Internet2 meetings and interactive websites
I am attending the Fall Internet2 meetings and just finished a review of web resources available to our resources. So far we looked at two resources, Whyville and the Exploratorium.
(c) Exploratorium, Photograph by Amy Snyder.
Whyville is a simulated environment for young students that offers social networking and real learning experiences for them. The students earn money referred to as “clams” in this setting. I wandered around it a little while, created an avatar, and took some quizzes. I thought it had potential.
The Exploratorium holds a true plethora of resources for K-6, and secondary science teachers. They have integrated live and simulated learning environments as part of their educational presence on the Web. I enjoyed their top ten sites where I found Activity TV, this was fun and reminded of the Instructables web site.
Bret,
It sounds like you had a good trip to the Internet2 meeting. I am glad that Whyville was brought up in regards to learning possibilities. A few years ago I ran across some research related to Whyville while looking for information on Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs). There are actual quite a few opportunities related to ways that Whyville might be used. I tend to look at two scenarios when looking at MUVEs, either Macro or Micro explorations of a system, or simulating something that you couldn’t in school. The following examples I think show both.
One of the experiences that I am referring to speaks about the purposeful implementation of Whypocks within Whyville, and how students experienced the spread of an infectious disease within this virtual world. Quite interesting the problems solving and hypotheses that students come up with. It is also interesting in the sense of our students today don’t actually have too many real infectious diseases to worry about, as compared to other parts of the world were disease such as tuberculous and other infectious diseases are more prevalent. Here are the two references I am referring to:
The other experience that I am referring to was actually a computing error that occurred within Whyville that affected students avatars. Because of a Server failure some data was lost in regards to the faces that students created in Whyville, this lead to everyone having the same face as a new user would. This experience lead to Whyville users talking about being a “Newb” and how identity can be affected.
I don’t believe this is listed online at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kafai/paper/index.htm , but may have been in one of the books co-authored by Dr. Kafai http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kafai/print/index.htm.
These articles really start to talk about some of the work that has been done already in these spaces in the educational realm and offer some insight to ways we might want to look at using technology to offer learning opportunities to students.
Thanks,
Tadge