Thoughts and Reflections on 2018 VWBPE Conference in Second Life
VWBPE is short for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education. It is a global grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments. It is held annually in Second Life, an online virtual world.
VWBPE 2018 Conference was really an eye-opening conference! I attended over eight presentations at VWBPE and found the v-conference (virtual-conference) experience quite interesting.
Here are some of my thoughts I get from the presentations.
1. WW1: A Virtual Remembrance. March 10, 2018.
The presenter guides audience from place to place (home guard area, trench warfare, poppy field, and Versailles Palace), and meanwhile introduces the history bit by bit in text. During the virtual field trip, some participants share their connections to the places/topics. For example, someone shares the difference between touring Versailles Palace in VW and his real-life trip; someone says that this VW trip relates to himself because his grandpa was a WW1 dispatch rider; another educator says it will be great to have the students build the ww1 and ww2 scenarios.
Participants are quite engaged in a virtual field trip. But if the presentation is delivered both in voice and text, the experience will be more immersive.
This virtual field trip gives me an idea that when introducing a topic that is too heavy/tough/boring for students to understand, you can build or have your students build some related scenarios to put some interest into it.
2. Making Discoveries with SL Creative Processes. March 12, 2018.
This conference is held on the Inspiration Island which is a very resourceful education place. It is about Creative Processes and Symbolic Modeling. It consists of three demonstrations: (1) outside-in/inside-out building, (2) Visions of self and (3) collective work on a drawing.
The speaker guides people to think/speak in 1st person position, and speak out the object’s inner voice, such as “I am this green part of the object; I am strong; I want to go higher and break my obstacles…” Such way of perceiving objects is quite interesting and new to me. However, at first, I find it quite weird and hard to understand the instructions for this activity.
My biggest takeaway of this conference is the new way to perceive the creations. Both every part of the object and the whole object have their symbolic meanings. Builders and educators can act as facilitators, and guide the participants to interpret the objects in virtual environments by themselves (such as think aloud the object’s inner voice in 1st person position), instead of interpret for them.
Check the resources shared by the presenter on the conference if you are interested:
3. A VRevolution for a New Digital Literacy - Identity, literacy, immersion and presence. March 15, 2018.
This presenter showed his studies on the embodiment and identity of the avatars in VW.
Cool speaker, engaging conversations, nice place!
4. The Minecraft VRevolution: Collaborative Learning. March 15, 2018.
Three educators shared their stories, challenges, strategies on utilizing Minecraft in educational practices. They also engaged several 7-minute discussions with the audience.
It seems that quite a lot of schools/universities/districts are supporting using Minecraft in education. However, the education I once received never included any virtual technologies. I heard of Minecraft before but never tried it. I felt that previously I was kinda isolated from virtual worlds. Second life opens a whole new world for me!
5. Conversation with Ebbe Altberg. March 15, 2018.
Ebbe Altberg is the CEO of the Linden Lab, the company that developed Second Life. It is so amazing to meet the Linden Lab CEO “in person”! However, the conversation is only open to a few avatars, thus, I, along with other hundreds of avatars only watch the live video of their talk. The conversation content mainly coveres Sansar, VR, SL, economy situation in SL, technology, tools, as well as past and incoming support for the education community.
Hmm, how does it look like when you are running a tech company like this? ;)
6. How to Get There from Here. March 15, 2018.
It is a very useful and resourceful presentation. The presenter talks about ideas, skills, activities and games that can be used in SL teaching and learning, especially language learning. For example, the presenter has built some checker games and a honeycomb game where students themselves become part of the chess pieces. Only if they answer a question rightly, can they have the chance to move the next step. Such edutainment activities in the virtual worlds can greatly increase students’ learning interest and make the learning process more educational and entertaining.
7. Improving Digital Literacy – A Solvable Challenge using Virtual Worlds. March 16, 2018.
The speaker presents her paper on how to use virtual worlds to improve digital literacy. It is a very comprehensive review of digital literacy, from its definitions to some data analysis in previous research, from its critical issues to implications for librarians and teachers. She also presents her exhibits on digital citizenship. I find it interesting to know something about “digital citizenship”- Digital Citizenship for Kids, Digital Citizenship for Avatars, Digital Citizenship through the eyes of an Artist, Authentic Avatars, etc.
8. Cultural Appropriation? Cultural Appreciation?. March 17, 2018.
It is an interesting area to discover. SL is a world containing various cultures. It’s important to be mindful of the messages we intend to convey in our culture-related artworks, and be mindful and critical when appreciating other cultures.
The term “the third culture” is new to me. Very intriguing. Does it refer to the various cultures in virtual worlds? Haha I would like to find out more about it.
The three reasons for cultural appropriation are so true! Though I don’t quite understand the “distance” in third reason, I like “when there is a distance from other cultural groups, imagination fills the gap between the cultural object and the reality”. I do use my imagination at times when I come across some cultural/info gaps. lol
During the presentation, I had very pleasant private talks with two of the participants, including the cat!
By the way, here is my presentation collaborated with the UBC professor Sandrine Han. It is going to take place in VWBPE in April 2019:
© Wenyi Gong 2018
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