Virtual Learning Environments

Our objective for this assignment was to to create a richer learning experience for high school students by combining entertainment, games, virtuality and education on an easily accessible browser-based platform. Ultimately, we developed Fractor World to be a collaborative learning hub on the Metaplace platform that exposes students age 13+ to social, political and economic issues and encourages action on their behalf through a confluence of Fractor newsfeeds, games, videos and other multimedia.

As a brief overview of our project, Fractor World is designed for use by high school teachers and their students. Games embedded within the Fractor World learning environment are suitable for age 11+, while the Metaplace platform is navigable for age 13+. Overall, the Fractor World community is a “gamelike” environment that allows educators to aggregate appropriate topics and activist opportunities for students age 11+.

While the site is game-oriented, it is carefully structured and organized based on the topics and activist opportunities Fractor hopes to advertise and encourage. Primary emphasis is placed on learning from playing, and supplemental information is available on both The Playground and The library in the forms of RSS feeds, instructional videos, relevant websites, and articles of interest. As a functional platform, one of our main goals for Fractor World was to create a sense of community and interactivity within Fractor. Interactivity is present through the nature of the 3-D virtual worlds and chat settings, and through the game-like nature of such environments (chat, avatar, world-building, games). Additionally, Fractor World features a rich sampling of RSS feeds, videos, images, and web links, which all make integrating Fractor World into classrooms simple and effective; it’s easily adaptable for the needs of the students and educators, and makes learning more fun and dynamic than only following lesson plans by the textbook.

Fractor World Playground

By design, Fractor World is more interactive than Moodle and Blackboard, although it is a somewhat unconventional LMS platform. For some educators chiefly concerned about storage capacity, Fractor World may be used as a supplementary learning tool and one that is easily embeddable on a class blog or within other LMS platforms like Moodle. See: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10275758-2.html. For educators who wish to use Fractor World as a primary LMS, surveys, quizzes, and lesson plans may be easily incorporated throughout the platform. Additionally, depending on the educator’s abilities, new worlds can represent new lesson plans allowing for easy chronological transition through course curriculum.

As primary administrator of Metaplace/Fractor, educators have the option to tailor RSS feeds, videos, and games for their particular curriculum. Additionally, educators have the authority to serve as content managers, space-designers, and overall administrators of site, bringing creativity into education and tailoring lesson plans as necessary. To facilitate educator’s module building, Fractor should distribute a complete functionality – topic, links, RSS Feeds, and games list – so educators can maximize Fractor World’s potential. Overall, Fractor should consider Fractor World a central hub through which it can partner with teachers and schools to increase awareness, organize fund raisers, and create community outreach programs. Fractor specific newsfeeds, “action” feeds, and games can be used by teachers to promote social action and build enthusiasm for the issues that Fractor identifies as critical problems in need of attention.

Fractor World Library

While we hope that our presentation reflected a relatively polished product, we encountered a number of social/collaborative and technical challenges developing Fractor World. In terms of our social/collaborative challenges, one big factor was geographical separation and time differences. To build a successful project, we all needed to organize and keep each other up to date on goals despite significant time differences. Furthermore, coming to a consensus about project goals and methods proved to be difficult, but ultimately beneficial. Individual ideas, while duly recognized, had to be set aside to allow for a mutually agreed-upon consensus about the overall direction of the project. Also, ensuring all edits and additions to the site remained fluid and consistent with the work of the rest of the group was a priority as we needed the end result to be as cohesive as possible. As such, organizing all of our efforts to create a specific “look” and “feel” for the site, and assigning roles and responsibilities to each member to ensure that every topic was sufficiently covered and no gaps were left in our work were top priorities.

We also had a number of technical challenges as our group members have varying technical training and experience with computers/programming/internet navigation. What’s more, Metaplace itself is a relatively new platform and we experienced a few major issues. One was when Metaplace lost our site for over a day and we had to rebuild everything we had created. Smaller, but equally substancial challenges we faced were: access to well-made, good looking objects that suited our needs, functionality issues when assigning behaviors to objects (Youtube videos didn’t always work, and some external links would cause Metaplace to freeze), and site consistency when inserting objects and organizing our World (objects didn’t always stay where they were supposed to, and landscaping and other terrain building functions were unreliable and hard to work with). Over all the biggest challenge was that we had very specific ideas and goals for the project which needed to be adjusted because team members lacked the technical understanding to accomplish them. In many instances, Metaplace lacked the functionality to allow us to realize many of our ideas, and especially so in relation to game-creation.

Moving forward, we envision many important applications for Fractor World for teachers, students, and the general population. While Fractor World is currently somewhat limited by the ongoing development of its Metaplace platform, we believe Fractor World might be considered for the following uses:

Games: “The Activist”, “The Paper Boy”

Mobile: Josephine’s suggestion of mobile apps/collaborative play on mobile devices.

Geotagging: The user’s ability to click an area in the world and see what non-profit groups exist in that specific region.

For a better view of our project and to see some relevant screenshots, supplemental videos, and game descriptions, please visit: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?docid=0AZ_UMkdL1leRZGdwcXNxN21fNzAyZGI0bTNoZg&hl=en&invite=CLzmqtUE

Critical Foundations for Fractoplace

The response process models the responsiveness, cooperation, and content-relevant communication between the learner and the group. (Chang/Lim) 9The base of our project was created out of the ideas of shared creation and information transfer. Both Fractor and Metaplace are based on the idea of sharing information and relevant action and therefore support a “game” model that allows for exploration, cooperation and communication.

Much social organization no longer fits a group-centric model of society. Work, community, and domesticity have moved from hierarchically arranged, densely knit, bounded groups to social networks. (Hunsinger) Internet communications have given rise to a new tribalization of society, based on interests and on individual concerns, but because humanity is social by nature, individuals gravitate towards others with similar interests in lieu of space and family.

Research has shown that computer-mediated communication supports a range of instrumental, informational, social, and emotional exchanges in work and leisure contexts (e.g., Baym, 1995; 1997; Rice et aI., 1998; Wellman & Gulia, 1999; Quan-Haase & Wellman, 2004; 2005). There is little need to argue that the Internet is both a colossal waster of time and the biggest resource for information ever conceived by mankind. Fractorplace echoes the world of the internet—a user can walk around, see some sights, have a conversation, take in the news, etc. It allows for exploration, gathering of information and a platform to share it. True feedback loops may occur here. …A more complex form of play; the game which is constructed not upon the premise “This is play” but rather around the question “Is this play?” And this type of interaction also has it’s ritual forms… (Bateson)Fractorplace blurs the idea that research and exploration are boring, partially just through the medium, but also through the ways in which students can explore in the world. For example, they can learn about SlowFood through a hot dog stand!

Boundaries between play and production, work and leisure…are increasingly blurring. (Pearce) Metaplace provides an avatar for each user and through that avatar one experiences a secondary life that also is linked to our first lives through our minds’ connections. It looks as though a conversation is a game if a person takes part in it with one set of emotions or ideas—but not a game if his ideas or emotions are different. (Bateson)For students, it is important to blur this line because the work-learn paradigm in education is failing due to information and media saturation.

More Shots of Fractor World Playground

A space of mixed collaborations provides variety in play experience and flexibility in learning. Our findings suggest that lightweight collaborations can be enjoyable and enlightening and need not be negatively valued. (Nardi) Fractorplace provides these abilities to collaborate and to play—with enough customizable flexibility on behalf of the development team to create something worldly. The ability of some communication technologies to support simultaneous feed- back can signal listenership and turn-taking during the learning process. (McLaughlin) The ability to move around in Fractorplace allows for this asynchronous learning model to take root. The teacher and student are on a level playing field, thus allowing for true explorative and project based learning, with enough options to garner the attention of myriad groups.

The response process of asynchronous learning will encourage higher degree of response with media having higher social presence than with media having lower social presence during cross-cultural communication. (Chang/Lim 15) By setting up the form factors in Fractorplace, the Fractor community can help students to be active members in their society in ways that interest them, and it gives them the ability to research what actually interests them!

Polysynchronous environments are defined as virtual spaces that closely approximate real life environments. People..communicating polysynchronously not only talk synchronously (in real time), but also create temporal objects such as mail messages, newsgroup messages, as well as objects that can be experienced by others. This form of virtual reality has potential as a dynamic learning environment. (Robins)The ability to interact with each other, as well as with almost every object in Fractorplace provides a depth and a breadth of experience for the user, teacher and student alike.

E-Iearning has become an integral, valuable, and highly valued component of education, and standard-bearer for state-of-the-art learning and teaching as we advance into the 21 st century. (Harasim)

How does your project leverage and create a richer learning experience for your specific target population?

Our project, Global TextBook, allows students to engage in documented discussions where their responses, questions and answers can be calculated and well-planned. The online nature of the discussion forums and potentials for chat room interactions also allow for students who may be shy in face-to-face environments the chances to say what’s on their mind. The amalgamation of RSS feeds and video/photo posting in one space allows students a wide range of access to sources to supplement their textual reading material.

The typical targets of Global Potential are lower income and underprivileged urban youths who typically wouldn’t be exposed to critical analysis of sensitive topics; they would typically only see the perspective of their local community. The Ning platform offers a compelling multifaceted forum that is engaging, yet not limited by many of the usual barriers to entry that students from lower income households tend to face. Ning is not dependent upon a speedy internet connection or advanced computer hardware. Its windows are easily formatted when one needs to print and it is not blocked by many of the filters used on public internet access computers. Our Ning community will also allow students to break their geographic limitations and form a new community whose purpose is to critically discuss differing historical texts. This elaborates on the idea that students are encouraged to think more critically about historical issues.

Ning allows students the chance to see two sides of an argument, giving students an opportunity to create a new perspective for themselves for the situation they are discussing. It also gives them skills that they can transfer to other parts of their lives. Additionally, the format that is being used allows students to learn debating skills.

Screenshot of Discussion Forum

Given that Ning is fairly easy and accessible, it also allows a high level of personal customization both at student and moderator level and easily facilitates connection and networking with like-minded individuals and communities. In addition, given the increasing interest in NING, customized skins and applications specifically designed for NING are becoming more and more prevalent, thus making the student, teacher and classroom experience ever more personalized and focused.

Screenshot of Profile page

Given that virtual learning environments are becoming increasingly cultivated into educational experiences, Ning is an excellent choice for segueing into this form of technological learning. Because it is simple and direct, it provides the student a solid understanding of how to interact in a VLE, as well as how to contribute on an equal level as his/her classmates. As mentioned before, the opportunity to be more “vocal” in an online educational forum will allow for more students to better express themselves and share one another’s knowledge and viewpoints, decreasing the shyness factor that can be brought out in a typical classroom setting. It also gives more freedom to question the subject matter and inspire a deeper level of critical thinking; one that is tougher to reach learning out of a textbook.

Briefly summarize your project objective, obstacles, modifications/solutions, describe project progress to-date, and include relevant processes/screenshots/links.

The Group:

Each member of our team worked diligently to contribute to the various parts of our Ning social site, Global Textbook. While each person has their own skills, we all did our part to pull together a solidly constructed virtual learning environment that students can benefit from and contribute to.

As a group we worked on the organization of the main page. We also agreed on what tools we should provide to our community. This includes the Photos, Videos, Forums, Links, and a reference page. We also agreed that we would create a Global Textbook user manual using a separate wiki space. We met weekly to revise our Ning site and brainstorm ideas on how to make it better.

Screenshot of Chat page, where we held some of our weekly meetings

Each member played his or her part in bringing the project together and we were not hampered by ‘wannabe superstar egos’.  As such, workloads were apportioned evenly and according to individual talents and schedule; and thus each member was able to shine in his or her own way. We worked efficiently and without ‘pomp and circumstance’; keeping true to Katzenbach & Smith definition of a successful team. We simply remained throughout… a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and [a common] approach for which they hold themselves accountable. [1]

Individual Tasks:

Although each of us went to considerable lengths to make this project the best it could be in a short few weeks, we will briefly summarize below what each member completed throughout the duration of the Ning site and the supplementary Wiki page.

Katharine’s main duties were to set up the interface for the Global Textbook site, where she chose “Social Sunny” as the theme (silhouetted conversing figures) which best demonstrated the purpose of the site. She also edited the colors to be similar to Global Potential, and added some initial features to the main page, while doing some html coding for the Links tab for easy navigation. She also wrote instructions for six of the tabs, which can be found on the Wiki page.

Kelly’s main responsibility was setting up RSS feeds to the Ning site. Google News had a decent sampling of the current news from each region (Haiti and D.R.), which she chose to feed into the main page of Global Textbook. She also contributed to rearranging the page, initiated the Wiki, and wrote about starting a discussion, while also giving a tour of the main page.

Henry set up two forums for Global Textbook and wrote the instructions and rules for posting on them. The first forum is Lessons, for administrators only, and the second forum is Open for all members to start discussions on their own topics. The restricted Lessons forum would allow Global Potential to use the site for its educational purposes, while a less restricted open forum would provide students and other members a place to share their ideas and views in order to build a better sense of community. Henry also contributed to the Photos section to provide a sample of how it could be used by instructors, as well as to include supplemental images. He also wrote Wiki entries for Photos and Videos, and contributed to the “How to post to the forum” section. These entries explain how the sections are meant to be used for educational purposes, and how to post in them.

Vicki worked on researching different videos, articles, and relative information about Haiti and the Domincan Republic to provide a solid base of information for Global Textbook’s main page and additional tabs. She included a Reference Texts tab (with the help of Katharine) to add a bibliography of relevant texts and information written about these countries. There are a few videos that better visualize the relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic that are posted to the Video tab and take the user straight to the video’s host page. She also included links in the Links tab to both nations’ United States Embassies home pages. She also included a map of the island of Hispaniola in the Photo tab to add to the visual element of the learning experience in Global Textbook.

Helen was responsible for getting the site off the ground, which she did by initiating the Google Groups forum and creating the Ning network name and ID project, where Global Textbook could get underway. She also contributed to setting up RSS feeds on the Ning site, which are linked below. She added a list of NGO/UN and other links, easily located in the Links tab. She also wrote the four sub-sections under “Your Members” for the Wiki.

Screenshot of Videos page

Concluding thoughts:

There are always obstacles to working with a group on a project that is done completely through virtual methods, but we are all confident with the outcome of the Ning site and are proud to have created this educational platform in a rather limited time frame. There was a clear lack of direction and misunderstanding of the project in the first few weeks of the course. Once we received clarification from Salman that our goal was to construt the skeletal frame work for Global Potential, and not to actually create and implement lessons, we were able to pick up momentum and pull things together. Every time we met, we found new ways to improve our site. Another issue was the general simplicity of Ning itself. In the end, the simplicity of Global Textbook actually compliments the goal of the project, emphasizing the analysis of text rather than toying with new online networking trends.

One issue with the site is the overall appearance. We have gone with a neutral style using a default image provided by Ning. Though this works and stays with our simplistic nature, it can still seem mundane. Global Potential may want to find a design student to create a more unique logo for the community.

This was no small feat. When things run smoothly, it’s often easy to overlook the unspoken work that each of us put in to making room for the other, and for each of us to pull their own weight. This level of maturity is rare and yet is a key element in the ultimate success or failure of a project such as this. Consequently, we feel that we should congratulate ourselves on the efficient flowing work environment that we created and acknowledge the accomplishment of this.

1] ‘The Wisdom of Teams’ J. Katzenbacj & Smith [1993], p.45

From Highsmith Ch.5 Adaptive Software Development

a. http://globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/americas/dominican-republic/

b. http://globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/americas/haiti/

Visit our Ning site here: http://globaltextbook.ning.com/

I have had many a discussion with friends about Twitter and its usefulness vs. uselessness.

I went to do see a panel in early June called “The Future of Media” that included Nick Denton of Gawker Media, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Bonnie Fuller of Bonnie Fuller Media, Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Alan Murray, and Craigslist founder Craig Newark. All of them were talking about what a huge deal Twitter was becoming and would continue to be, what a powerful tool it is, etc. I wrote a blog about this talk, which inspired a 25+ message exchange on Facebook about the Twitter phenomenon between myself and a friend from undergrad who was in my Film and Media Studies program with me.

So the following is from said friend on my Facebook in response to my status update that said “The Future of the Media is, apparently, all about Twitter” and then linked to my blog on the topic. Please note that I’ve changed all of the places where he’s decided to use an offensive term for Twitter (take away the “i” and replace it with an “a”) with a more PG version of the term:

Must everything be shortened to one sentence in order to be consumed in milliseconds? I don’t see the purpose of this site other than to give one sentence, and therefore poor, recaps of other stories from other sources…Self-indulgence is still very much a part of the [Twitter] universe it’s just now you can get some news updates I guess while you’re being self-indulgent. They can slap some polish on the turd but I’m still not impressed. I think it’s a horrible symptom of a larger disease that is the breakdown of our communication masked as the evolution of our communication. Dumb down everything. Reduce everything to a headline or a soundbite. One sentence is all we need. The phone call has already been replaced with the text. We’ve sacrificed in-depth analysis with the one-sentence [tweet] and people think it’s great because it’s easily accessible.

While I think some of what he says has validity, he has obviously not spent much time exploring the site or taking advantage of the @replies functionality or the search engine, which causes him to think it’s “largely the narcissistic updates every 5 minutes of the minutiae going on in people’s lives” as well as just being “a poor man’s Google News”.

I think that writers using Twitter is a way of journalism adjusting to the way that their information is presented to the public and is in no way destroying communication. If anything, it is opening up new, different avenues of connectivity.

What do you all think? I have started going to several new sites to obtain my news that I never looked at before because of Twitter and think of it as a very useful tool…but then again, I am a student of media and tend to be on the more accepting side of the “our world is changing” coin. I have also heard from all of my job-seeking friends that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a job as a writer or a PR individual if you aren’t an active tweeter.

Hi everyone,

So it seems that our work is finally coming together! I added about 6 slides tonight and made some minor edits on a few others.  I plan to have all my slides completed by tomorrow night so I can spend the remainder of our time making edits and polishing the presentation.  It seems that our initial slides were created using lower-case for all words except for proper nouns with the Courier New font.  I used this formatting for the slides that I created to keep things consistent – does this work for everyone else too? I think it looks kinda cool and jives with the flow of our project, so kudos and thanks to whoever started it.  I’m assuming that we’re just working on the slides that we signed up for, correct?  If any presenters are swamped and need me to post their slides for them I’m happy to do so – just let me know!

Are we all meeting at 8:00 tomorrow?  I think it would be great to touch base before we head into the final stretch.  All in all, we’re on the right track and things are coming together well.  My only question is on videos.  Have we decided who is going to create them?  I can make one if we need another; I’m just a little confused as to who’s doing what in this regard.

See you  tomorrow!

This is hard for me to say, but I was wrong. I always had a very negative view of twitter (maybe it’s the name). I haven’t completely embraced it and connected to any prospective industry contacts with it, but I have signed up for twitter updates from some of my favorite news sources, and I’ve looked through some of the tweets the rest of you have put on your tweeter rolls on the wiki. I guess my issue with twitter was always that I didn’t like the constant dumbing down of communication. The trend from Newspapers to Blogging to Micro-blogging put me in a state of fear that soon ideas would be communicated in the most basic sense. What I mean is complex or iconic events being condensed into simple contextless statements instead of informative reports “michael jackson dead.” “Iran oppresses people”. The more I looked through twitter and even used it I realized that I was absolutely right, but that’s not a bad thing. I signed up to BBC world news and CNN breaking news because I looked through their tweets and saw headlines of stories  I wanted to read, I realized that it wasn’t much different than looking at newspaper headlines at news stands, but as a bonus I can do it in my underwear and not have frightened people staring at me in disgust. Oh, and I comment on the story and allow people who follow me to see ideas and help spread that story (theoretically speaking, I don’t have many followers yet). I see this as potentially as a strong tool in industry as well, granted I have no connections, I can see how after becoming part of a twitter network getting my ideas out or even just getting my name known would be easier than if twitter were never introduced.

Here is the video of screen shots showing the progression on using Metaplace/Fractors_World:

Geotagging Fractor/Metaplace

Cluster Map of Geotagging

Enjoyed the meeting with the group:

SL Meeting 7-22-09

Project 1, Conflict Texts Group Meeting

We met tonight (Wed, 7/22) to continue working on our globaltextbook page on Ning.  The meeting ran for about an hour (6:30-7:30) during which time we reviewed where we want certain information to appear on the pages. We reviewed the texts Salman sent us and decided to create a Reference Texts tab to help provide more information for our moderators. We also plan to create “how to” section that gives basic instructions on creating discussion through the forum. We’ve also created a wiki to use as another information base for Global Potential to build on. Once the details of the work on the site were finished, we delegated responsibility to each other for what needs to be finished, then scheduled a meeting for this weekend.

We have some excellent ideas in our outline to answer the second question:
How does your project leverage and create a richer learning experience for your specific target population?

Considering the time constraints for our project and the importance of contributing sufficient detail to each bullet, I think we should begin focusing on how we can begin translating our ideas into a media presentation.  How will we organize our efforts? Perhaps we should begin signing up to address the topics that need coverage.  We can always have multiple submissions for each topic, but it’s important that all the topics are covered by at least one person.  I’ll sign up tonight for the ones I want to work on.  Also, I think we’ll need one person who is good at compiling slides, videos, and content to tie together our various efforts into one cohesive presentation.  Obviously that is a big job, so that could just be someone’s sole role in the final project.  I’d say that we should divy up this responsibility, but unfortunately I think it’s a one person job.  Do you guys agree?  I guess a big question is - who wants to be the person to compile our individual efforts into one fluid presentation?  Does anyone have a lot of experience with this?  Once it’s all put together, I think the process is that we’re supposed to submit it to Josephine in a Quicktime format.

Does anyone have anything process related to add or change?

I just want to say again how much of a pleasure it has been to work with all of you on the project.  This group is by far the most responsive, fun, and intelligent I’ve ever had the opportunity to do work with.  Thanks again!