Chelsey’s Weblog

Virtual Tools: Learning about Care in SecondLife
Chelsey Hauge
Ethnography and New Media
Professor Jason Pine
Dec. 8, 2008

“We should not simple assume that the most effective use of these technologies lies I the attempt to re-create, in detail, the same kinds of personal contact and exchange with which we are currently familiar. In fact, if we expect these technologies to deliver, at a distance, the veer same kinds of sensory input and interactive potential that we encounter in normal daily life, they will almost certainly continue to disappoint. What is we instead allowed them to define brand new niches for genuine action and intervention?” (Clark)

New media technologies hold new potential for facilitating learning. I am particularly concerned with facilitating learning about and across difference in terms of privilege and power. SecondLife appears to hold power to release new patterns and interactions in learning. At the same time, there are some serious roadblocks that need to be addressed. The potential to use SecondLife as a tool for learning, especially when we consider the way the body is left behind and at once integrated into knowing and being is unique. This research primarily addresses the ways in which SecondLife, through its connectivity to and interaction with Real Life can open up new niches of learning and understanding across and about notions of difference.

SecondLife and RealLife interact in ways that do not leave the body behind, but instead extend “embodied awareness in highly specific, local, and material ways that would be impossible without electronic prosthesis” (Hayles, 290). Media and literary scholar Katherine Hayles theorizes that it is impossible to conceive of consciousness- whether virtual or not- without embodied knowing and experience. She goes on to explain our interaction with virtual realities and smart machines like computers and mobile media technologies to be examples in which our loop of knowing extends beyond the body and language in order to include in the feedback loop the machine- the extension of embodied  knowledge that would be impossible without electronic prosthesis. Here, neither embodied knowledge nor the body is left behind, simply they are included in the virtual loops of knowledge production that integrates virtual reality into its existence and being. Through new media technologies like Second Life, we then are extending our feedback loops in include not only the technology but also the virtual environment inhabited by the digital presence of other people. Extending our feedback loop in this way increases the ways we are able to open ourselves to receive knowledge, and thus new patterns of learning become thinkable and possible.

In navigating these spaces, there is often concern in the educational community that new media and the Internet, especially virtual environments, may inhibit learning amongst children and youth, and social interaction amongst all people participating. Yet, in order to part pate in virtual environments, argues Marika Lauders in  her article “Conceptualizing Personal Media,” one must  be able to act as a cultural producer. Without being able to produce cultural artifacts and apply multi modal literacy’s to the environment, participants would be unable to engage or understand the virtual world around them (Lauders). Examples of ways in which SecondLife users engage through cultural production include the creation and maintenance of an avatar (the digital people who inhabit SecondLife and who are controlled by program users), dressing for parties, creating and hanging art in galleries, and interacting both through auditory speakers and visual written communication. SecondLife avatars often give gifts, have jobs, and attend parties. All of these activates require participation in culturally acceptable norms and require the user to produce cultural artifacts. The artifacts reflect both the physical life outside of SecondLife experienced by the user as well as the negotiation of multi-modal literacies, which generate particular meaning within SecondLife. This engagement with physical worlds, cultural artifacts, and multimodal literacy’s within SecondLife suggests that engagement with virtual worlds might produce a new kind of learning niche.

Media scholar Andy Clark presents, in his article “A Sense of Presence” the idea that new media technologies in fact do construct a new niche of knowing as opposed to replacing an older understanding of the ways in which learners understand and process information. Katherine Hayles, an expert on posthumanism in digital worlds, writes in her book “How We Became PostHuman that it is impossible to exist- whether as an avatar or as a body made of skin and bones, without recognizing that experience and existence is embodied. Again here, we return to the idea that Hayles presented about integrating machines into our feedback loop to understand the world. In this sense, we are seeing a new niche for learning. These two ideas grow into each other, for indeed a knowledge loops that acknowledges the body and newly integrates technology does create extended awareness and new niches of being and existence that were previously unthinkable.

These new niches of existence and of being release potential for our learning about each other in new embodied forms. This is very important because in what bell hooks refers to as a “racist capitalist hetero-sexist patriarchy,” the lines of division between different kinds of people with different kinds of bodies are highly threatening and destructive in the pursuit of knowledge.

This study, then, aims to understand the ways in which interacting through a feedback loop that includes the virtual reality SecondLife as part of the construct and mediation that filters information and understanding of the world can release new potentials for learning. I am particularly interested in learning about difference and tolerance amongst diverse groups of young people. When learning involved a feedback loop that integrates both physical environments with virtual realities, these environments are allowed to mingle and become intertwined with each other. I hypothesize that when this happens, there is an increased potential for learning to be structured around caring in the manner defined by education scholar Nell Noddings.
Nell Noddings, in her book “Learning to Care in Schools” suggests that if education was structured around circles of care that problems of difference and alienation would subside. This would happen because all students would engage in learning about how to care for oneself, intimate others, physical objects, distant others, nature, and ideas, among other topics. This would topple the hierarchy currently plaguing our education system that places a higher value on traditional liberal arts subjects like math and history, which is alienating to some learners. In addition to being alienating, this system serves as a model to teach children and young people to alienate each other and create divisive barriers among which some people are defined as more capable and more intelligent. With Noddings’ idea, we try to move education beyond these barriers, transcending difference and celebrating unique talents.

The hope is to lay the groundwork for a Collaborative digital curriculum that is intertwined with Noddings’ helpful model of how to care for — and create caring — young adults. The curriculum should encourage youth who are often marginalized to safely collaborate online — within the means they have. This means creating opportunities and experiences that can be executed from school and library computers and executing collaborative videos that can be done from nothing more than cell phone or cheap Flip Camera. Create a collaborative learning experiences for young adults that tap into Nel Noddings’ “Circles of Caring” in a clear and precise way using virtual worlds could be key in providing global networking transformative programs. In Nodding’s work, she defines seven “circles” in which youth come to experience and understand the world. Through this model, she believes young adults will be empowered to contribute to the overall health of society.

Although there are a number of projects that are dealing with the topic of Collaborative Digital (see helpful links) few have ever tried to tie Noddings’ understanding of an effective education built around circles of care. This project wants to avoid being heavy handed and serve as a more bottom-up approach, where children have the flexibility and freedom to explore and understand any topic of their choosing.

This research takes place on a very small group of people. This group of people includes only a male in his late twenties who I will call S; and a woman in her early thirties who I will call S, and of course, myself- I am a woman in my mid twenties. The three of us come from widely different backgrounds and spend time out side of SL together. After introducing both participants to SecondLife, I toured them through a few of the sims I am familiar with, including dance parties, a French bar, a clothing store, and a music café. The participants changed their avatars, or digital representations of themselves, and responded to these changes, as well as participated in a few different directed activities. After the participation in SecondLife, we also engage din discussion together about the experience and its meaning in our lives. Participants wrote diaries after each experience, and then reflected together in a shared physical space about the experience. Diary entries and images from this experience can be found on my blog, http://chelseyhauge.wordpress.com/. This is an example of how a research project in SecondLife might be done in the future, on a larger scale in order to consider how learning about and across difference can occur in SecondLife. Primarily, future research might consider in what capacity SecondLife can be a tool in transformative education.

The most significant finding from this small example study is that SecondLife experiences are most powerful learning tools when used as a component of a larger educational plan. While experiences in SecondLife do indeed suggest an interaction of the computer with the body in order to build relationships with others and the world as Katherine Hayles has so clearly emphasized in her book, this machine-mediated experience needs to be paired with real interaction in order for it to become a transformative learning space for the participants. This was evidenced in journal comments about appearance and role play that emphasized physical characteristics and their relationship (or lack there of) to what, or who was behind the screen. The participants made many comments about their avatars not looking like themselves, trying to be someone else, and even about users “cheating” their identities through changing what they look like in SecondLife.

This level of engagement with the physical does lead to a certain degree of curiosity that is powerful insofar as it moves participants to ask many questions of each other about the others life that are not guarded or shaped by assumptions made about physical appearance. However, these questions tend to stay in the physical realm, and the participants tend to ask each other questions and/or comment on how differently avatars and their “people” look, act or behave. Focusing on this difference between real and digital puts an emphasis on what we dream or aspire to be like physically, and could guide research about desires and dream states about the body and image. This does not, though, facilitate transformative education.

SecondLife, though, when coupled with real interaction and discussion about the above mentioned characteristics can have potential to fuel transformative education and critical consciousness. In the right setting, it serves as a play-space to explore questions about identity and relationships as they are linked to questions of power like race, sexuality, gender, geography, age, and other markers of power. However, without post-SecondLife experiences that are situated in a Frierian construct of education for critical consciousness, the experiences in the play-space bear no meaning in real life.

Initially, I considered that the question-asking and curiosity about how one is so different physically in real life than in SecondLife interpretations might hold potential for users and learners to effectively care about each other in new ways in the sense suggested by Noddings. However, it became apparent in this very small experiment that caring is more likely produced through the critical engagement in real space rather than in the SecondLife space alone. In order to foster this kind of empathy towards others at all, users need to move beyond stereotypes and stigmas attached to users of virtual worlds. This was a major barrier in the case of one of the participants, who tended to cling to stereotypes like “all SecondLife users use SecondLife because they don’t know how to have real lives,” and “all SecondLife users are probably uneducated.” While SecondLife might provide a space for those who have difficulty interacting or feeling like they are part of community in real life to engage at different levels, certainly this portion of people does not include on SecondLife users. Additionally, SecondLife users are people who have access to high level technology and fast Internet. It is unlikely that the conception that they are widely uneducated holds any water at all. These are issues though that must be addressed when working with new virtual-world users and trying to use virtual worlds as a learning tool for critical consciousness.

SecondLife provides a very interesting platform for people to come together in one virtual space even as they may be physically at great distances. For those of us interested in building critical consciousness and in activating young people to take a lead in international issues, SecondLife appears to hold endless potential. This virtual space does indeed hold potential for connecting youth globally. We must be careful, though, to construct learning in a way such that young people are able to engage both in SecondLife and in real life in supportive environments. These environments should be structured around Noddings circles of care.

In designing a curriculum for youth educators that opens pedagogical spaces of critical consciousness and makes use of virtual worlds, we should consider creating “home groups” of learners who interact with other “home groups.” Home groups, in this vision, would be small groups of students working with a facilitator or educator to guide them in local contexts. These groups would engage in significant team building activities in order to build trust and community within the group. Home groups could then engage on SecondLife with other home groups from other states, cities, nations, and continents. This would require educators coming together globally to construct a series of themes about which the youth could engage. Likewise, youth playing a leadership role could select and help to guide home groups through the themes.

While youth would participate in virtual activities surrounding a variety of themes, they would process these experiences in their home groups. The home group leader would be responsible for creating a pedagogical space where issues of power, activism, and justice could be interrogated. Creating informed youth in this manner, and providing a supportive environment that networks with other supportive home groups is crucial. Here, we see the vision shared by many media theorists of a networked existence consisting of nodal points come into focus in terms of education and young people. Issues would be shared and learning exchanged through the network, each home group serving as a point of gathering for tiny nodes of interaction, and those tiny nodes would each make up a larger node in the network (Hayles, Shaviro).
The reality of ubiquitous computing in the lives of youth worldwide has potential to affect education tremendously. However, this shift needs to be carefully planned out in ways that are beyond our current educational system. While wide-scale change like that suggested by Noddings is possible in the digital world, especially in education, we have yet to reach this utopia. For this reason, this kind of progressive use of virtual worlds in education that focuses on empathy, care, concern, love, and hope in the world seems to exist and flourish in after school pockets and in small and very progressive private and charter schools.

The existence of educators working in this mode is hopeful, however the movement is piecemeal, existing in pockets here and there and inside of small networks of communities stretched across the globe. At this moment in time, it would be most effective for educators and theorists as well as youth learners to come together to begin to bridge the gaps in learning and access that still plague our youth. Digital worlds hold extreme potential for learning in new ways, for releasing questions and curiosity about difference, and for providing experiences to youth that they can then process in the real world in pursuit of critical consciousness and peaceful youth alliance building and leadership.

Works Cited

Clark, Andy. “A Sense of Presence”. Pragmatics and Cognition (2007): 413-433.

Hayles, Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

hooks, bell.1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, New York: Routeledge.

Luders, Marika. “Conceptualizing Personal Media” New Media and Society  (2008).

Noddings, Nel. 1992. The Challenge To Care in Schools. New York: Teacher’s College Press.

Shaviro, Steven. 2003. Connected, Or What it Means to Live in the Networked Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Smith, Randall B. “Experiences with the Alternate Reality Kit: An Example of he Tension Between Literalism and Magic.” (1987): ACM-0-89791.

All work archived with participant diary entries and images at:
Hauge, Chelsey. http://chelseyhauge.wordpress.com/

“We should not simple assume that the most effective use of these technologies lies I the attempt to re-create, in detail, the same kinds of personal contact and exchange with which we are currently familiar. In fact, if we expect these technologies to deliver, at a distance, the veer same kinds of sensory imput and interactive potential that we encounter in normal daily life, they will almost certainly continue to disappoint. What is we instead allowed them to define brand new niches for genuine action and intervention?” (Clark, Andy)

New media technologies like Second Life tend to be the recipients of negative criticism about the scary fetishistic potential it holds for those who spend lots of time in SecondLife. Often, these criticisms take form in the concern that those who pass extreme amounts of time in SecondLife do so in order to replace RL, primarily because they are unable to interact in the “normal” way in “real life.” Instead of taking this opinion or even trying to respond to it, this research primarily addresses the ways in which SecondLife, through its connectivity to and interaction with Real Life can open up new niches of learning and understanding across and about notions of difference.

SecondLife and RealLife interact in ways that do not leave the body behind, but instead extend “embodied awareness in highly specific, local, and material ways that would be impossible without electronic prosthesis” (Hayles, 290). Media and literary scholar Katherine Hayles theorizes that it is impossible to conceive of consciousness- whether virtual or not- without embodied knowing and experience. She goes on to explain our interaction with virtual realities and smart machines like computers and mobile media technologies to be examples in which our loop of knowing extends beyond the body and language in order to include in the feedback loop the machine- the extension of embodied  knowledge that would be impossible without electronic prosthesis. Here, neither embodied knowledge nor the body is left behind, simply they are included in the virtual loops of knowledge production that integrates virtual reality into its existence and being. Through new media technologies like Second Life, we then are extending our feedback loops in include not only the technology but also the virtual environment inhabited by the digital presence of other people. Extending our feedback loop in this way increases the ways we are able to open ourselves to receive knowledge, and thus new patterns of learning become thinkable and possible.

In navigating these spaces, there is often concern in the educational community that new media and the Internet, especially virtual environments, may inhibit learning amongst children and youth, and social interaction amongst all people participating. Yet, in order to part pate in virtual environments, argues Marika Luders in  her article “Conceptualizing Personal Media,” one must  be able to act as a cultural producer. Without being able to produce cultural artifacts and apply multi modal literacy’s to the environment, participants would be unable to engage or understand the virtual world around them (Lauders). Examples of ways in which SecondLife users engage through cultural production include the creation and maintenance of an avatar (the digital people who inhabit SecondLife and who are controlled by program users), dressing for parties, creating and hanging art in galleries, and interacting both through auditory speakers and visual written communication. SecondLife avatars often give gifts, have jobs, and attend parties. All of these activates require participation in culturally acceptable norms and require the user to produce cultural artifacts. The artifacts reflect both the physical life outside of SecondLife experienced by the user as well as the negotiation of multi-modal literacies, which generate particular meaning within SecondLife. This engagement with physical worlds, cultural artifacts, and multimodal literacy’s within SecondLife suggests that engagement with virtual worlds might produce a new kind of learning niche.

Media scholar Andy Clark presents, in his article “A Sense of Presence” the idea that new media technologies in fact do construct a new niche of knowing as opposed to replacing an older understanding of the ways in which learners understand and process information. Katherine Hayles, an expert on posthumanism in digital worlds, writes in her book “How We Became PostHuman that it is impossible to exist- whether as an avatar or as a body made of skin and bones, without recognizing that experience and existence is embodied. Again here, we return to the idea that Hayles presented about integrating machines into our feedback loop to understand the world. In this sense, we are seeing a new niche for learning. These two ideas grow into each other, for indeed a knowledge loops that acknowledges the body and newly integrates technology does create extended awareness and new niches of being and existence that were previously unthinkable.

These new niches of existence and of being release potential for our learning about each other in new embodied forms. This is very important because in what bell hooks refers to as a “racist capitalist hetero-sexist patriarchy,” the lines of division between different kinds of people with different kinds of bodies are highly threatening and destructive in the pursuit of knowledge.

This study, then, aims to understand the ways in which interacting through a feedback loop that includes the virtual reality SecondLife as part of the construct and mediation that filters information and understanding of the world can release new potentials for learning. I am particularly interested in learning about difference and tolerance amongst diverse groups of young people. When learning involved a feedback loop that integrates both physical environments with virtual realities, these environments are allowed to mingle and become intertwined with each other. I hypothesize that when this happens, there is an increased potential for learning to be structured around caring in the manner defined by education scholar Nell Noddings.

Nell Noddings, in her book “Learning to Care in Schools” suggests that if education was structured around circles of care that problems of difference and alienation would subside. This would happen because all students would engage in learning about how to care for oneself, intimate others, physical objects, distant others, nature, and ideas, among other topics. This would topple the hierarchy currently plaguing our education system that places a higher value on traditional liberal arts subjects like math and history, which is alienating to some learners. In addition to being alienating, this system serves as a model to teach children and young people to alienate each other and create divisive barriers among which some people are defined as more capable and more intelligent. With Noddings’ idea, we try to move education beyond these barriers, transcending difference and celebrating unique talents.
The hope of this project is to create a collaborative learning experience for young adults that taps into Nel Noddings’ “Circles of Caring” in a clear and precise way. In Nodding’s work, she defines seven “circles” in which youth come to experience and understand the world. Through this model, she believes young adults will be empowered to contribute to the overall health of society.

The hope is to lay the groundwork for a Collaborative digital curriculum that is intertwined with Noddings’ helpful model of how to care for — and create caring — young adults. The curriculum should encourage youth who are often marginalized to safely collaborate online — within the means they have. This means creating opportunities and experiences that can be executed from school and library computers and executing collaborative videos that can be done from nothing more than cell phone or cheap Flip Camera.

Although there are a number of projects that are dealing with the topic of Collaborative Digital (see helpful links) few have ever tried to tie Noddings’ understanding of an effective education built around circles of care. This project wants to avoid being heavy handed and serve as a more bottom-up approach, where children have the flexibility and freedom to explore and understand any topic of their choosing.

Methodology:

This research takes place on a very small group of people. This group of people includes only Samuel Morales, my boyfriend; and Keervi Poole, my roommate, and of course, myself. The three of us come from widely different backgrounds and spend time out side of SL together. After introducing them to SecondLife, I have asked each of them to maintain a diary about their experiences, as is suggested by Randall Smith in his article “Experiences with the Alternate Reality Kit,” and is also suggested by______, __________.

Resistance and Difference

-role play in a fantasy world
“he doesn’t seem Mexican anymore, just seems like a rando without a social life”
“I think this is a substitute for real like. I don’t think its healthy very much at all.”

It is interesting that K identified this process as something only people without a social life would engage in. She also commented that she believed most people to be rather uneducated in SL. Of course, these are assumptions that don’t hold much water next to a larger study on who the users of SL are, largely a diverse middle and upper class crew- a group of people who tend to have more education than K herself. K comes from a working class white family and is completing her bachelors degree part time. She works as a dog groomer. She dropped out of high school at 15, got her GED at 25, and started college part time at 27. Its an especially interesting comment that “he (he being the third particpant, Sam/Xolo who is from Vercruz, Mexico) doesn’t seem Mexican anymore, just seems like a rando without a social life.” The implication that identities so deeply tied to our sense of being in RL- things like being Mexican, being white, or being as related to race or ethnicity- can become irrelevant in SL is somewhat challenging. While K still knows that S is Mexican, he doesn’t seem that way in his virtual representation, though she can walk into the next room and hear him speaking Spanish and see him “being Mexican.”

The idea that our differences can become seemingly new, our seeming-ness associated with the fixed qualities of being given to us but society in RL indicates an emergent potentiality for role play and understanding different ways of being. I do not mean here that through role play in SL we are able to understand the way in which certain groups of people with certain stereotypes fixed qualities about themselves inhabit the world, or feel or express relations of power. Instead, this seems to suggest that SL reveals a new way of being that exists neither in the RL nor completely in SL.

Being or existing in a way such that one is not tied to physical identifiers introduces new potential for learning about difference. Because through learning about difference in daily physical life is deeply related to physical appearance, when interaction that involves learning about difference in SL arises it does so through initiation of the topic by one of the parties in SL as opposed to deep assumptions about others related to physical identifiers.

It is also relevant that in SL, because physical identifiers are fluid and we are aware that someone has chosen them, that judging takes on a new form. In order to understand some of the choices, one must initiate conversation. This is relevant to learning because in real life discussion about difference is often avoided at all costs, especially when that difference is physically visable. The two people who participated with me in this research had a discussion at one point with some avatars in a French party sim about ethnic identity. The conversation was brief, and was spawned by the difficulty in communication that was occurring between the French party-goers and K and S, who do not speak French. While K disengaged after a few minutes, S was very attentive and engaged in translating words from English and Spanish to French via an online translator so he could communicate.

Additionally, S communicated with me asking how to say certain things in English so he could feed them into the translator and communicate in French in SL. This, in turn, drew me into the process. While K became very frustrated, both myself and S engaged with the French party-goers about the kinds of alcohol popular in Mexico and Mexican and American tradition and culture.

This instance suggests that through introducing into the feedback loop technological reality created through the computer by the presence of other avatars, our learning another language and about another culture very different from our own was stimulated. We felt a sense of urgency when we discovered the other avatars did not speak English to communicate. Our co-presence in real life fed into this, our excitement and confusion shared in real life directed us to an online translator. This intermingling of real and virtual worlds and conversation led to further conversation later that evening after we had disconnected from SecondLife about cultural and linguistic differences. This suggests that SL might serve as a jumping off point for those trying to stimulate interest in global issues.

Even so, K became very frustrated, though she was in a similar setting both in her physical world and in the virtual world. In order for virtual worlds and places of encounter to spur learning and interest in difference, there needs to be a fluid understanding and high ability of the user to navigate the system and to receive information. K had some difficulty navigating the system, which reflected the general frustration she experiences when using a computer. Clearly, learning through the integration of technology into the feedback loop of understanding- in this way recollecting back to Katherine Hayles’ work on perceiving the world thorugh the virtual, thus making new ideas and encounters possible for the first time.

Different Bodies, Different Experiences

“its like inventing reality, like trying to be whatever you feel like at the moment- things the rich people in RL can do in seconds because they have money- its like in SL you get to be a celebrity with access to body shifting surger to fulfill your whims.

“I think its interesting…. To think about the different kinds of lives people live because of their skin color- except the realities are not even real in SL. In RL, perceived difference has real consequences. In SL, perceived difference is only perceived because you don’t know who it really is… and we don’t punish for role play”

“gender/sex/size/stereotypes madly reinforces as you see so many avatars that are just completely impossible to be real- why do we pusue these Barbie standards? On the other hand, who am I to tell a woman what is beautiful, and who am I to say what she wants to be is or is not valid? Yet also, why does our longing flow in that direction? Where’s the spout?”

“he doesn’t seem Mexican anymore, just seems like a rando without a social life”

These comments on physical difference like the way an avatar dresses, skin color, and gender stood out to me from within the diary entries about physical difference. These responses were made after we I took the other two avatars to buy new clothing, to a skin shop to get new skin, and to select new body types.

Again here we see the possibility of being able to understand experience of difference through the dawning of a new avatar. Yet, that experience is unembodied, and this seems to be what S and K are pointing to, suggesting in some ways it is “real” experience yet in many ways it creates few parallels to “real” life. Instead of re-inventing “real” life, SL has the power to instead to spark and support imagination.

In sparking imagination in this virtual world, we may be more able to create empathy and a willineness to listen in real life for our young people. SecondLife then could serve as a space to imagine, to invent, to test and try out ideas and movements in a safe place without the peer pressures affecting young people. Going through this process in “safe groups-“ groups of young people who have established some kind of support structure (as in deep friendship) and guided by an adult, SL exploration of themes related to visual difference like racism, sexism, and body issues might be hinted at and opened up. When these kinds of themes are opened up in a dual space- one that is real and safe as a result of team building and careful teacher facilitation and one that is virtual (ie. SL) and connects youth together in cross cultural scenarios could be a space for “growing” empathy and care that then moves young people to action.

This kind of discussion should facilitated by an adult who is able to monitor experiences both in and out of SL, assuring that young people are questioning the consequences- both in SL and in RL of real and perceived difference. Real and perceived difference seem to become most apparent through the consequences that are attached to them.

How to Deal with the Integration of SL/RL in Educational Settings

“Its surreal that yu can exist in a place like this, and play your music or DJ. It seems like a great way to disseminate music because so many people are there. Creative outlets- it kind of reminds me of interactive way of existing like when I am composing music on my laptop. I get isolated from the world in order to compose, and I sort of float in that world of musical notes. I don’t come out often, and sometimes people’s words- like when Chelsey says something to me when my head phones are on- become part of the music I produce. Not literally, but they find themselves their in notes and tones and syncopations. SL is kind of like that, except that in that world it is not just me and my notes, there are a breadth of other people hanging out- and dancing! Dancing! I would like to be able to show my music here. Even compose here, and compose from the rythym of the people walking around… Like I am making right now a symphony of NYC- it would be a symphony of SL. With Chelsey’s voice in it, and the kittens at my feet. Its when you get into the mode…”

I was sitting at my kitchen table, and my roomie was in her bedroom. My boyfriend was not home, but he teleported “home” via SL from his recording studio. It was a strange mix of being in more than one place at once- in two worlds at once with one person, together in digital points and physically separated by a door. Knowing exactly where the other digital-point-being was hanging out, what he was wearing and doing and where he was sitting twenty blocks away in a reccording studio. I could smell him in my apartment. And he had a different name in SL.

Whether we are in a virtual world or working on some focused activity, outside sounds and events effect our focus, even if we do not notice this effect. We see here S’s recognition of this outside force effecting his musical work. The same thing happens in SL, our setting effecting who we talk to and the way we perceive. It is for this reason I have suggested that using SL in the educational setting we do so in “safe” groups in physical spaces. The facilitator can structure the safe group andphysical space in order to build out the most of interaction with difference in SL.

Sam, being a avid traveler, searched for Paris. We ended up in a french bar. Thats when Sam got a tequila, telling everyone he is Mexica and then began using his desktop translator to translate Spanish words into French in order to communicate in the french cafe….

all that the virtual technology can do, thorugh the internet, to meet people, to make friends

strange mostly because he did not want to really spend time in there getting clothes like I do. He was not into it, preferring to stay in the same old avatar clothes. Interesting, bc in RL he does not care too much about clothes, though I felt the need to tell him he “needed” to change in order to be “cool.” Pressuring him via RL voice about digital existence in SL. Whoa. So he changed, leaving on the avatar shoes and choosing all black. He paid a little more attention to appearance once he figured out how to use it.

K: Weird. I don’t think its good for communication skills for people to be changing how they look and to be able to be just super skinny, super big boobs, trendy, whatever. I tried on a bunch of different clothing, but its like you can be whatever you wanted to be without having to actually deal with it in real life. I think that makes people live in a fantasy world, instead of a real world. Like C, she doesn’t look like that in real life. Neither does S. How am I supposed to trust Mina and Xolo in SL if they are constantly changing who they are? It makes me wonder who we aspire to be, though. Like does C aspire to be who Mina is or is she just playing, trying something? Is it weird I am wearing short skirt, it makes me feel powerful and a little slutty in a positive way. Weird too to see S like that, like Xolo because I know he spends so much time composing. So what is it when he is like this? He doesn’t seem Mexican anymore, just seems like some rando without a social life. Like everyone on here.

S: (written in Spanish, translated by Chelsey) I think it is very interesting people are able to look differently, and to change their look so often here. In real life, we can’t change out look like this, and because of that how we think and act has to do with how we look. Here, we sort of live without that. But then again, its like inventing the reality, like trying to be whatever you feel like at the moment- things the rich people can do at a seconds notice because they have money money money- its like in SL you get to be a celebrity with access to body shifting surgery to fullfill your whims. How did we get here, where we have this standard? I think its interesting and can be neat and amazing and make you think about the kinds of different people who live different lives because of their skin color- except the realities are not even real in SL. In RL, perceived difference has real consequences. In SL, perceieved difference is only perceived because you don’t know who it really is…

C: I think its empowering and shifts identity into this more fluid state to be able to change your look so completely you become someone else. In some ways I agree with S that there are less physical consequences to percieved differences on SL, but I still think people treat you in ways related to your look. Perhaps it is in a different modus opperandi… At the same time, gender/sex/size/etc stereotypes are madly reinforced as you see so many avatars that are just compeltely impossible to be real- why do we pursue these Barbie standards? On the other hand, who am I to tell a woman what is beautiful, and who am I to say what she wants to be is or is not valid?

K responds to her visit to SecondLife as Vinda Lakells:

This is very weird. I think the people are lonely folk who can’t be with people, have friends and exist in real life. I think this is a substitute for life. I don’t think this is healthy very much at all. Instead this is very addictive. People get addicted sitting alone in their apartments. Now my roomates are calling me by my SL name, which is strange because she is just a little robot I made for make-beleive.
S Responds to his 3rd or 4th time in SL, this time with the third participant, our roomie Vinda. (Response was translated into English from Spanish by Chelsey)

I think I want to post some of my music to be played in one of the cafes. Its surreal that you can exist in a place like this, and play music or DJ. Creative outlets- it kind of reminds me of interactive way of existing like when I am composing music on my laptop. I get isolated from the world in order to compose, and I sort of float in that world of musical notes. I don’t come out often, and sometimes people’s words- like when Chelsey says something to me when my head phones are on- become part of the music I produce. Not literally, but they find themselves their in notes and tones and syncopations. SL is kind of like that, except that in that world it is not just me and my notes, there are a breadth of other people hanging out- and dancing! Dancing! I would like to be able to show my music here. Even compose here, and compose from the rythym of the people walking around… Like I am making right now a symphony of NYC- it would be a symphony of SL. With Chelsey’s voice in it, and the kittens at my feet. Its when you get into the mode…”
C  (That’s me) responds to the time with both S and K in SL :

That was weird. I was sitting at my kitchen table, and my roomie was in her bedroom. My boyfriend was not home, but he teleported “home” via SL from his recording studio. It was a strange mix of being in more than one place at once- in two worlds at once with one person, together in digital points and physically separated by a door. Knowing exactly where the other digital-point-being was hanging out, what he was wearing and doing and where he was sitting twenty blocks away in a reccording studio. I could smell him in my apartment. And he had a different name in SL.

K hated this entire experience. She thinks its un-organic, mind-numbing, and an element contirbuting to separation and stupidity and un-activism in our society. Its going to be difficult to get her back in.