Filed under: News and developments by Digado

Tuesday and Wednesday I logged into the ‘Learning Grounds’ of IBM’s ‘What’s Missing‘ Learning summit. After a remarkably easy download process I found myself in one of the most boring environments ever to be part of the 3D web. I wasn’t really shocked with the poor visual quality of the Active Worlds set up, but… the grey, black and blue auditorium was an insult to the status of Virtual Worlds. I really tried not to be superficial and talk about Active Worlds poor graphics, but the set-up this showed so little respect for the immersive environments Virtual Worlds can be, I just couldn’t just let it go. Sorry. (Notice how the invitation showed a visual of Second Life rather than Active Worlds).

Resisting the urge to join the conversation on the poor choice of environment (I don’t mean Active Worlds, I mean the build itself) I walked around some, getting increasingly annoyed by the green system messages and the huge ‘listening range’, seeing the text of everyone of the avatars in sight (about 200-300 in total) in the chatbox. The presentations themselves were set up with a Skype Client. I am not sure whether this was necessity because Active Worlds doesn’t support voice or streaming audio, or a smart choice of the organizers because this part worked remarkably smooth.

So to answer the question: “what’s missing?”

Indexed content to create good information exchange between 2D and 3D worlds - Standards for importing and exporting data in and out of Virtual Worlds. There is a huge necessity of 2D and 3D information exchange. Not only will this make the adoption of the 3D learning environments a lot easier, sometimes 2D is just better. It’s like we have to invent RSS all over again.

Engage in Conversation - It’s an easy mistake to make: Gather 300 people in one place, set up a blog and allow comments, even send out a Survey and think you have successfully opened the debate and can now ‘engage in conversation’. The people this eLearning community needs to talk to are not on your blog, not on your summit, not in your mailinglist and are likely to have never heard of ‘The Big Blue’. Find people with real problems with the educational system, such as people unable to afford the high class expensive universities, only available to a select elite and learn from them.

Rich presentations - Why the immersive power of Virtual Worlds is presented on 2D slide shows with NO creativity whatsoever is really beyond me. Why not put some effort in and actually impress your audience. If nothing but aesthetic value, show some creativity in 3D space and do NOT confine yourself to the limits of a 2D screen in a 3D word (this should go without saying, but apparently it really doesn’t).

Clear reference material - Even though there where some clean (boring) Power Point slides made beforehand, I expected to see the same kind of clarity as documentation after - but apart from a default Wordpress blog I’d say the effort into sharing the information outside of the conference itself has been minimal. This is not very promising for the application of the Virtual Learning Environment because documentation and information sharing is the key to progression.

Less inside the box thinking - Out of the two days there was one presentation that seemed to go beyond the borders we’ve been gazing part for the past 3 years. It’s the sluggish machine of the educational system that seems to just be barely catching up to already widely accepted 2.0 technologies, and this niche of evangelists is immediately applying their new-found knowledge (all the familiar buzzwords - ’serious games’, avatars, collaboration and co-creation) to a virtual environment, with little to no effort to go beyond that.

Conclusion: Less than impressed

Overall I am really less than enthusiastic about this meeting and can only hope the summit reached out to some unconvinced or uninformed souls, who took the time to listen in on their peers advocating the power of 3D in one of the most horrific 3D environments ever to be part of the 3D web, and the power of Virtual Worlds using Skype and Powerpoint to let us know just how powerful it really was.

Posted on: February 21, 2008 | Share on: