In the future, the Augmentationist's avatars will look like this:
http://www.spiral-scratch.com/index.php?page=gamecam3d
Why does an avatar have to look like a Pre–Raphaelite painting? Cubist tries hard to look cubist, but Ian would prefer to look like an impressionist painting. Vibrancy and life at the expense of detail.
Imagine a shared space occupied by the live 'holograms' of real people like the one in the link. How would a virtual meeting be different if you could virtually shake hands at the start? Maybe people could learn dance moves together. (Dance distance learning?). The lack of authentic body language cues in conventional conferencing systems is a major problem. Slightly glitchy, but undeniably alive avatars might give off all the right signals to improve our chances of accurately judging mood.
The scary thing is, this could be actually quite straightforward, technically. We should play.
Sunday, 10 August 2008
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Wonderball
I've been messing about with full 360 x 180 degree panoramics. When you map one of these photographs onto a sphere and walk inside it, it gives a good sense of being in a real space. The image distorts a little as you move around in the sphere, but your brain seems to be able to make adjustments quite easily, so I can imagine that you could map other objects within this space and you would get a reasonable sense of their position in relation to the projected panoramic. If you had a bunch of avatars inside this space, and each avatar had a rectangular cone object which projected out in the direction they were facing (the cone would correspond to the field of view of their camera), then everyone would be able to see what they were looking at. This would be very useful in group discussion about the location of the panoramic image that everyone was inside. It would also indicate when someone was looking you in the face, providing another valuable visual cue in the 3D virtual space. Browsers and whiteboards could also be placed within the sphere to facilitate the discussion.
I reckon all of this is do-able with Wonderland.
I reckon all of this is do-able with Wonderland.
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Walking in an Inter-Wonderland
Some more quick thoughts on Wonderland.
Wonderland is basically a 3D conferencing tool, a bit like a 3D version of Elluminate. Rather than avatars, it would be more useful to see a live video stream of the people you are communicating with. Bandwidth restrictions would probably limit this to low-rez versions of each participant's webcam, but even this in the 3D space would be useful. As a participant watches you move around, they would get a sense of what you are looking at, as your video image would be orientated to face that thing. In group meetings, the direction that you are looking would make sense in the 3D space. If you look to someone on your left, your video image would seem to be looking at the same person in the 3D space. This would provide valuable cues to enhance social cohesion. If someone decided to wander off, you could follow them, see what they are drawing or browsing, and engage in a meaningful conversation with them about it.
Wonderland is basically a 3D conferencing tool, a bit like a 3D version of Elluminate. Rather than avatars, it would be more useful to see a live video stream of the people you are communicating with. Bandwidth restrictions would probably limit this to low-rez versions of each participant's webcam, but even this in the 3D space would be useful. As a participant watches you move around, they would get a sense of what you are looking at, as your video image would be orientated to face that thing. In group meetings, the direction that you are looking would make sense in the 3D space. If you look to someone on your left, your video image would seem to be looking at the same person in the 3D space. This would provide valuable cues to enhance social cohesion. If someone decided to wander off, you could follow them, see what they are drawing or browsing, and engage in a meaningful conversation with them about it.
Monday, 14 July 2008
Wonderland spillage
Some initial ideas about Wonderland after spending half an hour messing about with Open Habitat's MPK20-based test area:
It ain't Second Life. This is both bad and good.
The shared applications are great. Walk up to a whiteboard and shift-click on it and you can just draw straight onto it. No external applications needed like in SL.
The avatars just look disturbing, and editing them is clunky and pretty pointless really. What would be better would be to allow users to upload a mugshot of themselves and apply it to a box.
The bots are even more disturbing. They create a sense of confusion (your not sure if they have real people connected to them at the other end or not). Hearing a voice coming from them makes you want to find out how to walk away faster (Press shift to double walk speed).
The performance is terrible, until you adjust the clipping settings to something sensible.
As MPK20 is geared up for 'you being you', using your own voice and using 2D applications in a 3D world, the first person (mouselook) camera view makes more sense. Being able to see your avatar forces you to see them as an external character, and you can't help going down the road of wanting to dress them and love them etc. Second Life is a million times better for this role play, and it's looking like it will take a long time before wonderland's avatar rendering will catch up with SL's sophistication. I'd quite confidently say that it never will, so why not ditch the 3D avatar side of things now? A good photo of someone's face when you're on the phone to them helps. Seeing a creepy generic doll does not.
The range of possibilities for what you can do using Wonderland/MPK20 are far more limited than SL, for sure, but the few things that you can do - if tweaked and focussed - will have much wider appeal for business and education. This is something that I could imagine would benefit a large number of my Graphics students. Second Life is one type of media out of many. Wonderland could be a tool that could help students whatever type of media they work with.
I'm imagining something quite abstract. Minimise the lag inducing things. Trim the clipping right down. Fill the place with loads of browsers and whiteboards and make it into an ideas studio. Write some specifically adapted web based application, and link to Graham's e-portfolio tool. e-Studio?
With the services of a decent Java developer, we could make something really good out of Wonderland.
It ain't Second Life. This is both bad and good.
The shared applications are great. Walk up to a whiteboard and shift-click on it and you can just draw straight onto it. No external applications needed like in SL.
The avatars just look disturbing, and editing them is clunky and pretty pointless really. What would be better would be to allow users to upload a mugshot of themselves and apply it to a box.
The bots are even more disturbing. They create a sense of confusion (your not sure if they have real people connected to them at the other end or not). Hearing a voice coming from them makes you want to find out how to walk away faster (Press shift to double walk speed).
The performance is terrible, until you adjust the clipping settings to something sensible.
As MPK20 is geared up for 'you being you', using your own voice and using 2D applications in a 3D world, the first person (mouselook) camera view makes more sense. Being able to see your avatar forces you to see them as an external character, and you can't help going down the road of wanting to dress them and love them etc. Second Life is a million times better for this role play, and it's looking like it will take a long time before wonderland's avatar rendering will catch up with SL's sophistication. I'd quite confidently say that it never will, so why not ditch the 3D avatar side of things now? A good photo of someone's face when you're on the phone to them helps. Seeing a creepy generic doll does not.
The range of possibilities for what you can do using Wonderland/MPK20 are far more limited than SL, for sure, but the few things that you can do - if tweaked and focussed - will have much wider appeal for business and education. This is something that I could imagine would benefit a large number of my Graphics students. Second Life is one type of media out of many. Wonderland could be a tool that could help students whatever type of media they work with.
I'm imagining something quite abstract. Minimise the lag inducing things. Trim the clipping right down. Fill the place with loads of browsers and whiteboards and make it into an ideas studio. Write some specifically adapted web based application, and link to Graham's e-portfolio tool. e-Studio?
With the services of a decent Java developer, we could make something really good out of Wonderland.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
United! United!
According to Christine Kenneally (New Scientist 21 May 2008) the only things that are uniquely human are art, cooking, religion, humour, sport and world wide domination. I can't help wanting to combine these things together somehow. The art bit is already there. The world wide domination thing is relevant to the sorts of global technologies we are messing about with. Graham and I spend quite a lot of time laughing about our preposterous plans. Someone once suggested that I start a virtual cult, with my hologram of Clive Egginton as the God of Second Life (I think Philip Linden has already claimed that one.) Not sure about cooking, although mixing up prims to a recipe for a tasty dish of art might be an interesting line of inquiry.
The one that I am really intrigued by is sport.
I must point out at this point that I always got picked last for the team at school, and I can barely throw a ball let alone catch one. I also have little interest in sport as a spectator, except the odd football game on the tele. However, my interest in sport as a potential model for learning in virtual worlds has been stoked up by two things. The first is the need to find a more effective way of getting productive collaboration going in phase 2 of the project. The other is the announcement that Leeds Met is to become the UK Centre for Coaching Excellence.
I have been interested in coaching ever since I attended three coaching sessions as part payment for a website I made for a life coach (This was no cowboy coach. She had qualifications and everything, and usually charged £200 quid an hour). These sessions had a profound effect on me. It helped to reveal to me what I really valued, and gave me permission to be brilliant as me, not what other people thought was me. I certainly wouldn't have got involved in JISC if I hadn't had those three one hour sessions. I realised when I was getting coached that there were many similarities with life coaching and the negotiated learning/tutorial based approach that is central to the way we do things. I also stole some her techniques and tried them out on colleagues and students, with some success. So, I'm a fan of coaching based approaches to personal development and the subsequent learning that is unlocked as a result.
Back to sport. As I was spilling 50 ideas for Phase 2 onto the floor of my last blog post, I found my mind wandering towards sport as something that might provide a possible framework for creative collaboration in virtual worlds. I like the idea of teams with different skills working together. I'm interested in two or more teams competing. I'm wondering what the rules of art/design sports might be. I like the fact that teams can compete globally. I can see how the tutor could be like a coach, picking the team, structuring the training exercises, motivating and encouraging, but ultimately standing on the side line whilst the students put in the effort and perform.
Another issue that is limiting the potential of the Open Habitat project is working with Noobs. I wonder how we might recruit good players for a team? Can we look outside of the University, in the same way that clubs sign players from abroad? Oh, the brain's working now. More on this soon.
The one that I am really intrigued by is sport.
I must point out at this point that I always got picked last for the team at school, and I can barely throw a ball let alone catch one. I also have little interest in sport as a spectator, except the odd football game on the tele. However, my interest in sport as a potential model for learning in virtual worlds has been stoked up by two things. The first is the need to find a more effective way of getting productive collaboration going in phase 2 of the project. The other is the announcement that Leeds Met is to become the UK Centre for Coaching Excellence.
I have been interested in coaching ever since I attended three coaching sessions as part payment for a website I made for a life coach (This was no cowboy coach. She had qualifications and everything, and usually charged £200 quid an hour). These sessions had a profound effect on me. It helped to reveal to me what I really valued, and gave me permission to be brilliant as me, not what other people thought was me. I certainly wouldn't have got involved in JISC if I hadn't had those three one hour sessions. I realised when I was getting coached that there were many similarities with life coaching and the negotiated learning/tutorial based approach that is central to the way we do things. I also stole some her techniques and tried them out on colleagues and students, with some success. So, I'm a fan of coaching based approaches to personal development and the subsequent learning that is unlocked as a result.
Back to sport. As I was spilling 50 ideas for Phase 2 onto the floor of my last blog post, I found my mind wandering towards sport as something that might provide a possible framework for creative collaboration in virtual worlds. I like the idea of teams with different skills working together. I'm interested in two or more teams competing. I'm wondering what the rules of art/design sports might be. I like the fact that teams can compete globally. I can see how the tutor could be like a coach, picking the team, structuring the training exercises, motivating and encouraging, but ultimately standing on the side line whilst the students put in the effort and perform.
Another issue that is limiting the potential of the Open Habitat project is working with Noobs. I wonder how we might recruit good players for a team? Can we look outside of the University, in the same way that clubs sign players from abroad? Oh, the brain's working now. More on this soon.
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
50 ideas for phase 2
Time to start the brain up again. Phase two starts tomorrow.
1. Explore/test SL/OpenSim hybrid via Open Grid Public Beta
2. Make OpenSim standalone package (Mac)
3. Make VMware standalone package (PC & *nix)
4. Run sessions on Graphics course from October to February (5 month run)
5. Just do OpenSim standalone induction and name game, then set free in SL.
6. Make them collaborate.
7. Redefine collaboration,
8. Ditch SL/OpenSim and use Wonderland instead.
9. Use Wonderland for Philosophy/project meeting (Mac issue - project buys us Bootcamp/Windows)
10. Run cross institution competiton.
11. Run cross discipline/Leeds Met based competition.
12. Explore immersionist angle - no RL bits - no blended bits (Apart from seperate OpenSim induction.)
13. Only use experienced avatars.
14. Open up beyond institutions.
15. Run a grid wide competition.
16. Set up an OpenSim grid with free entry and see what happens.
17. Create fertile ground for rhizomatic collaboration.
18. Make a tool that glues avatars together into collaborative thing.
19. Engineer collaborations through human management.
20. Think global.
21. Be a magnet for diverse talent.
22. Apply all we know about learning in our art & design world to global virtual collaboration.
23. Create a standardised, free, assessable 15 credit point, 150 learning hours elective module that anyone in LeedsMet/UK/the world can study.
24. Harness and validate informal learning.
25. Create a structure for assessing informal learning through regular formative feedback and dialogue.
26. Do everything in-world. No web 2.0 crutches.
27. Structure learning through broad learning outcomes.
28. Motivate not through prize money, but through assessment, marks and credit points.
29. Develop a model for sub-letting learning.
30. Link SL with a course length programme of personal development.
31. Link SL with coaching. Leeds Met has just become a center for coaching excellence. There is massive potential to obtain resources and support for a coaching focussed approach.
32. Create a structure for placing coaching at the center of learning, using SL and web 2.0 tools to support a mentoring approach.
33. SL is not a game, but could the underlying principals of sport be used to provide scaffolding for learning activities?
34. Look at the sports team (i.e. a football team) as a model for collaboration.
35. The tutor as coach - he/she picks the team, based on strengths identified in training, decides on the game strategy, but the players play the game.
36. Explore competitive games. Team playing against team following set rules.
37. Organise cross institutional tournaments. E.G. LeedsMet, coached by Kisa Naumova, take on Leeds College of Art, coached by AngryBeth Shortbread in a game of art. Half a sim each. May the best team win.
38. Explore the role of branding in team building - i.e. the brand of Manchester United, the pride of the player working for the club. The loyalty of the fans.
39. Evaluators are pundits. Steven W is Alan Hansen. Margarita is Alan Shearer.
40. Organise weekly training sessions at the training ground. Structured activities to develop the skills.
41. Devise individual fitness programmes fro each student. They have to but in the effort though.
42. Make sure the training ground and pitch are suitable and well maintained. makes sure relevant equipment is available.
43. The project manager is the Chairman of the board.
44. Look at the theories of life coaching. (stripping away the voices of others to reveal your personal values etc.)
45. Invent design sport.
46. Design sport could be a way of structuring collaborative learning with a focus on problem solving? Link with Maggi's PBL work.
47. The job of the coach-educator is to make up new games, explain the rules, and train the player-students. The job of the player-student is to understand and play by the rules, exercise and compete in the games.
48. Invent some design team games.
49. Test out the games with experienced avatars.
50. Publicise the games and rules amongst art educators worldwide, and coordinate a tournament.
1. Explore/test SL/OpenSim hybrid via Open Grid Public Beta
2. Make OpenSim standalone package (Mac)
3. Make VMware standalone package (PC & *nix)
4. Run sessions on Graphics course from October to February (5 month run)
5. Just do OpenSim standalone induction and name game, then set free in SL.
6. Make them collaborate.
7. Redefine collaboration,
8. Ditch SL/OpenSim and use Wonderland instead.
9. Use Wonderland for Philosophy/project meeting (Mac issue - project buys us Bootcamp/Windows)
10. Run cross institution competiton.
11. Run cross discipline/Leeds Met based competition.
12. Explore immersionist angle - no RL bits - no blended bits (Apart from seperate OpenSim induction.)
13. Only use experienced avatars.
14. Open up beyond institutions.
15. Run a grid wide competition.
16. Set up an OpenSim grid with free entry and see what happens.
17. Create fertile ground for rhizomatic collaboration.
18. Make a tool that glues avatars together into collaborative thing.
19. Engineer collaborations through human management.
20. Think global.
21. Be a magnet for diverse talent.
22. Apply all we know about learning in our art & design world to global virtual collaboration.
23. Create a standardised, free, assessable 15 credit point, 150 learning hours elective module that anyone in LeedsMet/UK/the world can study.
24. Harness and validate informal learning.
25. Create a structure for assessing informal learning through regular formative feedback and dialogue.
26. Do everything in-world. No web 2.0 crutches.
27. Structure learning through broad learning outcomes.
28. Motivate not through prize money, but through assessment, marks and credit points.
29. Develop a model for sub-letting learning.
30. Link SL with a course length programme of personal development.
31. Link SL with coaching. Leeds Met has just become a center for coaching excellence. There is massive potential to obtain resources and support for a coaching focussed approach.
32. Create a structure for placing coaching at the center of learning, using SL and web 2.0 tools to support a mentoring approach.
33. SL is not a game, but could the underlying principals of sport be used to provide scaffolding for learning activities?
34. Look at the sports team (i.e. a football team) as a model for collaboration.
35. The tutor as coach - he/she picks the team, based on strengths identified in training, decides on the game strategy, but the players play the game.
36. Explore competitive games. Team playing against team following set rules.
37. Organise cross institutional tournaments. E.G. LeedsMet, coached by Kisa Naumova, take on Leeds College of Art, coached by AngryBeth Shortbread in a game of art. Half a sim each. May the best team win.
38. Explore the role of branding in team building - i.e. the brand of Manchester United, the pride of the player working for the club. The loyalty of the fans.
39. Evaluators are pundits. Steven W is Alan Hansen. Margarita is Alan Shearer.
40. Organise weekly training sessions at the training ground. Structured activities to develop the skills.
41. Devise individual fitness programmes fro each student. They have to but in the effort though.
42. Make sure the training ground and pitch are suitable and well maintained. makes sure relevant equipment is available.
43. The project manager is the Chairman of the board.
44. Look at the theories of life coaching. (stripping away the voices of others to reveal your personal values etc.)
45. Invent design sport.
46. Design sport could be a way of structuring collaborative learning with a focus on problem solving? Link with Maggi's PBL work.
47. The job of the coach-educator is to make up new games, explain the rules, and train the player-students. The job of the player-student is to understand and play by the rules, exercise and compete in the games.
48. Invent some design team games.
49. Test out the games with experienced avatars.
50. Publicise the games and rules amongst art educators worldwide, and coordinate a tournament.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Trans-institutional education.
Yesterday's Emerge conference social event was more than just jolly tower building fun for me. A number of vague ideas that have been bouncing around my head since we finished the first art & design pilot were suddenly brought into focus. Earlier yesterday, whilst giving StevenW a hand preparing for the event, I got the chance to chat very briefly to Margarita about the initial evaluation of the pilot. One issue that has emerged is the restrictive nature of dealing with noobs. Another is the limitations of restricting learning to a three week block. The pilot made great use of OpenSim standalone to show how induction of new students could be made more effective, and we are already planning to base SL inductions in other parts of LeedsMet on our findings, but the Open Habitat project is primarily about collaboration. This proved elusive in the 3 week noob-fest that was our first pilot. Last night, Cubist and Paz tried to collaborate to build a tower. We were time-bound, and had little 'scaffolding' to support our constructionist learning excercise. Our tower kept falling over and wasn't very tall, but the struggle to work directly together helped to confirm what we suspected from the pilot, that collaboration is a broad and complex thing. It is much more than having permission to edit each other's objects.
Communities and collaborative relationships develop over time, but the hierarchical, time-bound structure of a conventional course seem to get in the way of this. The rhizomes keep getting dug up by over zealous educational traditionalists with the spade of summative assessment.
My thoughts are also being stirred up by reading 'Wikinomics' by Don Tapscott and Antony D. Williams. The focus of this book (so far. I'm only on page 30) is the way that commerce is being transformed by the application of the values of openness, peering, sharing and acting globally. I'm imagining how these principals apply to 'taught' education (they kind of already apply to academic research, I think). I know that I am guilty of trying to fit the educational potential of virtual worlds into a traditional framework, albeit a very open and appropriate art school model. But I am still hung up on:
Enclosing the learning within the course walls.
The hierarchy of levels of study and staff authority.
The difficulties inherent in assessing collaborative work.
Acting too locally - (Just art and design students. Just my art & design students.)
The real challenge for me and for others is how to embrace openness, sharing, peering and acting globally in a meaningful and useful way.
The other significant thing that happened yesterday was a chat I had with the mighty guru, her royal highness, AngryBeth Shortbread (she of the Whiteboard). She has just taken over the management of 'The Port' sim, which is my all time favourite art island. It's been around since 2005, and the work there still impresses me two years since I first saw it. AngryBeth is planning to do a bit of a revamp of The Port, and has created a Ning site to revive and support the community.
Anyway, whilst Cubist was dancing on the catwalk on Emerge island, I had an idea. What if The Port were to create an academy? The following raw thoughts then spilled out of my head:
Phase 2 ideas
The Port Academy
Trans-institutional education
Dedicated sim for the development of artwork by invited 'students', with the theme of The Port as the guide.
Real artists that exhibit on the Port are the 'Masters'. (link with master apprentice/atelier model).
Some of the masters are real tutors with real students, but maybe they forget whose students are whose when in world.
The Port is used as a study aid, with the Masters contributing understanding through their work and, if appropriate, through interactions with the students.
Each apprentice has to be invited by a Master. They must be competent and willing to learn. They may be studying in real life, or may just consider themselves to be a student.
Collaboration will not be forced, but encouraged and enabled by the environment of The Port Academy sim. Rhizomes are the order of the day.
The avatars are the students.
Use a Ning based tool, Flickr/blogger or a bespoke tool to support global collaboration via the web.
It is the responsibility of the students to integrate their work into their real life studies if they want to.
We follow the Wikinomics principals:
Openness, peering, sharing, acting globally.
Open Habitat operates within this academy as masters, coordinators, facilitators. We evaluate the learning that is taking place in this alternative educational set-up through virtual means.
Should the Open Habitat sim become the collaborative art studio for The Port academy, with individual studio spaces provided by participating institutions/individual students? (e.g. Practice on your own on LeedsMet, work together with others in The Port Academy on Open Habitat?)
This is about immersion, not augmentation. It is about embracing the new possibilities by suspending the need to directly integrate this form of learning into traditional institutional structures.
In the same way that commerce is wary of losing its control and obvious revenue streams by opening up and sharing, so traditional education is wary of losing its module based, assignment led, fees financed model. Can the model of wikinomics be applied to learning, yielding something between formal and informal education? Something more powerful? What about revenue? Costs are low, so can fees be replaced by something else?
Can Universities provide validation and awards for this 'new' approach to learning? What would that mechanism be? Like a PhD by submitted papers? Can students choose which institution they want to be validated by when the time is right?
Philosophy students and masters are invited to participate in the same way. The Port is used as a basis for discussion and analysis, bringing the benefits of heavy duty read/write/discuss theoretical rigour into the mix.
What about other disciplines? How can they get involved in this collective learning endeavour?
How do we avoid anarchy? What scaffolding do we provide?
Can a system for formative feedback and assessment glue everything together?
Mmmmm. /me thinks.
Communities and collaborative relationships develop over time, but the hierarchical, time-bound structure of a conventional course seem to get in the way of this. The rhizomes keep getting dug up by over zealous educational traditionalists with the spade of summative assessment.
My thoughts are also being stirred up by reading 'Wikinomics' by Don Tapscott and Antony D. Williams. The focus of this book (so far. I'm only on page 30) is the way that commerce is being transformed by the application of the values of openness, peering, sharing and acting globally. I'm imagining how these principals apply to 'taught' education (they kind of already apply to academic research, I think). I know that I am guilty of trying to fit the educational potential of virtual worlds into a traditional framework, albeit a very open and appropriate art school model. But I am still hung up on:
Enclosing the learning within the course walls.
The hierarchy of levels of study and staff authority.
The difficulties inherent in assessing collaborative work.
Acting too locally - (Just art and design students. Just my art & design students.)
The real challenge for me and for others is how to embrace openness, sharing, peering and acting globally in a meaningful and useful way.
The other significant thing that happened yesterday was a chat I had with the mighty guru, her royal highness, AngryBeth Shortbread (she of the Whiteboard). She has just taken over the management of 'The Port' sim, which is my all time favourite art island. It's been around since 2005, and the work there still impresses me two years since I first saw it. AngryBeth is planning to do a bit of a revamp of The Port, and has created a Ning site to revive and support the community.
Anyway, whilst Cubist was dancing on the catwalk on Emerge island, I had an idea. What if The Port were to create an academy? The following raw thoughts then spilled out of my head:
Phase 2 ideas
The Port Academy
Trans-institutional education
Dedicated sim for the development of artwork by invited 'students', with the theme of The Port as the guide.
Real artists that exhibit on the Port are the 'Masters'. (link with master apprentice/atelier model).
Some of the masters are real tutors with real students, but maybe they forget whose students are whose when in world.
The Port is used as a study aid, with the Masters contributing understanding through their work and, if appropriate, through interactions with the students.
Each apprentice has to be invited by a Master. They must be competent and willing to learn. They may be studying in real life, or may just consider themselves to be a student.
Collaboration will not be forced, but encouraged and enabled by the environment of The Port Academy sim. Rhizomes are the order of the day.
The avatars are the students.
Use a Ning based tool, Flickr/blogger or a bespoke tool to support global collaboration via the web.
It is the responsibility of the students to integrate their work into their real life studies if they want to.
We follow the Wikinomics principals:
Openness, peering, sharing, acting globally.
Open Habitat operates within this academy as masters, coordinators, facilitators. We evaluate the learning that is taking place in this alternative educational set-up through virtual means.
Should the Open Habitat sim become the collaborative art studio for The Port academy, with individual studio spaces provided by participating institutions/individual students? (e.g. Practice on your own on LeedsMet, work together with others in The Port Academy on Open Habitat?)
This is about immersion, not augmentation. It is about embracing the new possibilities by suspending the need to directly integrate this form of learning into traditional institutional structures.
In the same way that commerce is wary of losing its control and obvious revenue streams by opening up and sharing, so traditional education is wary of losing its module based, assignment led, fees financed model. Can the model of wikinomics be applied to learning, yielding something between formal and informal education? Something more powerful? What about revenue? Costs are low, so can fees be replaced by something else?
Can Universities provide validation and awards for this 'new' approach to learning? What would that mechanism be? Like a PhD by submitted papers? Can students choose which institution they want to be validated by when the time is right?
Philosophy students and masters are invited to participate in the same way. The Port is used as a basis for discussion and analysis, bringing the benefits of heavy duty read/write/discuss theoretical rigour into the mix.
What about other disciplines? How can they get involved in this collective learning endeavour?
How do we avoid anarchy? What scaffolding do we provide?
Can a system for formative feedback and assessment glue everything together?
Mmmmm. /me thinks.
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