a camera and laptop device which uses differing frequency to transforming colour in front of the head-mounted lens into sound, played back to Harbisson via an earpiece. Originally a six-color device, the Eyeborg has now evolved to 360 colours.

Again the similarity falls at the potential of the technology, as Adam identifies in his interview with Richard and Judy, “not just for coloured blind people but blind and partially sighted people as well and visual and performance artists. What a fantastic, creative use of technology.

Since Apple introduced the ‘podcast U’ feature for ipod , I’ve become a voracious consumer of the University podcast. My choice will sometimes be random and sometimes be prompted by a spec ific curiosity or interest. Depending on the first couple of minutes of my listening experience, I may abandon it immediately. But if I like it, I may continue through an entire course…, as I’ve recently done with Modern European History from Berkeley University, Ca lifornia. I stumbled acro ss this one, enjoyed it, and discovered that I even preferred it to Strictly C ome Dancing whilst on the treadmill at the gym. I’ve never met the course leader or any fellow students and although I’ve never bothered with any of the course reading, and probabl y wouldn’t pa ss an exam, I’ve learned a hell of a lot as an informal ‘collateral learner’.

Sociologically, the podcast is an unlikely yet significant development in the support o f the activity of learning, both formally and informally, and one that is sometimes overlooked in the scramble of excitement about whatever happens to be the very latest technology. As such, a pedagogical perspective on this development ( a ‘podagogy’?) specifically within the context of H igher Education is timely. Podcasting for Learning in Universities (G. Salmon & P. Edirisingha, forthcoming: Open University Press) deals with both theory and practice in its presentation of a range of research undertaken in the UK, Australia and South Africa, together with best practice models for HE practitioners.

The examples contained in this collection of research summaries reflect a wide range of use in a variety of contexts. Nevertheless, certain common themes emerge. Although expressed in different ways, those identified in the section summarising an Australian study on ‘Podcasts and distance learning’ are typical. Podcasting has particular significance in: increasing learner motivation and engagement; facilitating and enhancing learning outcomes; mobility and lifestyle learning; and fostering a sense of community. Collectively, these accounts provide a compelling case for serious engagement within Higher Education with technology and podcasting in particular. With this in mind, the editors’ own work as part of the Information Mobile Podcasting and Learning Adaptation (IMPALA) research team is especially valuable. The 10-step pedagogic model for developing podcasting within Higher Education provides an essential step-by-step guide for anyone venturing into this area for the first time.

Another useful link is the Podcasting for Learning in Universities book site. “The book is an introduction, a guide and a key resource that will help you to explore podcasting as an exciting area of pedagogical development.”