NPR’s Marketplace had a spot about the shrinking economy of the virtual world, including analysis by Marketer Mark Hughes, who says:
The people in Second Life, they aren’t worth reaching. It’s just a weird place. It’s never gonna catch on. It’s a fad, not a fashion at all.
Hear the full story at the Marketplace website.
How exciting! I met Sophrosyne at last week’s Community Builders meeting and after some very engaging discussion, she invited me to come speak at Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon in Extropia. The plan is to discuss education in virtual worlds and our community building efforts on the Mainland sim of Chilbo. Hopefully I will be joined by Chilbo’s other Land Steward, Cosimo Urbanowicz.
Join us this coming Saturday, January 12th, at 1PM SLT (PST) in Extropia Core!
Discovered this little nugget over on the Not Possible In Real Life site. The author talks about Second Life in 2008 with Larry Pixel aka Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium (NMC), a big mover and shaker in the educational arena of Second Life, Forseti Svarog aka Giff Constable, COO of the Electric Sheep Company, and Seifert Surface, a brilliant mathematician who created the tesseract house.
If you’ve never heard of the Horizon Report, it is a collaborative annual report from the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE that surveys emerging technologies that will impact education in coming years, and I highly recommend it, especially for instructional designers and others involved in educational technology.
In any event, I’ve been looking forward to the 2008 report and spotted some surprising words from NMC CEO Larry Johnson in the interview:
Larry Pixel: NMC Virtual Worlds plans a big announcement after the first of the year. It will come out first in the NMC Campus Observer, about January 10th.
Also, the NMC’s highly influential Horizon Report (75,000+ copies downloaded or purchased in hard copy in 2007) will be released in late January. The contents of the 2008 report will be announced on the wiki next week.
Notably, this will be the first year since 2005 that some form of virtual worlds is not mentioned in the Horizon Report. I am not sure if that means it is now mainstream for edu, or if it is passe, but among my Real Life constituency, there are many many established projects, and many of these are clearly reaching mainstream faculty and other groups. Within the NMC, virtual worlds are still important, but are no longer considered the set of hot emerging technologies they once were.
I’d say the 2007 Horizon Report was a key piece of ammo for me when I first approached my dean about the possibility of using Second Life at the University of Cincinnati, and I wonder if its absence in this year’s report might be a blow to later coming faculty and IT staff who are making the virtual worlds pitch at their own institutions. Hopefully there are enough reports and data from other sources in 2007 to bolster their efforts, but I’m still surprised to hear that it won’t be included in the 2008 report.
It also means I’m even more anxious to see what the 2008 report _does_ hold. Will let you know when I find out!
The Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008 report spawned a host of predictions from other bloggers, and several commenters suggested I do the same when I reviewed the report. I think the general predictions have been pretty well covered so I’ll stick to the topic nearest and dearest to my heart: Education in Virtual Worlds.
Following the report’s question format..
What are your top 3 trend predictions for 2008?
1. Second Life will continue to be the virtual world platform of choice for educators in 2008. While competing platforms are coming online in droves, university and college administrators are conservative about investing in new and poorly understood technologies. In countless committee meetings, early adopter faculty and IT staff will have to show hard data to skeptical department heads and Second Life is the only virtual world platform with a critical mass of educators, institutions, grant dollars, and burgeoning research to provide that data. What the administrators don’t know and nearly as important as the data, however, is that Second Life is also the only platform with a large enough and diverse resource base to provide freely-given documentation, training, websites, and technical support that educators need to deliver results – a level of support that isn’t currently provided by the host institutions or Linden Lab themselves (though the power of the 4,000 some educators on the Linden Lab hostedSL Educators email list can’t be underestimated).
2. Traditional Course/Content/Learning Management Systems will belatedly establish project teams to explore how they can cross-over into virtual world territory. The big players like Blackboard and Desire2Learn will look at the ground-breaking work of the SLoodle project and the continued spread of the open-source Moodle CMS and wonder where the heck their heads were in 2007. Though there won’t be any major implementations of virtual world technology in these other platforms, internally there will be a lot of head scratching, planning, and development, which will be poorly implemented in 2009.
3. College presidents will demand proof of ROI more vigorously than any CEO in 2008. Though the cost of entry to stick an institutional sign in the virtual world yard is still relatively low, as more educational institutions develop virtual presences and programs, the cost in both time and money to build, document, and deliver courses in these environments will explode. Early adopters will be forced to defend their work in a climate of tightening budgets and the increasing corporatization of edu culture, which will yield better metrics and research study designs that will be utilized to better effect by the private sector in late 2008 and into 2009.
What goals have you set for 2008?
The University of Cincinnati Second Life Learning Community has grown from a handful of members to over 30 faculty and staff from nearly every college, and in 2007 we hosted 7 classes on our island. Beyond increasing growth of the learning community and the number of courses that explore Second Life as some component of the course, my 2008 goals include:
1. Research: Complete and publish results of a second study of educational institutions in Second Life to build upon the initial benchmark. The second time around, I hope to explore not just “who” and “what kinds of spaces are being built”, but also take a more comprehensive look at the type of educational activities that are being conducted. Are educators just delivering traditional PowerPoint slides and lectures in the virtual world, or are they doing something else?
2. Sustainability: Funding, funding, upgrade computer labs, funding, more support staff, funding, better documentation and support infrastructure, and did I mention funding? I suspect I’m not the only one working 60 or 70 hour weeks to make education in virtual worlds a reality, and if we don’t find a way to make these nascent programs sustainable, we’ll all suffer massive burn-out. In return for more institutional support, we’ll be expected to deliver on the promise, but we can’t deliver on the promise without more institutional support, so solving this chicken-egg dilemma is a high priority in 2008.
3. Collaboration: Identify and challenge departmental and institutional barriers that hinder opportunities for collaboration. Virtual worlds knock down more than just geographical barriers, they also facilitate the holy grail of interdisciplinary curriculum – digital design students can help create models and learning spaces that are programmed for interactivity by computer science students to facilitate social science research, and there’s nothing to stop this from happening across institutions as faculty find researchers from other disciplines who share similar interests from different perspectives. The technology makes it possible, it’s just a matter of discovering what cultural and procedural barriers are standing in the way.
What challenges do you expect 2008 to bring for education and the virtual worlds industry?
1. Throwing off the “games” label: 2008 will be the last year that educators have to explain that virtual worlds are not games, not because the perception disappears, but because mass media will do the job instead. Virtual world applications for other serious purposes will be discussed in newspapers and tv shows and other traditional media ad nauseum, and by the end of 2008, anyone who still thinks any animated simulation on a computer is just a game was living under a rock.
2. Integration: Educational institutions have spent millions of tax payer dollars integrating student information systems, HR systems, grant and research funding systems, payment processing systems, and more. All of this data and infrastructure exists to automate the day-to-day business processes previously done manually, and yet with closed virtual world systems, we’re back to manually creating accounts, enrolling students in groups, giving curriculum and items by hand.. Virtual world platforms that intend to be adopted by institutions will have to enable integration with institutional systems and infrastructure or be outdone by competitors who do. This is a key barrier to widespread adoption, and newcomers to the virtual world playing field will begin to address this need in 2008.
3. Scalability: The interface must be user friendly. The initial experience must be idiot-proofed (even a PhD won’t get you off of Second Life’s orientation island, and that is ridiculous.) The documentation must be free, easily accessible, and clear. The tools for teaching must be easy to find and plentiful to accommodate different teaching styles. The platform must be stable, reliable, and allow more than 2 or 3 concurrent classes in the same space. Virtual world platforms that get the basics wrong will lose educational users in droves in favor of the platforms that get them right. Second Life in particular is on the hotseat in this regard, educators are itching for a way to test their theories on a platform that makes it possible without it feeling like a root canal, and 2008 may be the make or break year.
A number of new platforms are launching in 2008. What are the biggest impacts this will have on education and virtual worlds?
1. The education separatists will get their wish and discover that closed, sterile, disinfected virtual worlds are boring as hell, but they’ll persist in using them because it’s safer and easier to defend to administrators. Their students will see the experience as one more horrible institutional misuse of a cool technology and adopt open virtual worlds in ever greater numbers.
2. New degree programs will begin to emerge that focus on the interdisciplinary cross-section of organizational leadership in online environments, virtual worlds, and pedagogy. Ok, I’m hoping to find a program like that in 2008, so let me know if you find one. 
3. The most highly paid “instructional designer” positions will require experience with 3D modeling, social networking, and virtual worlds. Nascent departments and sub-units with expertise in virtual world platforms will begin to develop in IT departments at educational institutions across the United States, and in some other nations where virtual world technologies are being aggressively pursued.
How will all of this change education in 2008?
It won’t change anything except on the margins. A few students in a few courses in a few institutions will get a revolutionary educational experience that radically changes their view of the world and their place in it, but the vast majority of institutional resources, staff time, and equipment purchases will be continue to be spent on flat web technologies and endeavors. Enormous amounts of resources will continue to be poured into crappy course management and e-portfolio systems that don’t properly utilize Web 2.0 technologies yet, let alone incorporate virtual world tech. Pockets of innovation, under-funded and under-supported, will continue to grow, however, and faculty will lead the charge as they become aware of grant and research opportunities that they can’t take advantage of because of this lack of institutional support. National and professional associations will develop virtual world Special Interest Groups and these will show rapid growth among young faculty and early adopters across disciplines, but it will be several years before virtual worlds in education begins to approach anything like mainstream adoption.
So there you have it, just in under the wire! I’ll look forward to seeing how off the mark I am at the end of 2008, but until then, a Very Happy New Year to all – especially the educational community!
I’ll try to get to the 2008 Virtual Worlds predictions here in the next couple days, but I can’t move on to 2008 until I’ve given some thought to the grand ole year of 2007. As I mentioned earlier, in 2006 I set a goal to figure out this blogging business and I think I’m doing ok in that regard. But there were a number of tools that profoundly influenced the way I experience the web, Second Life, and even have changed how I think about people and communities and society in general. So here they are, my Top 10 Tech Tools of 2007:
10. Ning and AirSet and Google Groups – All three allow you to connect with communities of interest and provide a suite of tools to keep in touch, share resources, and network with one another. All three have some features I like, none of the three do it ALL for me, but one way or another, I’ve connected with a bunch of good people through these sites.
9. StumbleUpon – I hate the name, forget to submit stuff, and don’t have any friends there, BUT! When I’m in mega procrastination mode and want the internet to entertain me, StumbleUpon is like channel surfing with the the TV remote, but on the internet instead. Flip, hmm interesting, flip, that’s stupid, flip, neat video! Caution, stumbling videos can be addictive at 3AM.
8. HUDDLES Landmark Pal – Second Life residents, if you don’t already have a landmark HUD solution for your most visited locations, this little HUD is simple, easy, and fabulous. It minimizes (TRUE minimize, not phantom) to take up less screen real estate and I love not digging in inventory to go to frequently visited places.
7. Google Web History – I avoided this tool for a while because I thought ew how creepy, a history of everything I browse! Then as I kept losing links or forgetting to tag stuff or needing to find that one website I saw that one day.. it turned into oh how neat, a history of everything I browse! I figure, google already has the data, I might as well have it too. Also neat to see my surfing trends.
6. ScriptMe! – This Second Life scripting tool is the cat’s pajamas for newbies or those with no programming experience. Hilary Mason aka Ann Enigma coded this tool to make simple scripts for those who have no programming experience. It’s simple, intuitive, and opens up worlds of possibilities for those who have never explored scripting their own objects in SL. Thanks Hilary!
5. Scobleizer – Scobleizer isn’t a website or a web app or a tagging service but he does all those things, and no I am not calling Scoble a tool. Robert Scoble is a human processor of amazingly enormous amounts of information. I think he has a real job too, but he digests a lot of info and shares the good stuff on a number of platforms and I think has such a large following that he becomes a high-end-user test case for a lot of webapps that don’t scale well, so he can point out shortcoming and flaws that other people might not notice until it’s too late. I’ve become a big fan and thanks to @Spin/Eric Rice for introducing me to @Scobleizer.
4. WordPress – I tried a zillion blog packages and after all of the trial and error came to a simple conclusion: If you’re blogging and not using WordPress, you’re nuts. WordPress has zillions of themes, zillions of widgets, EVERY webapp with a blog tie in is WordPress compatible, if you host your own, upgrading is simple.. I <3 WordPress. Bye bye Livejournal, Blogger, Typepad and others. Oh, and if you aren’t blogging but want to, it’s free. Go do it.
3. Google Feed Reader – Google’s Feed Reader makes subscribing to blogs easy and portable. I was using Sage, then I tried Flock’s built in reader, but all of those are dependent on a local machine and I need to be mobile. It’s not perfect yet (get rid of duplicates pls!), but with the addition of sharing with your Gtalk friends just a few days ago, it beats the competition hands down. It also proves that Scoble really does read all those feeds. Impressive!
2. BlogHUD – My favorite Second Life tool of the year is without a doubt BlogHUD. I just can’t tell you how much easier it has made posting images and information from in-world to out. If you need examples, just check the BlogHUD category on this site. I think this is a terrific tool for educators in Second Life as well as anyone who keeps a travel log, reports on SL news, or just wants to share the cool stuff their doing. BlogHUD Pro has a bunch of other features, but the only one I use is the cross-post images to blogs and it is SO worth $900L. It is fabulous.
1. Twitter – Twitter is the glue that holds everything together. Twitter is a steady stream of information, help, and camaraderie. Twitter is better than Jaiku or Pownce. Twitter has changed my web surfing habits, my conception of online communities, my Second Life experience, and my blogging habits. Twitter is the ultimate “just in time” information source. Twitter. How I Love Thee. Ok enough gushing! I think Twitter works best when you find a combination of Twitter add-ons that work for you. I personally use it in conjunction with GTalk, Twittermail, TwitterTools for WordPress, and SLTweets in Second Life.
Honorable Mention: Flock – Flock is a Mozilla based web browser that integrates a number of tools to make social networking and browsing media online even easier. It’s pretty slick looking and has some great ideas, but it still seems really top heavy and a little crash prone when you get a zillion tabs going. But I’ll keep an eye on it in 2008 because it does some things really well.
Dishonorable Mention: Facebook – Facebook feels like evil to me. Maybe it’s because it sounds like the “creator” stole the idea. Maybe it’s because if you don’t pick a gender it assumes you’re a guy. Maybe it’s all the privacy breaching going on. Maybe it’s the cloudy chain of who all owns it and invests in it. Maybe it’s all the stupid spammy groups. I am there and I’ll add you, but I won’t accept any of your third party super poking super whatever invites, because I am not a Facebook fan.
And that’s it! Thanks to all who brought these great tools to my attention and thanks to the people who make them possible! So what did I miss? What tools make your top 10 list for the year?
Dear Skin Designers of Second Life:
I am writing to alert you to a problem that you may not be aware of, since it has likely been a very long time since you were a newbie. I and many other educators are working with faculty and student populations to make them aware of the benefits of Second Life for teaching, learning, and research. Many of these folks have little to no previous experience with gaming or virtual worlds, and find the Second Life learning curve pretty steep. This isn’t a newsflash, I’m sure, but what might be is this:
There are virtually NO fully transferable skins for folks who wish to have an african, latino, asian, or other non-white skin type.
I have looked. I have been to all the freebie barns, stores, islands, OnRez and SLX, and every other source suggested to me.
There are, of course, many such skins for sale, but for educators like myself who are attempting to ease hundreds of new users into Second Life, it would be awfully nice to also be able to offer them some diversity of skin choices in our freebie avatar packages.
What does it say about our community if there are dozens of male and female white avatars that can be given to new users for free, but none for non-white skin types?
I know that many of you DO offer freebies at your stores, and that is very commendable, but that also requires the skill level needed to use search or find landmarks in inventory, teleport around, purchase and unpackage boxes, AND the time it takes to hunt them down. Skills and time are the very thing that many new students and faculty do not have, and for all of us who are doing our best to bring new users in-world, this is something you could help us overcome.
Please consider donating a fully transferable non-white skin to the cause and help make diversity in Second Life an easy choice for new users. If you choose to do so, let me know, I will be all too happy to acknowledge your contribution here and in-world.
Thanks,
Fleep Tuque
PS I am glad to see I am not the only one thinking about these issues, just today Poinky Malaprop writes about Avatars and Prejudice and asks a very relevant question, via Ren Rennolds at Terra Nova: Do virtual worlds liberate us from prejudices, or reinforce dominant stereotypes?
I would argue that virtual worlds enable us to challenge dominant stereotypes, but it’s all in how we choose to use the tool. Perhaps I need to re-think my own avatar choices as a result of this conversation. Thanks Poinky!
PPS Thanks to Celebrity Trollop of Second Style Fashionista for a possible lead on a transferable skin, I’ll follow up and report back!
Virtual Worlds Management released an Industry Forecast whitepaper for 2008 today, see the previous post for details to get your own copy.
The group asked 45 virtual world “industry leaders” to answer a series of 5 questions about the future of virtual worlds in 2008. These are fairly open ended questions, what are the top trend predictions, what are your goals, what challenges will the industry face, etc., and from all appearances they took the answers verbatim and pasted them all into a single document, which gives us some interesting insights into the personalities and writing styles of those who responded.
Most Interesting Responses:
Hui Xu, Founder & CEO, HiPiHi Co., Ltd.
Sure, you expect the typical buzz words and market jargon in a report like this, but of all the respondents, Hui Xu’s remarks were the most human and in parts, downright inspiring and hopeful.
Favorite quote:
“Avatars are cute, so is a world with no limits on imagination, but we have to drill down to the essence of human nature and find out how virtual world technologies can really support real human needs.”
Bravo Mr. Xu, I agree.
Brevity Award:
Guy Bendov, Co-Founder, Journeys
How to say the obvious in 10 words or less! Only one really substantive response, the rest are no-brainers.
Favorite Quote:
“Mass market adoption of virtual worlds as a main source of online entertainment will grow.”
Gee, you don’t say?
Paying Attention and Making Sense Award: Erik and Erik
Erik Bethke, CEO GoPets and Erik Hauser, Founder/Executive Creative Director of Swivel Media
Erik Bethke raises the issue of safe spaces for those under the age of 14 and the growing sophistication of internet users who will have less tolerance for clunky interfaces and privacy invasions. He also mentions legal ramifications of EULAs that make promises to the userbase that aren’t being kept. Erik Hauser discusses the difficulty in investing in experimental media in the face of a US recession and creating content that adds value to existing communities. I like plain talk and no footsy around the white elephants in the room.
Favorite Quote: (from Bethke)
“Things like [user councils] are absolutely necessary when you’re talking about a social space, which all virtual worlds are, and yet we’re only starting to see them come about in a formal way very recently. .. If you let the users themselves take ownership for their governing, they’ll catch things and smooth them out before you get in trouble with the law.”
Most Forward Thinking + Fun To Read:
Jerry Paffendorf, Co-Founder and Normative Futurist, WelloHorld
Ok, so maybe it’s a gimme that the only futurist on the list gets the Most Forward Thinking award, and perhaps I am charmed by his direct and colloquial tone, complete with smiley faces, but he’s thinking like I’m thinking and I’m looking forward to seeing what this mindshift will bring, too.
Favorite Quote:
“Unleash the Wello and take over the Horld!”
This is a 36 page document and beyond the generalizations and “how do we make money” analysis, it provides a framework for thinking about what 2008 might bring for those of us invested in the virtual worlds concept. Add it to your Must Read list, for sure.
Thanks to Virtual Worlds Management for providing it, and gratis to boot.
I’m reading the Virtual Worlds Management Industry Forecast 2008 whitepaper, see their website for details to get your own free copy, and so far the first thing that strikes me is that they took the replies from all of the respondents and apparently just pasted them all into a document without even making sure they were similarly formatted.
I guess I’m used to reading academic papers and research that uses anonymous or attributed quotes, rather than seeing exactly what so-and-so big wig from so-and-so company jotted down in an email one day. Some folks wrote formally, others seem almost offhand.
Definitely worth a read, just don’t expect it to look too much like a traditional “white paper”.
Perpetually behind on my blog reading, but today I caught up with Intellagirl’s Ubernoggin and got sucked into her Response to Jenkins, Prenskey Regarding Digital Natives post.
Intellagirl’s analysis points to two key phenomena that differentiates the Digital Native from the Digital Immigrant – exigency (need) and medial hauntings (previous experience with earlier technologies that lingers on). Now “medial hauntings” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue and until I read further, evoked images of severed limbs screaming BOO! from dark closets (oh MEDIAL not MEDICAL), but I think she’s onto something there. Certainly she addresses the kind of fear that I’ve seen in so-called digital immigrants, who already have a community of people to share thoughts with at church or the bowling league or whatever, and who are afraid to press a button in case it breaks or click a link in case there’s no way to go back, that sort of thing. And it brings to mind my own complete aversion to all things web based for years – my command line BBS works just fine thanks, I don’t need any of this newfangled blog crap! I BBSed from 1994 to 2006 and largely ignored blogs and blog culture because I had an interface that I was comfortable with and a community to share my thoughts with and what _need_ was there to change? So in that example, Intellagirl’s analysis hits it right on the head – I had no need and the few attempts I’d made at blogging were painful because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing and I kept saying to myself, “Pushing the spacebar to get new content is so much easier!”
This Digital Native/Immigrant dichotomy has been sticking in my craw because it doesn’t quite explain ME. By age demographic, I should be an immigrant. By socio-economic background and access to technology and gadgets, I should be an immigrant. By all sorts of measures and characteristics used to describe the two groups, it seems as if I should fit squarely in the immigrant category, but clearly I do not. Intellagirl’s post is the first I’ve seen that begins to get at an explanation that makes sense, not just on a macro level, but on a personal level. My adoption and wholesale immersion into the BBS/MUD community in the mid 90s was born out of great need, I was away from home, poor as a church mouse, out of my social element, and desperately seeking to connect with other people, and that technology provided something that my limited social and financial circumstances could not – COMMUNITY. I was moving constantly, like a bag lady, from apartment to apartment and state to state, but with the magic of the intarnets, my friends traveled with me wherever I went. Further, limited experience with previous technologies left me with no old habits to break, at the time I discovered email and UNIX talk and telnet, I was a fairly clean slate and picked it up quickly.
OK, so finally an explanation that begins to make sense.. Hm.
But there’s something else about my own personal experience that has been ricocheting around in my head and always comes to the forefront when I listen to one of Philip Rosedale’s speeches about how navigating 3D virtual worlds is innately more intuitive than navigating word-laden webpages. I think there’s truth to that and it seems to me that we’re entering a new .. phase, era, whatever word you prefer. But let me go back for a moment to the ricocheting thought, which is that I think my digital native behavior was/is extremely influenced by my lifelong addiction to reading. I was the kind of kid that would rather read a book than do just about anything else. If I was in the middle of a good story, nothing short of prolonged shouting could break the spell, to the annoyance of friends and parents alike. Somehow I transcended mere “literacy” and I’m sure there’s some academic term for those of us who become immersed in the written word and visualize it with such clarity that the “real world” ceases to exist while we’re in it. (I bet Henry Jenkins knows that word.)
So, being such a reader, the world of BBSs and MUDs and entirely text based virtual worlds wasn’t just an easy transition to make, it was like the holy grail – an interactive story that I was part of, that I wrote and changed and played a role and wow, what a dream come true. Webpages didn’t interest me quite as much, except as an information source, because they were like magazine stories, way too short and eventually full of too many pictures, when what I prefer is a nice big meaty novel that will take at least two or three days to read. And so I stayed in my text based virtual worlds for a very long time. Long after other BBS friends adopted LiveJournal and Blogger and reveled in posting pictures and links and video clips that could never appear in the old telnet window.
Until EverQuest, that is. MMO + RPG + 3D = love at first sight. I still remember the thrill of it: the beautiful scenery, the long walks across unexplored territory, the adrenaline rushes, the late nights, the empty Mt. Dew cans. Then DAoC and WoW and various single player games in-between (NWN, Deus Ex, Sims, etc.). And somehow, between 1994 and 2006, I transformed into a Native butterfly, an advocate for technology in education, a creator of digital content, a camera, mp3-player, cell phone carrying junkie, a 1337 translator with some old skool credibility, tivo equipped and subscribed to so many blogs, and now tweeting my life away for all to see. Indistinguishable from a so-called Native, except that my text messaging thumb dexterity is woefully inadequate.
I hate these terms, Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, because they imply all sorts of connotations that do more harm than good, and because my Women’s Studies 101 classes taught me to _always_ be suspicious of false dichotomies. It is not an either/or choice, rather there are continuums of related skill-sets and proclivities and if you look deeper under the skin of a Digital Native, you will find more complexity than a single word can possibly describe. Sure the 17 year old chained to his cell phone can text message while eating, driving, and talking, and sure his ipod seems to have grown fully formed out of his skull, but can he use a search engine effectively? Can he write a coherent paragraph with correct spelling and grammar to save his life? Increasingly, I think that answer is NO and that is worrisome.
At one time, the digital immigrant metaphor might have been helpful if it forced at least some adults to acknowledge their uncertainties, step out of their comfort zone, and adjust their thinking to respond to a generation growing up in a very different context than the realm of their own childhood. As Prensky concludes, “if Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives – i.e. all their students – they will have to change.” Yet, I worry that the metaphor may be having the opposite effect now — implying that young people are better off without us and thus justifying decisions not to adjust educational practices to create a space where young and old might be able to learn from each other.
So, what would digital multi-culturalism look like? Can we come up with a different set of metaphors to talk about these issues?
I say we MUST come up with a different set of metaphors, because to circle back to Philip Rosedale’s point about the intuitive navigability of 3D virtual spaces, if we don’t figure out a better way to talk about these concepts, the so-called natives will run so far ahead into the virtual world, that the wisdom of the text-based and physical world might be lost altogether. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this chilling report from the National Endowment for the Arts about current literacy rates. It strikes fear into the heart of this digital [whatever], because the power of all of this technology is tremendous, and while those who have accepted the term “digital immigrant” feel cut off or dismissive or frightened or too old or whatever it is are sitting around reading newspapers and drinking coffee at church and thinking that things like Second Life is just a game, the world is going to change around them, so fast it will make their heads spin if they’re still around to see it, and the certainty that this is coming fills me with such urgency, I just can’t shake it.
It keeps me burning the candle at both ends, and now we’re at the end of 2007 and my resolution in 2006 to figure out this blog crap, to bring Second Life to my campus, to work even harder to be the translator between the “immigrant” and “native” camps has been one of the most exhausting and stressful, yet wonderfully fulfilling years of my life. I’ll save the reminiscing for a different long rambly disorganized thinking-out-loud post, but at the end of all of this, I’m thinking we have a lot of work to do and we can’t do it fast enough. I don’t know if Digital Multi-Culturalism will cut the mustard, either, because that implies some acceptance of the status-quo that I don’t want to accept. I want to be intolerant of intolerance in the digital sense. I don’t want to just talk about it, I want to smack the hand that reaches for the phone book instead of a search engine. As I reach the ripe old age of my early 30s, I finally have come to understand that not all old people are wise, but there is wisdom in age and experience, and frankly, I fear we’ll lose that wisdom when the “natives” put down their video games and start harnessing this technology to change the world around them.
I think, moving forward, that we need to challenge those words wherever we see or hear them, because they are perpetuating a concept that we can’t afford to continue.
I wrote a bunch of things, but I think I’ve shared enough about me today. Thanks to whomever sent this over twitter, it was very timely.
