Traditional Designed VS Virtual Designed Classroom Instruction

After reading the two articles Social Learning Theory in Second Life by Michele Smith and Zane L. Berge, and Different spaces but same places: Possibilities, pitfalls and persistent practices in SecondLife by Julie Willems, I can see how my perspective of SecondLife for education is changing. In this post I want to reflect on my ideas of use of SecondLife in education after reading these two articles.

Traditional Learning

When I think about traditional teaching and learning, I think back to my days in high school. I can remember only being presented with facts and ideas and no real in-depth learning was taking place. Our school was in a very poor district with limited technologies. I rarely had a presentation by powerpoint and most of my classes still had chalkboards. If I were to go to a classroom 100 years ago, I would see almost the same thing. So, traditional learning has definitely made an impact on my life and how I view education. 

I feel that students can effectively participate in class if they are engaged, the material is relevant, and students are applying that skill or showing they can meet that objective. With traditional learning, many of these aspects are very difficult to accomplish. As a student, it didn't take much effort by a teacher to keep me motivated. That has continued with me as a college student and now a graduate student. I believe traditional learning is needed at times in the classroom, but for the 21st Century learner, traditional learning is a thing of the past.

Virtual Learning

This is a topic that I have some knowledge of, but only because of my recent assignments from FNDS 6223. Virtual learning is something that I had not imagined could be used in an educational sense. I see virtual worlds as a place for people to escape into their own land and dive into their interests. Both articles show benefits to using virtual learning with students, but we see that there is a need for more theory development and more study. Virtual learning can take you to places traditional learning cannot: vritual field trips, scavenger hunts, visiting virtual museums, and so much more. Is traditional learning effective in a virtual learning world?

From some of the pit falls found in Different spaces but same places: Possibilities, pitfalls and persistent practices in SecondLife . we can see some of the reasons why traditional instruction is not a fit. From students flying around during a lecture to others chatting back and forth, we can find the same distractions of traditional learning in the virtual world also. So, from these findings we can see there is more need for studies and instructional strategy related to virtual learning in virtual worlds. I plan to really think about how virtual worlds could be used in my biology classroom. I think Genome Island will be a great place to start!