"Innovator" Reflections, Part 4

Thanks for tuning in, and in advance (as well as in retrospect), my apologies for long posts. Prose has always been my downfall.

So in connection with my being chosen as "Education Innovator of the month at THE Journal, a leading educational technology publication, I'm writing here another little reflection on something I have done over the almost two decades during which I have defined myself as a teacher, something innovative that I can reasonably claim to have "innovated." A bit more evidence of my "innovativicity" (there, I just innovated that term, though I'm not really happy with it) than I'll cover in either my upcoming edutalkradio show or my EdWeb webinar next week. Here are dates and times:

Education Talk Radio (will be linked there Thursday, June 19, and live at 11:00am CDT).
Starting and Maintaining a Virtual School, Thursday, June 26, at 3pm CDT. You can register now!

I struggled a bit for today, thinking I might share something called "SLedupotential," a 3 hour "9 educators from 9 states" event that shared some groundbreaking work in virtual environments, back at NECC in 2008. But I'll save that one and get to another virtual worlds experience, my work with 4th graders in Indiana University funded "Quest Atlantis." Quest Atlantis, re-imagined as Atlantis Remixed, now resides at Arizona University, along with its creator, Dr. Sasha Barab.

My dear friend Bron Stuckey (whom I first met in Second Life, btw) was then Quest Atlantis's international face, coming to NECCs and trotting around the globe sharing its successes and challenges; its student-centered, social responsibilities-focused, plain and simple fun; and its educational validity with anyone who would listen. In 2009, I brought my first 4th graders into Quest Atlantis, after training as a teacher online within the platform (my teacher was none other than Bron) and performing the detailed permissions-getting/registering and account creation requirement to include my students in the Questers. Here's part of a blog post from my computer lab:

 USN Lower School Technology blog at http://usnlstech.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html:

This morning (Tuesday, January 27th) marked the first 4th graders' (Ms. Hunt's class) entrance into Quest Atlantis. My goal this week is just to hand out the usernames and passwords I've set up for the kids and to have them log in and begin to become comfortable with the user interface. Though the initial distribution process (handing out slips of paper to the kids with the information printed from a spreadsheet) was a bit clunky, we got in, and we didn't crash the internet connection! Yay! I did meet our network administrator in the hallway afterward and he said there was some slowing down, and we'll be testing over this week to see if I need to perhaps stagger the logins during that period more than I did today.

4th graders in Quest Atlantis!

The kids did GREAT! I asked them to find me at the clocktower and they did, then they moved about the OTAK island exploring and laughing. The excitement in our lab was palpable. This is looking good, very good, and look for ongoing communication about the process. Here's a picture of some of our virtual citizens in their "n00bie" shorts and teeshirts.

Over the rest of the school year, and into the following one, my students quested, explored,  leveled up, and learned. One of the most compelling reasons to take your students into Quest Atlantis is its foundational commitment to what they call the seven critical dimensions. Each element of every quest is designed to reinforce understanding of one or more of these. Here's a graphic screengrabbed from a portion of their Mission Statement:

If you can argue against 4th graders spending time immersed in those concepts and soaking them up into their core value systems, you're a better (and potentially vastly more evil) rationalizer than am I. 

So this Quest Atlantis experience is not something I made up, but making the effort and taking the time to bring it all into our K-4 computer lab, I would argue, qualifies as innovation. It resulted in many moments of epiphany and beauty in that learning and teaching experience, and I'll share one on my way out today. Louie and Gabe, one the son of a highly prominent rock-and-roll songwriter performer, the other the son of a schoolteacher, had risen in skills to the level at which they could modify their avatars. Take a good look at the picture and its insert, rasta hair and all, they made themselves twins. In the physical world they never could have done this, but in the virtual one, surrounded by meaningful positive experiences that they themselves have chosen from among the many available, they are twins. Life(s) is good...

Thanks for reading. More later!

Quest Atlantis is Rich and Promising

I had my first Professional Development session with Bronwyn Stuckey last night, and I'm happy to have begun my work in Quest Atlantis. The impact on my family time is sort of substantial, as balancing work(s) and my personal life is increasingly challenging. Thank goodness my wife is supportive and my son understands that my work is not 8 to 3 only. There's lots going on in our family and I need to be mindful of it always.

That said, I'm extreeeeemely impressed with QA. There is a thick thread of social commitment in my own classroom, underlying all the technology skills and understanding aquisition that it is my charge to inculcate. As I progress through my own initiation into this very nicely composed 3Di world, I can clearly see that the creators of it share my own dedication to kindness, creativity, and sharing, and do so in ways that will support students' initiation into thoughtful, intentional exploration of those themes and more.

I don't believe that anyone but the most entrenched neo-luddite could find any fault at all in this program.

Last night, just prior to the scheduled time I logged into Quest Atlantis via the shortcut the downloaded program's installation had deposited on my desktop. I also fired up Skype, having already added Bronwyn to my Skype contacts. I skyped her, but she informed me that I'd missed a direction and needed to place a call to a different specific number, which I did. It placed me in a free conference call. As we continued along the call, more people joined, as many as 14 others, I believe; and I muted my mic for the most part, relying on the QA text chat interface for asking questions and making comments.

Several of the other attendees hadde, clearly evidenced by the contrast between my stock "n00bie" white shirt and shorts and their own colorful get-ups. One must progress through the introductory quest in the program in order to have one's "avatar machine" unlocked. When it is unlocked, it remains so for only 24 hours, during which time one can experiment with one's look, from skin color, hair style, to shoes and such.

Remember I'd missed the first session. Accordingly, I laid back and listened to the discussion, led by Bron and carried on by several other attendees via voice. Peggy showed up, late (I think she'd missed the same instruction I missed (great minds think alike) and was working on both a Mac and a PC, complicating her experience. The program is cross-platform, obviously, but the Active Worlds based interface is different from the Second Life one we both are so highly familiar with. I kept holding the alt key and the up arrow to try to look closer at things, for example. I'm sure the more I work with it the more comfortable I'll get.

Anyway, I was soon very comfortable with Bron's clear direction and her kind demeanor. The two hours passed quickly, then became three as Peggy and I stayed behind to chat with her. Peggy at one point told her, "All right, I'm bringing 1400 students into here tomorrow, are you ready?" Bron laughed and said "Of course," or words to that effect.

This morning I was up early. I'm going to have to use the early a.m. time to pursue my path here, although the program seems to work fine from my laptop at school. Today I'll test one of the lab machines to make sure it can function well in the lab, and I have to admit I'm a bit concerned about the network resources that will be used if I get all 18 students in a class onworld at the same time. I'll have to 'speriment with that too, with David, our network administrator, so that I don't put undue strain on our network (parks that question for the next training session next week).

I progressed through my first few assignments, seeking out avatar/bots with information and in the process getting more and more facile with the interface, as well as its convention of indicating the North, South, East, and West coordinates in the window's toolbar. I've met the libarian, located the coffeehouse, and at this point I'm meeting mermen underwater and learning about Quest Atlantis' designers' "Learning Engagement Theory," having just speed-read an article published in the June-July 2005 issue of "Education Technology," a professional journal. The article is entitled "Eat your Vegetables and Do Your Homework: A Design-Based Investigation of Enjoyment and Meaning in Learning," by Sasha Barab, Anne Arici, and Craig Jackson from Indiana University. Very interesting stuff, and though it's "preaching to the choir" for me, I'd like to share that article with you. If I can get permission to do so, I'll so do :)

Meanwhile, it's off into a day of teaching and learning with my students. That's the primary business! I do, increasingly, believe that their journey into Quest Atlantis will be a richly rewarding one!

Virtual Teaching and Learning Starts with Quest Atlantis

I'm going to begin journaling my personal experiences with Quest Atlantis here in order that I might pull out perhaps publishable bits for print later on. So stay tuned here (and I may cross-post at Oh! Virtual Learning) for that. This is an exciting time for me and I hope to share it prodigiously.

It's been interesting this past year, learning about and experiencing the powerful way that immersion into a 3 dimensional internet experience (3Di) can lead to engaged learning. Most notably, I think of Peggy Sheehy's powerful presentation at the Second Life Educational Community Conference in Tampa, a gathering about which I've already blogged, and I'd also send you to Fleep Tuque's marvelous roundup at her blog, Fleep's Deep Thoughts. Funny, I use Second Life names and "rl" (real life) names interchangeably. Fleep is Chris Collins "irl" (in real life) and Peggy is Maggie Marat. I noticed in Tampa that folks tended to lean toward addressing one another using avatar names. There's a Masters thesis in there somewhere, ya'll--the whole issue of identity extension into digital realms. Thankfully, I don't have to write it here.

Peggy is THE pioneer in leading young students into immersive learning experiences via 3Di in the Second Life Teen Grid. This is a realm I have never visited, since I've as of yet failed to hook myself into a project, a required criteria for approval for adult entry into the TG. I hope to progress into the TG, and after listening to some of the success stories at the SLEDCC, I have every faith that I will. Meanwhile, I'm beginning my foray into VE with Quest Atlantis. The journey looks promising.

Quest Atlantis is a 3Di environment that has been working with students and teachers on a global scale since 2004. The extensive website that supports the teaching and learning states "Over the last four years, more than 10,000 children on five continents have participated in the project." I was introduced to it years ago and never got around to really digging in, that is until my relatively new friend Jeff Agamenoni, a teacher of special needs middle schoolers in Great Falls, Montana, needled me to investigate it.

Jeff's another story altogether. I met Jeff in Second Life, when he sought me out to add his new blog, "From Mr. A to Mr. Z" to the ISTE Island Blogger's Hut, a facility I maintain for the International Society for Technology in Education in Second Life. His avatar, Henny Zimer (that's "zymer," with a long "y," for those audial learners in the readership). We became friends. We Skype occasionally, twitter back and forth, and generally co-explore new technologies, especially social ones, together. We share a fascination with the new ways technologies are flattening the globe, and I respect his opinions, fresh as they are with the eyes of a newcomer to the field.

First Steps
I visited the QA website. I clicked on the "Educators" tab. I checked out the Professional Development (PD) schedule, and was appalled to see that qualifying for QA participation requires teachers to spend a month learning about the platform. PD sessions run weekly, about 2 hours a week, in the evening. I immediately set about trying to perform the equivalent of "testing out" of the training, sending an email to the website managers stating my prior experience with the 3Di, my various statuses as blogger (SL blog, contributor to the "official" Second Life Education blog), and my newly hatched LLC, MUVErs, dedicated to helping education and the 3Di "play well" together.

I received a prompt and polite response that I had to do the PD.

A little huffy, I thought to myself, well, I don't have time for that. My Google calendar, by the way, is pretty much a nightmare. My lovely wife, Lee Ann, and I have weekly meetings to make sure we're on the same page about our commitments, personal, familial, and professional; and it doesn't help that process much that I have two paying jobs--one as Lower School Technology Coordinator at University School of Nashville and one as "Teacher-in-residence" at the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach--and a start-up company that's currently knee-deep into high stakes negotiations with a large Mid-west America university system to help provide 3Di simulations for online learning. "NO WAY," was my thought.

Then one day last week I was inspired by an online conversation with Jeff to go look at the schedule again. I spent a bit more time at the QA website and complained to him that I'd missed the first in the September training sessions. He encouraged me to register for the rest, saying that he'd missed the first of his sessions but since it was basically introduction to VE, he was sure I could do the same. Here comes the nail in the coffin (perhaps an analogy with undue negative connotations, but such a graphic one I can't help but resort to it). I twittered a question:

Who wants to partner with me in Quest Atlantis training? 2 hours each Wed. Oops, there goes my audience, LOL

I did not expect any reply.

I went about my work irl. In a few minutes, I checked my tweets. The usual suspects had posted random, often helpful and informative thoughts, including this one.

@scottmerrick I do I do I do! 08:54 AM September 16, 2008 from web in reply to scottmerrick

It was from Peggy Sheehy, MaggieMarat on twitter, and my dear friend. Maggie, btw, was one of my 8 co-presenters in last summer's "SLedupotential: Educational Potentials of Second Life and Virtual Environments" at NECC2008 in San Antonio. Like quite a few friends I've met in Second Life and grown to know irl, Maggie/Peggy feels to me like a childhood friend never lost. What did I call her, a "dear friend?" I mean that. Later, friend Malinda McCormick (Joie Despres in Second Life) replied with a query about which session I was registering for. I hope that means that she'll join us! Malinda and I are "pagemates," a joking reference to our sharing a page in ISTE's "Leading and Learning with Technology" print and online publication this past summer as featured members of that 85,000 member international organization.

This may be time for a little aside. This is another Masters thesis topic, the strong bonds created by individuals who first meet "virtually," or "online," and then get to know one another personally and professionally and form amazingly strong relationships in both domains, maybe many domains. I will hypothesize here that the relationships are forged by common interests and predelections, not a half-bad way to start relationships, and further that these beginnings would never have happened at all without the mediating technology of the 3Di. Educational sage David Warlick and I have become friends for the very same reason, as he noted in a Skype chat with my teacher participants in 2007's Web2.0forUS! workshop: "Scott and I are not friends because of our geographical proximity. We are friends because of our ideas." I have never had so much as a cup of coffee with David. But when we meet irl he greets me like an old friend. I feel greeted and I return that greeting. I feel priveliged to know him, as well as to be known by him. That's what friendship is, or at least what supports it. It's powerful.

I must get back to my little journal.

Okay, well, tonight at 7 pm my time I will login to Quest Atlantis, using a new username, MisterMerrick, and my password that I set when I confirmed my participation in the teacher PD program, and I'll fire up Skype and get a voice connection with Bronwyn Stuckey, a teacher who leads QA PD from her home in Australia. The journey begins.

More later :)