This Generation

In a world filled with gamers we must find ways to motivate our students to constructively use the technology. The Educational Media Design and Technology program I am participating in at Full Sail University has been saturated with positive experiences in application of Web 2.0 tools. This has helped me understand how to address my own concerns that students will either get lost in the flash of media or simply use it ineffectively. In his book The Dumbest Generation http://www.dumbestgeneration.com/ Mark Bauerlein points out some of the dangers of the careless use of technology by students. “Instead of opening young American minds to the stores of civilization and science and politics, technology has connected their horizons to themselves, to the social scene around them.” (p. 10) He links the ways students use technology to a loss of their educational rigor. The most connected generation of the digital age is going to need guidance if they are to use the technology to achieve a brighter tomorrow.

Second Life (SL) is a technology that could be the key to help students move beyond the use of the Internet for socialization and entertainment. It can show them that there is valuable information available and do so in a way that resembles the games they play. John K. Waters in an article in The Journal http://thejournal.com/Articles/2009/01/01/A-Second-Life-For-Educators.aspx?Page=6 helps teachers get started in the right direction. He suggest that SL might be dismissed by a teacher if they are not connected to a community inside SL. If there is no one to help guide you it is easy to get lost and jump to the conclusion that it is a waist of time.

One of the places Mr. Waters refers a teacher to is Information & Communications Technology Library of Info Island (ICT) in SL http://ictlibrary.googlepages.com/home ICT describes itself as “a not-for-profit endeavor (Second Life-only) created to reach out to members of the educational and training community working within Second Life (SL).” It has many resources both inside SL (the library http://ictlibrary.googlepages.com/web_tour ) and outside SL (blog http://sledpicayune.blogspot.com/ and RSS feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/sledpicayune).

There are many communities to get involved with inside SL. For myself it seemed natural for me to head to “Science Island” to see what was available for the physics teacher in all of us. I joined a few communities while researching this blog entry; my favorite is Science Friday. http://www.sciencefriday.com/ I have known about this popular NPR radio program for some time but had not experienced them in SL. In their pavilion in SL you can listen to their radio broadcast while engaging in discussion with other listeners about the broadcast. I talked to some users while I was there and found that many of them use SL to sharpen there thinking through discussion and debate. They have found numerous resources and friends through the site.

The uses for SL are abundant and growing. SimTeach http://www.simteach.com/ is a great place to find numerous links and resources for educators to create community and use virtual environments to educate. They have compiled a list of the top 20 educational locations in SL. http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Top_20_Educational_Locations_in_Second_Life

Moiving beyond traditional instruction to integrate a variety of technologies will help motivate our students. Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum point this out in their book Web 2.0 New Schools, New Tools. http://www.iste.org/source/orders/isteproductdetail.cfm?product_code=newtoo They also caution: “For any of these things to happen there has to be a commitment to education, broadband and computer access, and policies to make sure that students are able to compete in a global market.” (p. 186) It is vital that we embrace as many technologies as we can to help our students learn how to use that technology to ensure a maximum return on our collective investment.