Tonight our course mentor instructed us in the essential points of SL construction - I had dabbled in building before tonight but it was good to have a once over while being able to build in real time and also watching others build. I built a round table and bench. The table was easy but I had real issues trying to get the top of the bench to line up with the end legs. SL needs an intuitive way in which to look around the back of something in 3D without having to use arrow keys and the mouse. Maybe something like a VR helmet where looking straight on at an object on the screen always shows the direct view of that object but looking to either side, top or bottom begins a slow revolution to the back side, top or bottom of an object and a mouse click or eye blink could stop and start the 3d revolution.
Chapter 5 in Gibson et all, 2007 begins to tie cognition to social constructivism and social constructivism back to the type of environment well supported by the use of MMORPGs. One of Dr. Gibson's ending statements hit upon work by John Seely Brown. I had not heard of this person but was inclined to Google him and found out that he is the retired Chief Scientist for Xerox or basically the guy who was in charge of productive thinking. John Seely Brown, or JSB as he seems to be widely known, has published a whole host of papers and other writings. One evening is hardly enough to identify and read a significant amount of his work but I did find a document on his web page: http://www.johnseelybrown.com/pushmepullyou4.72.pdf that seems to hint at why SL will ultimately succeed as more than a social fantasy networking environment. SL is as Dr. Brown seems to envision, a pull type of environment. Residents take what they need as they need it and when they need it and other residents ramp up production of those items that are needed in somewhat immediate response. It would almost be as if because I search for a certain old tractor part on Google that instead of just finding the part, that at that instant 5 companies begin production of that part, identify me as a potential customer and market it to me. Dr. Gibson also alluded to thsi similarly in a response to one of our discussion posts last week when he identified the SL learning environment as one that would offer help when needed, almost intuitively.
These are definitely some things to think about with more than a little thought - how could we let learning environments be built in such a way to offer potential learners what they were searching for just in time with their arrival and without any significant input from them. Is this precognition or just incredible timing?
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