Creativity costs money in Second Life
19-December-2006
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This is a long overdue post on Second life. Honest - I was there before all the hype. And ten days ago I ran a workshop as a semester course for art education students at the University of Flensburg on using games and immersive environments in education. As part of that workshop we asked all participants to establish an account in second Life and developed a number of exercises and activities for them. The main aim was for them to evaluate the potentials and drawbacks of Second Life and immersive environments for art education.
I will write another report on the planning and processes of the workshop itself. In this post I will provide my own thoughts on Second Life - although my ideas are very much based on the feedback, exercise and comments of the students.
Firstly Second Life is compelling. The major problem was getting the students to stop ‘playing’ in order to have some feedback and discussion. However I am not so sure that is not just due to novelty value - it may well be less compelling after ten or twenty hours.
Second Life and other such environments raise interesting questions about identity. It may be because they are art students, but all the participants on the Flensburg course spent a long, long time designing their avatars - getting their hair right, doing their makeup and worrying about thir clothes. And I think having an avatar and being able to change its appearance does help in developing and projecting an on-line identity and presence that is often lacking in text based on-line communication. Having said that I worry about the idea of a second identity. I think we should be encouraging learners to see their on line identity as part of themselves - not something separated. I said this at the plenary session on informal learning at Educa On-line and was criticised by some of the games people who pointed to the importance of play in learning. I take their point, but am still unconvinced by the subtext in SL which is that you can be someone completely different than yourself (despite being in a world which attempts whenever it can to copy western capitalism as a model).
SL - like other such environments - raises interesting question about gender. The students in my workshop were all female (interesting in itself that only female students signed up for the course). One chose a male identity in SL and was interested in the different ways ion which others reacted to her.
We were using 2 year old IBM Thinkpads for the workshop and had considerable hustle getting round the university firewall. SL was slow on the Thinkpads though notably faster on my Dual Core MacBook. Furthermore the search engine was broken all of the Friday and in general the performance of SL leaves something to be desired. Rendering can be very slow when going to new locations and text is often difficult to read.
Although in theory you can meet interesting people and talk to them the reality is that communication is as perfunctory as on some of the better populated bulletin boards. The main topic of conversation is sex and most comments are fairly crass. I guess for any real communication you need to meet your own friends. SL dies of course provide many social areas - bars and clubs but after the first five minutes novelty of watching our character dancing in a sleazy bar and having a few drinks it soon gets pretty boring.
So - education. Well the main education areas are pretty peaceful - no-one but me ever appears to be there. And pretty dull - a few notices and advertising for on-line courses -what is innovative in that. OK - I see some of the universities are developing on-line classrooms. But why? There is no more interest in having my icon sit down to an on-line lecture than there is in sitting down to a lecture myself. And considerably less contextual interest. Why oh why do we keep trying to copy traditional pedagogies in different on-line environments.
But my major reservation is the limitations on creativity. the students in the workshop are used to creating and wanted to create their own ‘exhibits’ in SL. Now you can make some squares and triangles and other basis shapes and can give them some texture. But its not much and not enough. Of course I suspect you can do much more if you pay but there is the rub.
The whole model of SL is a capitalist model and doing anything costs. This is not a tool for free public education. I am also amused to see the developing national identities and especially in the appearance of German BierKellers and German flags all over the place.
Having said that I do see a future for such immersive environments. But such places need to be outside the control of the Linden Corporation and need to be designed to allow real creativity for learners. In Europe there is particular interest in ‘virtual exchanges’ between learners in different countries and I think such an environments could be brilliant for this. But the learners must be able not just to select form a selection on Linden sanctioned appearances and names but to really shape and develop their own environment and to collaborate in the development of its social norms and social environments. OK - it might end up like SL - dominated by sex clubs, and strictly based on wealth. But I am still optimistic that there is an alternative.
Technorati Tags: e-learning, SecondLife
2 Replies (comments)
1 I suggest you take a closer look before passing judgement
Firstly Second Life is compelling. The major problem was getting the students to stop ‘playing’ in order to have some feedback and discussion.
Students are engaged! Great! And with any new piece of creative software students need time to play with it to figure it out and see what they can do with it. Especially something as novel and related to identity as SL. Expecting students to apply themselves to set tasks as soon as they get in there is totally unreasonable.
Having said that I worry about the idea of a second identity. I think we should be encouraging learners to see their on line identity as part of themselves - not something separated.
Despite the fact that our current online identities aren't an accurate reflection of ourselves anyway, you seem to make the mistake of thinking that identity in SL is necessarily completely separate from the rest of our identity. It can be an integrated extension of our existing identity. In fact my experience, and that of many others, is that SL allows us to explore aspects of identity that we otherwise would not. In that sense it can be like performance or acting.
Furthermore the search engine was broken all of the Friday and in general the performance of SL leaves something to be desired. Rendering can be very slow when going to new locations
I can't argue with you on the technical difficulties. Linden Lab are having trouble coping with the influx of new residents.
and text is often difficult to read
There are ways around that.
The main topic of conversation is sex and most comments are fairly crass.
This is patently untrue. You obviously didn't wander far out of some of the more public areas. Like the real world, or the web, there's a lot of good stuff and a lot of unsavoury stuff. You can choose to engage in only the good stuff, once you know where it is.
Admittedly, if the search engine was down then this makes it harder to find the good stuff, but there other ways to find out about educational projects and events in SL... like Google!
Well the main education areas are pretty peaceful - no-one but me ever appears to be there.
If you wander into a random classroom in a random university at any random time (remember it's a 24/7 world) you are likely to have the same experience. Try attending when the events are actually on.
OK - I see some of the universities are developing on-line classrooms. But why? There is no more interest in having my icon sit down to an on-line lecture than there is in sitting down to a lecture myself.
There is a sense of shared presence and experience in attending a presentation in SL that is not possible anywhere on the web, including videoconferencing and web-conferencing.
Why oh why do we keep trying to copy traditional pedagogies in different on-line environments.
Good point! Some educational institutions are just replicating the teacher-centred class-based model in SL, and this doesn't make sense. There are still arguments for running a traditional class in SL for distance education though.
But many of us are exploring innovative ways of taking advantage of the unique qualities of an immersive 3D world to create new types of experiential learning.
But my major reservation is the limitations on creativity. the students in the workshop are used to creating and wanted to create their own ‘exhibits’ in SL. Now you can make some squares and triangles and other basis shapes and can give them some texture. But its not much and not enough.
Graham, you have completely missed the point on SL with this one. The whole world is created by the residents - the buildings, the vehicles, the avatars. Those basic shapes are the building blocks of the whole world! Students can build and script just about anything they want.
'Limitations on creativity'? OMG! Have you looked around at what's there?
Of course I suspect you can do much more if you pay but there is the rub. The whole model of SL is a capitalist model and doing anything costs.
No... basic accounts that students can use are free. There are plenty of things you can do for free, including building. Like any innovative technology or software platform the institutions bear the brunt of the financial cost. In this case, buying and renting the land to build permanent projects on.
By 'capitalist world', if you mean run by Linden Lab, then yes, it is a closed proprietary system. But so is YouTube. This does present some problems, but Linden Labs is planning to open source its software.
Besides, SL is precursor to something better. I won't argue it's the be all and end all in 3D virtual worlds.
By 'capitalist world', if you mean it has an in-world economy, then you might be interested to know that it has been used to run classes on running businesses.
This is not a tool for free public education.
Neither are computers or the web - someone has to pay for them somewhere. Try thinking of SL as a platform, like the web, not a simple service, like Blogger.
But the learners must be able not just to select form a selection on Linden sanctioned appearances and names
The names are limited, yes, but the types of avatars that can be created are limitless.
but to really shape and develop their own environment and to collaborate in the development of its social norms and social environments.
Which is exactly what is happening. Linden Lab are taking a hands-off approach to the world, letting residents form their own forms of governance, legal systems, IP protection, mediation and conflict resolution systems, police force for dealing with griefers etc. It is a fantastic experiment in social development.
I urge you to do some decent research on the educational value of SL before passing judgment. All you have to do is Google "second life education" and you will find a lot of good information, like the Second Life Education Wiki.
Please take another, closer look... you might be pleasantly surprised.
2 Agreed, but with nuances
Hi Graham (we met at BlogTalk), I share a lot of your reservations, which to me amount to that SL isn't realizing its full potential yet.
And in the end it might be some other environment, other than SL, that does. I think 3D immersive environments not meant as a game have a significant place as a platform in the spectrum of on-line tools we can use to communicate, meet, learn, and collaborate.
The best stuff I have seen in SL tried to leverage the unique aspects, as opposed to recreating well kempt suburbs or red light districts, which are witness to the rather uncreative and base levels of much of the participants.
The cool stuff that stands can be categorized along the lines of: simulation and virtual! action learning prototyping visualization of complex data structures new experiences (2nDisability e.g., where you can experience what it means to have certain disabilities, or a complete working fantasy eco-system as Svarga) immersion in encounters (immersion, being in the now, is a scarce resource in our information abundant society) building things defying laws of physics You mention being limited in creativity is the only thing I do not buy at all.
The squares and triangles are the stuff all of SL is made from by users. It is not a very intuitive building interface, and it should allow importing from other applications (which with the OS client it might soon do), but it does not limit you in any way.
I would find it interesting to see where the real limits are, so that artistic expression has something to bang into. Creativity needs limits/obstacles somewhere to shine. But it is not in the building in SL. Building is free as well. There is a charge for uploading textures (30 textures for a US$), as there is a charge to permanently put stuff on display (buying land). But that can come hardly as a surprise. You are simply buying your hosting services piecemeal. No on-line environment is free from hosting costs after all.
best, Ton
