“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______, __________.
