Lineage: One Way To Teach A Stampede of Cats

Lineage II
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

By Curt Castillow

Trying to motivate my high school students to learn is a lot like herding cats. It can be done but it’s not easy. I spend half my lesson trying to pull “a rabbit out of a hat” just to keep their attention. Yet, those same students will go home and spend hours in front of a computer screen playing their favorite games. What do those computer games have that I don’t? Well, I know one thing they have—my student’s attention. That is why I believe MMO’s have a great potential to educate youth. Educator Frank Lyman quips that “Education should be an itch, not a scratch” Lineage, like other MMO’s, is an intense itch that youth would love to scratch. Unfortunately, learning how to kill Orcs or cast spells on Wizards won’t help chemistry students much with mixing compounds or math students with solving quadratic equations. But an MMO, could, however, motivate students to want to learn how to mix compounds or solve quadratic equations. If MMO environments required gamers to use educational skills to progress and succeed in the game environment, they would not only have the ability to motivate students to learn, but they would actually learn something substantial.

Think of the potential of a Lineage-type game in a geometry class where one has to use Pythagorian’s theorem to calculate the distance from the catapult to the castle. If the player wants to take out the castle wall, he or she would have to learn how to calculate the exact angle requisite for the flaming projectile to meets its mark. Think of the potential for a chemistry class if there was an island where wizards survive by buying, selling, and casting spells with magic potions made from real elements. If they need water to put out a burning village then they need to know how many atoms of hydrogen and oxygen form a water molecule. If they want to attack a neighboring castle they would need to know how to create an explosive mixture with the right amount of Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygen. Of course the there is no game that does that at this time, but why can’t someone design one? (I know, no money.)

Then again, a sociology professor wouldn’t have to redesign Lineage if he or she wanted to teach Granovetter’s theory of mob violence. A quick visit to the Knight’s Silver City and one would quickly see how quick the store-front turns into a riot of wizards, elves, and knights. Similarly, psychology teachers could discuss antisocial behavior then let students see virtual-real, anti-social behavior in Lineage. It wouldn’t take long before an antisocial knight would hack them like the one that leveled me for merely saying “hello!”

MMO’s would be an excellent source of learning because they possess an element of Problem Based Learning (PBL) where the learning engages students. In PBL, learners are “thrust into a problem situation immediately, just as readers are thrust into the middle of the story, from which they must learn their way out” (Wiggins & McTighey, 1998). Likewise, if a Lineage gamer is going to succeed and progress to higher levels they must learn their way through each level.

In a Lineage setting, an instructor could also utilize cooperative models of learning. For example, he or she could divide an engineering class into quads where each quad works online as a team. Each team would have to attack a castle with a battering ram they designed. The better the design, the faster they break down the castle’s door and capture the king.

I know my ideas are a little dreamy, but Dave, you want us to think out of the box—especially with social software? You stated the following,

“ I think that games can be a great component of the [learning] experience. If the person is studying urban planning, they could study principles in class and play Sim City. Recreation management majors could play Roller Coaster Tycoon to learn how to manage a theme park - but they would need to attend class and learn the principles that would help them succeed in the game” (Wiley, 2004).

Gulfidan (2004) quoted Dewey as saying “I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself”. MMO’s are very demanding and stimulating to youth and adult alike (Ask RoeHaun). MMO’s are not the pedagogical panacea, but they have some essential components of learning. Practice is required, feedback is given, and zones of proximal development are established >(Wiley, 2004).

So in conclusion, and in keeping with the “herding cats”-barnyard metaphor, you can lead a horse (student) to water (education), but you can’t make him drink (learn). You can, however, feed him salt (desire), or a dash of MMO.

There Are Smart People, But Their Are Smarter Crowds

Hiv Spread Rate
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

I have to be honest, I didn’t get as much out of playing Netlogo as I thought I would. I did, however, learn from Wiley’s upcoming book on Open Learning Support (OLS). I was fascinated with the concept that the “further up Bloom’s taxonomy a desired learning outcome is, the more important social interaction will be in promoting student achievement of the outcome”. I was also very interested in the information his links provided.

I followed the links in Wiley’s lecture page and spent hours reading and learning about OLS. I went to his OLS website and read comments from students and visited the FAQ section where I learned the mechanics of OLS. I also went to MIT’s OCW website and read assignments and syllabi descriptions of different classes. I was intrigued that anyone could take class from a Professor Frank Wilczek, a Professor of Physics who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his discovery of quarks.

Wiley’s paper and related links engendered excitement in me. I believe OLS is cutting-edge technology in education. The OLS concept reminds me of fairly new book titled, “The Wisdom Of The Crowds: Why The Many Are Smarter Than The Few, And How Collective Wisdom Shapes Businesses, Economies, Societies and Nations.” The author, James Surowieki, states, “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter than the smartest people in them”. He supports his theory with real-life examples. Here is an excerpt from John Mark Ministries (2004)that shares some examples with interesting comments. I thought you might think it interesting.

"A classic demonstration of group intelligence is the jelly-beans-in-the-jar experiment, in which invariably the group's estimate is superior to the vast majority of the individual guesses. When finance professor Jack Treynor ran the experiment in his class with a jar that held 850 beans, the group estimate was 871. Only one of the fifty-six people in the class made a better guess." This is only one example of many in the book. No matter how knowledgeable the individual observer, a group estimate, even a group composed on non-experts, routinely trumps the individual in insight. Whether it involves counting jelly beans, estimating the weight of an ox, or assigning blame in the stock market to the correct company responsible for the Challenger accident in 1986, the crowd gets it right faster and more accurately than the individual expert. Note this other fascinating example:

"In May 1968, the U.S. submarine Scorpion disappeared on its way back to Newport News after a tour of duty in the North Atlantic. Although the navy knew the sub's last reported location, it had no idea what had happened to the Scorpion, and only the vaguest sense of how far it might have traveled after it had last made radio contact. As a result, the areas where the navy began searching for the Scorpion was a circle twenty miles wide and many thousands of feet deep. You could not imagine a more hopeless task. The only possible solution, one might have thought, was to track down three or four top experts on submarines and ocean currents, ask them where they thought the Scorpion was, and search there. But...a naval officer named John Craven had a different plan. "First, Craven concocted a series of scenarios -- alternative explanations for what might have happened to the Scorpion. Then he assembled a team of men with a wide range of knowledge, including mathematicians, submarine specialists, and salvage men. Instead of asking them to consult with each other to come up with an answer, he asked each of them to offer his best guess about how likely each of the scenarios was..Craven believed that if he put all the answers together, building a composite picture of how the Scorpion died, he'd end up with a pretty good idea of where it was...He took all the guesses, and used a formula called Bayes's theorem to estimate the Scorpion's final location..When he was done, Craven had what was, roughly speaking, the group's collective estimate of where the submarine was.

"The location that Craven came up with was not a spot that any individual member of the group had picked. In other words, not one of the members of the group had a picture in his head that matched the one Craven had constructed using the information gathered from all of them. The final estimate was a genuinely collective judgment that the group as a whole had made, as opposed to representing the individual judgment of the smartest people in it. It was also a genuinely brilliant judgment. Five months after the Scorpion disappeared, a navy ship found it. It was 220 yards from where Craven's group said it would be."

Remarkable, right? Is it just in humans that we see this sort of behavior? No. Consider how bees find good sources of nectar:

"They don't sit around and have a collective discussion about where foragers should go. Instead, the hives sends out a host of scout bees to search the surrounding area. When a scout bee has found a nectar source that seems strong, he comes back and does a waggle dance, the intensity of which is shaped, in some way, by the excellence of the nectar supply at the site. The waggle dance attracts other forager bees, which follow the first forager, while foragers who have found less-good sites attract fewer followers and, in some cases, eventually abandon their sites entirely. The result is that bee foragers end up distributing themselves across different nectar sources in an almost perfect fashion, meaning that they get as much food as possible relative to the time and energy they put into searching. It is a collectively brilliant solution to the colony's food problem. "What's important, though, is the way the colony gets to that collectively intelligent solution. It does not get there by first rationally considering all the alternatives, and then determining an ideal foraging pattern. It can't do this, because it doesn't have any idea what the possible alternatives -- that is, where the different flower patches -- are. So instead, it sends out scouts in many different directions and trusts that at least one of them will find the best patch, return, and do a good dance so that the hive will know where the food source is."

Now we begin to see the secret to this group wisdom effect. The more people involved (or the more bees), the greater the input from the group as a whole and the more likely it is that the correct solution is reached. That makes intuitive sense, for we all know that "two heads are better than one." So that means instead of relying on one expert, get a group of experts together, right? Wrong:

". . . [A] group made up of some smart agents and some not-so-smart agents almost always did better than a group made up just of smart agents. Diversity is, on its own, valuable, so that the simple fact of making a group diverse make it better at problem solving. That doesn't mean intelligence is irrelevant.. but it does mean that, on the group level, intelligence alone is not enough, because intelligence alone cannot guarantee you different perspectives on a problem.. Adding in a few people who know less, but have different skills, actually improves the group's performance." OK, now we're getting radical. A group of experts and non-experts is better than just a group of experts, even if the group size is the same? Surowiecki knows what you are thinking at this point and addresses it:

"Again, this doesn't mean that well-informed, sophisticated analysts are of no use in making good decisions. (And it certainly doesn't mean you want crowds of amateurs trying to collectively perform surgery or fly planes.) It does mean that however well-informed and sophisticated an expert is, his advice and predictions should be pooled with those of others to get the most out of him. (The larger the group, the more reliable its judgment will be.) And it means that attempting to 'chase the expert,' looking for the one man who will have the answers to an organization's problem, is a waste of time." So don't worry, he's not deprecating intelligence or expertise, and he acknowledges there are obvious times when you do want the lone expert working on your problem, especially if "your problem" is you need brain surgery. And Surowiecki absolutely acknowledges the problems that can come from relying on the crowd to achieve wisdom. But the principle upon which this book rests is expressed simply thus:

"The idea of the wisdom of crowds is not that a group will always give you the right answer but that on average it will consistently come up with a better answer than any individual could provide." It's that group experience that makes the difference. Expertise is needed, but relying on expertise alone will leave you worse off than if you couple expertise with diversity. Does that sound familiar? It should. It's the Linux model for developing software, and it's the Groklaw model for gathering legal news and insight. The more diverse the crowd, the greater the chance that one of those waggling bees will stumble upon the right answer, or the best answer. It works when looking for nectar, and it works when submitting bug fixes and new features for Linux. Notice what Surowiecki says about Linux:

"In the way it operates, in fact, Linux is not all that different from a market. Like a bee colony, it sends out lots of foragers and assumes that one of them will find the best route to the flower fields. This is, without a doubt, less efficient than simply trying to define the best route to the field or even picking the smartest forager and letting him go. After all, if hundreds or thousands of programmers are spending their time trying to come up with a solution that only a few of them are going to find, that's many hours wasted that could be spent doing something else. And yet, just as the free market's ability to generate lots of alternatives and then winnow them down is central to its continued growth, Linux's seeming wastefulness is a kind of strength (a kind of strength that for-profit companies cannot, fortunately or unfortunately, rely on). You can let a thousand flowers bloom and then pick the one that smells the sweetest. "So who picks the sweetest-smelling one? Ideally the crowd would. But here's where striking a balance between the local and the global is essential: a decentralized system can only produce genuinely intelligent results if there's a means of aggregating the information of everyone in the system. Without such a means, there's no reason to think that decentralization will produce a smart result. In the case of Linux, it is the small number of coders, including Torvalds himself, who vet every potential change to the operating-system source code. There are would-be Linux programmers all over the world, but eventually all roads lead to Linus."

So we see that wisdom from crowds comes as a result of certain conditions. There are principles by which wisdom can come from the crowd (as opposed to madness):

". . . the four conditions that characterize wise crowds: diversity of opinion (each person should have some private information, even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known fact), independence (people's opinions are not determined by the opinions of those around them), decentralization (people are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge), and aggregation (some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision). If a group satisfies those conditions, its judgment is likely to be accurate." What about the opposite result, the one where crowds are not wise and even dumb? Under what circumstances do crowds go wrong and start to riot (or in the case of online communities, start to turn on the community)?”

So having quoted that (I’m impressed if you read all of it), it seems to me, Dave, you are saying too, that the online groups will naturally organize into highly intelligent groups that are smarter than the smartest person in them. I would love to be a part of a learning environment like that. As the online environment grows smarter, I grow smarter too. The group never grows too big because the bigger it gets, the smarter it gets. Your OSLO group is heading in the right direction. Kudos.

Pedagogical Principles: Pure, Powerful, And Universal

Karate_Kid
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

Are teaching and learning really done differently in Lineage than in the classroom? I believe they may be “done” differently but the underlying principles that provide true teaching and learning are the same whether in the classroom or in cyberspace. Mr. Meeogi would agree. Remember in Karate Kid when Danielson is frustrated because his first self-defense lesson seemed to him no more than a home-improvement project for Mr. Meeogi. What Danielson thought was no more than a lesson on washing cars and painting fences, however, was a lesson on self-defense. Washing and waxing cars, and painting fences had nothing to do with karate, but the circular and vertical movement of his arms performing these tasks were principles of karate that had everything to do with it. The application of the movement was different, but the technique and tactics in arm movements were the same. The principles Danielson learned could be applied to a wide variety of circumstances whether one washes cars, defends him or herself, or karate-chops high school bullies.

So it goes in the classroom and MMU’s. As long as true principles guide the pedagogical process, true learning takes place whether it takes place face-to-face or online. Though I believe more learning generally takes place in a Lineage environment than many classrooms, it’s not because the MMU is a better medium than the classroom, but because it adheres to some sound principles of pedagogy. I’ve seen, however, classroom instruction every bit as effective and efficient at engaging learners as Lineage, but it was only because the instructor employed sound teaching principles. In Gulfidan’s “Problem-centered coaching and communities of practice,” (which incidentally I enjoyed the most of the three I read) Gulfidan believes that principles found in Social Theories of learning are exclusive to social communities like Lineage, but I believe that the principles she teaches are universal and can be applied to a wide variety of circumstances whether it be in the classroom or online.

Gulfidan believes classroom instructors present problems as abstract or “decontextual” knowledge that is “outside the learner”, and abstract “representations are meaningless unless they can be made specific to the situation at hand”. She goes on to state that, conversely, in an online environment like Lineage, learners are immersed in a problem that is what Merril might call “authentic” and “real world” (p.5). I concur with Gulfidan that abstract knowledge undermines learning, but it will undermine learning online as well as in the classroom. For example, parts of the tutorial in Lineage’s Hidden Valley were very abstract and general. Their explanation of teleporting was extremely ambiguous. I learned more from a Lineage participant’s one-line explanation than I did from a verbose, nebulous explanation given in the tutorial. Conversely, I learned more about calculating the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle on the roof of house from a leathered face, old carpenter that called me “boogerhead,” than I did from Mr. Rodriguez’ high school geometry class. Thus, it’s not where the instruction takes place but how it’s presented. If it’s presented with true principles, it will educate wherever it is presented and through whatever medium.

Gulfidan stated that the role of a teacher is to coach, support and “help children in authentic learning activities,” to which I agree, but is that role limited to online communities? She claims schooling environments are devoid of coaching mentors to which I agree. But if a teacher will implement the coaching principles she speaks of, they will be as effective as coaching mentors are in Lineage. I recall in my high school agriculture class my teacher, Mr. Brown taught us the beef-production process by coaching us through a step-by-step process. We raised and fattened a beef cow, butchered it, packaged it, cooked it in a pit barbecue, then sold the beef at a community dinner held at our high school. I learned as much about beef production from Mr. Brown’s coaching as I did about purchasing healing potion from wizard in Lineage. I learned in Mr. Brown’s class as much as I did in Lineage. The only difference is I was coached face-to-face in one setting and online in another. They both used what Gulfidan calls problem centered coaching they just implemented the principle through a different medium.

I believe that one of the occupational hazards in social sciences and education is to believe that one theory is the panacea of the people. There isn’t a panacea just principles. I am of the same opinion of Merrill that there are certain principles that are so pure, pristine, and packed with pedagogical power that they can be applied to a wide variety of circumstances. It is those principles we must seek. For example, one of them Merrill purports is what he calls Demonstration. He says, “Learning is facilitated when the instruction demonstrates what is to be learned rather than merely telling information about what is to be learned” (p.6). This is a true principle that is not exclusive to the classroom or online communities. For example, A 13 year-old boy demonstrating to me how to clobber a Mine Dwarf was every bit as instructional as Mr. Brown demonstrating to me how to weld a horse feeder.

Gulfidan states that coaching is an integral part of online communities like those found in Massively Mutliplayer Games. I believe the coaching she speaks of is a sound pedagogical principle and when it’s applied in other settings it will help maximize learning. Merril speaks of coaching as a principle that can be applied in any learning program or practice. Merrill states that “Learning is facilitated when learners are guided in their problem solving by appropriate feedback and coaching” (p.7). Just as a Lineage user coached walked me to the dungeon, likewise, Mr. Merrill, my college physics professor, personally walked me through many difficult physics problems.

Whether learning to defend one’s self through karate in Danielson’s world, or defend one’s self through magic potions in Lineage’s world, the learning is the same. It’s similar so long as the principles of pedagogy are applied in the same way.

My MMO Experience

Knight
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

I played Lineage several days and thoroughly enjoyed it. I can’t believe how fast time went by as I played. The game is very addicting. No wonder MMO games bring in billions of dollars.

I chose the character of a Knight and his name was Gazelem. He carried a dagger. He collected lots of loot and prizes in the Hidden Valley. At first I didn’t know what the prizes were for but over time I learned to use them. For example, in the Dungeon I learned to use my lamp to light my path. The healing potion came in handy when I had to fight the snake lady. I had a difficult time destroying her. I remember a tip on how to destroy her appeared on the screen the first day I played, but I couldn’t remember what it was. So, they/she/it wasted me several times.

My favorite creatures were the Black Knights on Level 6. There was something scary and mysterious about them. They reminded me a little of the horse-mounted creatures in Lord of the Rings.

I died so many times I can’t count them. None of the deaths stood out as overly embarrassing, but I was, however, embarrassed when was responsible for another knights demise by the scary Black Knights. I attacked one and the knight tried to protect me and he was killed. He was a Knight who was tutoring me for quite some time. He warned me not to attack anyone on that level, but I couldn’t resist. I apologized and obeyed him after that. It turned the tutoring knight was a 13-year old kid from Argentina. Go figure.

The Dynamics Of A Group That Gave Back To The World What One Took Out

tiffany
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

By Curt Castillow

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) an artist at the turn of the century perfected the art of creating stain glass lamps, vases, and windows. His trademark was the favriel style of iridescent colors and natural forms in art nouveau. His lamps become extremely popular in the 1960’s and today sell in the price range anywhere from $80,000 to $350,000. Unfortunately, when he died his technique died with him. There was no book or instruction manual left behind to show ensuing artists how to do what he did. No one really knows exactly how he did it, but there is a small group of individuals who have resurrected his technique through trial and error and have created works of art that rival even his $100,000 Tiffanies. This small, international society of artists is no “DaVinci code” secret society but it is an online LISTSERV. Through cooperation and incentive, this listserve thrives today and shares Tiffany secrets of stained glass art that gives back to the world what Tiffany took out.

In the early years of our marriage, as a stained glass artist, my wife was still learning skills necessary to creating a Tiffany reproduction lamp. She found a website created by Walt Beopple that displayed his beautiful Tiffany reproduction lamps. She emailed him requesting how she might learn to design and create quality lamps like his. He told her there was only one way—the ASLGA LISTSERV. ASLGA stood for Association of Stained Glass Lamp Artists. It was a group of a 1000 plus stained glass artists from around the world that communicated via the list-serve to share Tiffany reproduction lamp techniques, methods, and art form. My wife learned from the LISTSERV that there was no book that taught Tiffany’s technique and method; There was only a relatively small handful of artists around the world that knew the technique. She joined the group and the other artists began to tutor her online how to create her own Tiffany reproduction lamps. The knowledge was invaluable.

Artists emailed my wife and others, step-by-step instructions, tips, shortcuts, pointers, and other valuable information. What was so fascinating was that this information couldn’t be obtained in any other way or place than with this group. The information disseminated in the group via email, was so valuable that the head of the group eventually put together all the instructive postings and bound them. One could purchase the postings for $20.00 which was the cost of the binding fee. What I found even more fascinating than the priceless secrets held by this group was their trust in each other.

They trusted each other enough to lend each other tools and equiptment worth hundreds of dollars. For example, my wife needed a large fiberglass dome to build her Tiffany lamp upon, so she emailed the group requesting where she might find one. A woman named Carol offered to lend my wife her dome worth over $150.00. She had never met my wife but trusted her. My wife didn’t have an account name, signature, or website to give her credibility. She did, however, have Carol’s trust.

I asked Heather (my wife) if there were technical cues that gave a person credibility so that you could trust them. She said it helped if they had a website that presented their artwork. For example, Peter Grotpass, an artist, shared his website address so that one could see for him or herself Peter’s beautiful stained glass lamps. Another technical clue that helped others trust in another’s expertise was finding a business name in their email address. For the most part, however, everyone trusted each other.

My wife claims their trust in each other came because they were a close group. I couldn’t help but wonder if the trust came because they were close or the closeness brought the trust. For whatever reason, they were a tight-knit group considering most of them had never met each other. Here is an illustration of how close they were. There was one artist named Walt, that was admired by the group for his knowledge and skills, but most importantly, for his willingness to reach out to anybody in the group that needed help. He helped my wife countless time and was the responsible for leading her to the LISTSERV. One day, an email was received that Walt had passed away. The group was very saddened by his tragic loss even though most of them never had met Walt. My wife related how strange it was that she was so saddened by the death of a man she never met. She said there was a void in the group after Walt left. It took sometime for the group to get over the loss of one they had grown to admire and cherish.

You could see the group’s closeness in the content of their email messages too. At least half of the messages were personal. If anyone became sad or discouraged users would rally to their side with emails of encouragement. There was a phrase they would often say to cheer each other up: “I’m sending some ‘white light’ your way.” I’m not sure what white light was but I assume it had something to do with the light that radiates from the stain glass lamps.

My wife doesn’t participate in the group anymore but she will always remember with fondness their willingness to give what no one else or book could give. It was not only the knowledge of a lost art form she appreciated, but the friendship and all that comes in its wake—trust, appreciation, respect, and validation. She will always remember with fondness the willingness of this group to give back to the world what Tiffany took out of it.

The IRC World: An Unconscious Pretending In A Real-Time World

brain
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

by Curt Castillow

When I was a kid, my friend Mark Saxon was given a “CB” radio for Christmas. It was one of the nicer quality CB’s that received long-range signals. Excited with the prospect of communicating to the world, we began at once talking to strangers. Most individuals we spoke with were within our state, but occasionally on a cloudy day, our receiver picked up far away places. One such place was Australia. Mark and I would spend hours—no—days talking with a world of people we hadn’t previously met. I don’t have a CB anymore but I do have a computer. Instead of a handheld receiver, I have a keyboard, and, instead of communicating by airwaves, I communicate by bytes and bits. I find it just as fascinating to communicate today with a complete stranger in the UK as I did back then with one in Australia. It is that real-time communication that appeals to the IRC and MOO users. Though both IRC and MOO group users apply real-time technology to communicate, there is a subtle difference in the way in which they interact online. The difference is in the their conscious or unconscious effort to pretend to be something they are not.

In the MOO world, users interact in a pretend world of textual sights, sounds, and places. A user may find himself in a conversation with a stranger in a tree house or a jet tub. They consciously make an effort to imagine they are in the tub and make comments like “The water feels great!” Conversely, in the IRC space, there is no pretend world of make-believe. Users interact with each other without pretending to be anyone but themselves or anywhere but at home behind their computer. They don’t try to imagine they are in a closet or a gypsy wagon, just as I don’t try to imagine I am grain silo when I speak with my sister by telephone. As she and I talk, I acknowledge she’s in a car on a cell phone, and she recognizes I’m behind my desk at home. We don’t try to pretend we’re anywhere else nor anyone different then what we are—brother and sister. In the IRC world, people don’t try to consciously pretend, but in a sense they still do only they do it unconsciously. Let me explain.

The “anonymity of interaction in IRC allows users to play games with their identities” and be something unlike their real selves. Their “boundaries delineated by cultural constructs of beauty, ugliness, fashionableness or unfashionableness, can be by-passed on IRC. It is possible to appear to be, quite literally, whoever you wish” (Reid, 1991). I don’t believe most users deliberately try to be someone their not, but it’s a phenomenon that just happens. I noticed as I spoke with a user in an IRC environment, I was a little more upbeat and friendlier than I am in person. I wanted to make a good impression with him. This phenomena found in IRC users is not exclusive to cyberspace interaction. It can be witnessed in person as well. For example, we might find ourselves on edge with a family member then answer the front door and greet our neighbor with a friendly smile. On a first date, a man says all the right things and acts the right way but it may not be his real self. The blind dater doesn’t consciously deceive his date into believing he is something different than he really is, but he does it anyways.

Why are we not genuine with others online or in person at the front door? I don’t know all the reasons, but I think I know one: I suspect one reason is because we fear if others knew our “real selves”, they would dislike us. So we put on our best behavior and appear to be better than we actually are.

So whether I was trying to convince a trucker on my CB that I was older than I actually was, or convince a musician on the IRC channel that I’m a better guitarist than I really am, I want to look the part I think they believe I should be. In essence, I want to be to be more than I really am—I want to liked—whether it’s really me or not.


(I participated in three different channels on the EFNet: #apple, #horses, and #(I can’t remember the title but the people were foul)

Comparing A MOO World To A Blog or Fan Fiction World: It's A Good Place But Is It An Essential Place?

Cow
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

The MOO world is different than any other social software environment I’ve experienced in this class. The emotional ambiance created by artifacts and descriptions of people, places, and things made the MOO world unique, but it was the real-time interaction that made it so different—even enticing. Is the MOO world the best world though for an instructional technologist?

Even though I knew I wasn’t really standing in a dark closet with strangers, the very idea that I was pretending so, made me a little uncomfortable at first. In my real world, it would be inappropriate for me to stand, lie, or sit in a dark closet with anyone but my wife. I found it odd that a surreal world of make believe could evoke my conscience and make me feel I might have to defend my moral standards. I have to admit though, I was fascinated that so many people were in the closet, and I couldn’t help but wonder why, so I began to ask. I asked one girl (I think it was a girl) why she would stand in the closet. She replied, “To feel warm and cozy.” Now I thought that to be a little strange yet interesting—she felt warm and cozy in a pretend closet? But then again, in the pretend closet I felt real feelings that my personal space was violated. A pretend, textual world, created an emotional ambiance that could evoke feelings in me—uncomfortable feelings. So that shouldn’t seem so strange they would evoke “cozy” feelings in her.

Blogs and fan fiction writings evoked emotion too, but not in the same way that standing in a dark closet with a stranger did. Also, reading a description of a make-believe world in a fan fiction story was one thing but exploring it, touching it, and feeling it in a MOO world was another. For example, I visited a street that had an open manhole with a rope dropped in it. I was so fascinated as to who would be in that manhole and why. In a fan fiction piece, as a reader, I would merely observe the manhole from afar, but in a MOO world I’m there. I can see it, touch, and smell the stale, pungent odor rising from it cavity. Furthermore, I can look inside and talk about it with real people who see it too.

The fascination, however, was not so much a mysterious, dark, manhole, but who was in it, and why they were in it. I was interested in the people. Often I would explore strange places like a gypsy wagon, wondering what kind of personality would be in gypsy wagon, but was very disappointed to find no was there but me. I wanted people to be there; I wanted to interact with them. They made the world real, and were that attraction that made the make believe world so charming and alluring. So it wasn’t so much the artifacts and surroundings that make the MOO world so appealing, but the people that are in them.

Which brings me to what I believe makes the MOO world so different from the fan fiction and blog world. I can write a blog and eventually someone will respond and I feel a connection with him or her. In a MOO environment, I just enter a room and feel connected immediately as people greet me in real-time with a warm smile. I ask them questions and they respond. The world is pretend but their immediate response is real—very real and immediate. In fact even their body language seemed real. When I first entered the Living Room, everyone kept smiling at each other. They drove me crazy. Feeling self-conscience, I finally asked why they were all smiling. I felt they were all looking at me, and knew something I didn’t know as if perhaps a cyber, poppy seed was stuck between my teeth. They seemed to sense I was new and naïve to their world. They had fun with my inexperience, but were sensitive and helpful.

I can’t help but wonder though if the MOO world is the best world—at least from an instructional technology perspective. I know MOO and MUD world’s are “constructionist environments in which people build personally meaningful artifacts” (Bruckman, 1994) and collaborate in social settings. I know they have pedagogical underpinnings. And I know, they build by experiencing, and Dewey would say experience is the best teacher. I believe, however, experiencing the right things is the best teacher. I don’t have to experience Crack to know its bad. I’m not saying the MOO world is comparable to a drug world, but I’m not sure its an essential world to learning. Granted, it is a place where people experience and make understanding, but even Dewey said, “It is not enough to insist upon the necessity of experience, nor even of activity in experience. Everything depends upon the quality of the experience which is had” (Dewey, 1938). Is the MOO world a quality-learning environment? For the time you spend there is it worth it? If I am to look at from an instructional technologist point of view then I have to say no. At least, no, it’s not the best of quality time spent in pedagogy. There are better quality constructionist environments where I can build personal meaning to my world. I suspect though they might not be as enjoyable as a MOO world.

If I look at the MOO world from a psychological perspective, however, then perhaps I might say it is a quality world worth its weight in gold and my precious time. “Technicolor” thought so. When I asked her why she participated in the MOO realm she replied, “I’m a shut-in and I have to interact socially somehow with people.” In light of that statement, I can see where it might be a place to be.

Having said all that, on the bright side, I enjoyed the experience and was fascinated with the people and the emotions their cyber world evoked in me. But I have very little time and I’m not sure if the MOO world is where I want to spend what precious time I have left. Besides, I get all the MOO I need every morning from my neighbor's hungry cow.