The NOSE

WCET 2008 - Second Life Debate

Chris Lott of Ruminate reviews the debate on Second Life between Barry Dahl and me at WCET 2008. I took the pro side and Barry the con side. I have to give Barry all the credit for setting up the debate and making it a lot of fun for me and the audience. He gave the audience of about 70 people clickers and the ability to rate us during the debate.

In a comment to Chris' posting Scott Leslie has now coined Lott's Law: “As an EdTech discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison invoking the Blackboard as the Evil Empire approaches one.” Hey, that's funny.

The Virtues of Virtual Worlds

I still field the question, "What do virtual worlds have to do with learning?". Take a look at this short and very accessible video on YouTube, called  "MIT sketching".

An anonymous MIT researcher illustrates an early incarnation of a tool called ASSIST, which allows an engineer to design a mechanical system on paper and then interact with the design as if it were a physical system. 

As the researcher observes in the video, "one of the nice things about an online environment is we can have the advantage of having it feel like paper and yet be able to do things that are not possible to do on paper."

All human creativity, including science, art, and literature, are imaginative activities. The ability to imagine different possibilities and interact with them is one of the virtues of virtual worlds.

Update (1/25/2008):

According to Phil Long at MIT, "The ‘unnamed professor’ is Prof. Randall Davis of CSAIL at MIT.  The software is Magic Paper, now called Natural Interaction.  More can be found about it at http://icampus.mit.edu/magicpaper. Or feel free to contact me: longpd@mit.edu". Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, The Wired Campus.

Sun's Project Darkstar and the Next Generation Learning Platform

Last week I had the opportunity to meet Sun's Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos. Over lunch and at a panel discussion at St. Paul College (recently recognized as a Sun Center of Excellence) we had a wide ranging conversation about the future of educational technology, gaming, and internet culture. The event was graciously hosted by Warren Sheaffer of St. Paul College and Robert Reagan of Sun Microsystems.

Why am I so interested in gaming? I believe that the next generation learning platform will see a convergence of three elements: virtual worlds, gaming, and learning management systems. Gaming will become an essential part of learning and Sun's Project Darkstar is quickly emerging as the leading open source contender in this space. Wonderland, which sits on top of Darkstar, is Sun's equivalent of Second Life. Many of us are experimenting in Second Life but the future of education in Virtual Worlds, especially once we factor in the needs of the enterprise, will more likely go in the direction of environments such as Darkstar+Wonderland. (If you want to know about the potential of research collaboration in these types of spaces, check out Sun's MPK20.)

The current LMS, which we are all familiar with, will need to evolve from the currently bloated monolithic crapware to a true Learning Management Operating System (LMOS). The learning platform of the future will need a substrate that performs the mundane but essential bookkeeping functions such as authentication, authorization, and integration with backend systems. The LMOS should look more like the linux kernel: a lean, mean traffic cop that sits below the application layer and mediates access to common services.

Is there a Blackboard killer on the horizon? Yes. Forces such as Project Darkstar are gaining momentum in the education galaxy. Learning management systems that are not open source friendly or patent friendly will increasingly be at risk.