Sunday, July 12, 2009

Reflection on visit with Spiff Whitfield

I "teleported" from our visit with Spiff Whitfield with a valuable lesson about how how education can be used in SL. Spiff's presentation taught me that I had been viewing SL all wrong, which has contributed to a lot of my disgruntlement with the program.
You see, I kept going into SL questioning how I could use it with a group of students. But constant tech problems and confusion over controls, not to mention the fact that not all learning in SL can be hands on, meaning that a lot of information is recieved through notecards, I kept thinking that text books and movies were just as good, if not a better resources. Spiff showed us ( and I know that Esme has said this to, but I didn't hear at well) that SL is better suited for helping educators work together to enrich their lessons and knowledge about their content area. Spiff listed a variety of locations that he has attended with other educators (most of which had a social-studies theme) and talked about the rich conversations he has had with other teachers about the subjects these Sims respresented. To see what Spiff was talking about, I spent some time in Virtual Harlem, at Spriff's recommendation. It is a neat place. It gives you a visual of what Harlem looked like in the 20's, with its famous theaters and rich artistic culture. There were images and notecards about famous African-American artists who transformed how artists of their color were recieved by popular culture. As I was sitting there watching the show, I remembered that I read a book my freshman year of college entitled When Harlem Was in Vogue. I had completely forgotten about this bookuntil I was sitting their in Virtual Harlmen, but suddenly I had a memory of all this information. It occured to me that although I was not in Virtual Harlem with a lot of educators, but had I been I would have undoubtebly benefitted from the other teachers.
Experiencing something can jog a memory, which can lead to more depth in a conversation. Teachers who know a little about Harlem in the 20's could meet in Virtual Harlem, exchange information and because they are connecting the information to their "surroundings" then they may just get more from the conversation.
I am sure that there was a lot more I could have learned from Spiff's presentation, and I certainly did appreciate the lengthy list of great Sims to visit that he provided us with. But what I really got out of was that SL serves a great ways for teachers, who would have never had a way way to meet otherwise, to excange their knowledge about a variety of topics and learn from one another.

1 comment:

  1. Dear Excitedtoteach (Meghan)

    I did a google search of my alter ego Spiff and came across your blog and kind words about my presentation. I was honored that you wrote about my talk.

    I have become a firm believer in virtual worlds as a unique and creative way to learn, but an even better platform for teachers to collaborate.

    Good luck in your endeavors and feel free to join our Virtual Pioneers group to meet other educators interested in social studies. http://virtualpioneers.ning.com

    Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete