Week 9

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—  What am I learning about my new literacy?

Cultural literacy is an incredibly important part of education and communication. I draw an example from my placement class. There was a vocabulary question that was fill in the blank and the student had no idea of what word to fill in because they didn’t understand the content of the sentence. The sentence needed the student to know what an Ivy League school was. I am in a sixth grade class and my students are very far from even thinking about attending a university, let alone Dartmouth or Yale. Their knowledge of universities is more than likely limited to MSU, U of M, and whatever school their parents may have attended. Cultural literacy involves knowing “the basics” of a culture that allows students and people to communicate effectively. Cultural literacy also allows students to succeed in the classroom, which is the very reason we teachers are in this business.

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What am I learning about my new technology?

I have learned a few things about Second Life/virtual worlds/OpenSims. First, I learned that my outdated computer does not have the processing power to run such worlds without crashing. Without being able to play and see what these virtual worlds were really all about, I turned to reviews. The reviews on these types of virtual worlds are very consistent in their content.

There are benefits and downsides to these virtual worlds. The benefits include: a new place for students to interact with each other and with the teacher, increased opportunities to communicate, the ability to choose a new persona, and the ability to create a world that reflects the vision of the users. These characteristics are especially beneficial for students who are learning a new language. Language learners can move and communicate at their own pace and can speak using academic or conversational language. There can be spaces and times that are specifically designated for different uses. The chance to interact during many occasions is why this can be a great tool for a classroom.

The pitfalls of such an open world are many and varied. Anything is possible in a virtual world. Anything. Avatars can move from world to world and from a safe learning environment created by a school to a completely user generated world filled with everything from virtual sex to virtual rock shows. This is obviously a concern when students are exposed to this type of material when they are supposed to be using such worlds for educational purposes.