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Case Study: Teen Second Life at Suffern Intermediate School with Peggy Sheehy

Scroll down for the actual video footage, folks. STOP PRESS: My school have now followed in the steps of Suffern - see our experience with our own 3D Virtual World click here for news, video, advice, and reflections on our own experience.

On the last day of our visit to the USA, I caught a train up from New York to Suffern Intermediate School, in Suffern.

There, Peggy Sheehy was the first educator in the world to pioneer the use of Second Life for teenage student. Second Life is a 3D Virtual World which you can walk around in, and interact with other people who are simultaneously in the same environment. Amazingly, the 3D environment itself is created by the users themselves. I must mention the world has voice chat, so the social dynamics of interactions are surprisingly like real life. For instance at a party in Second Life you can hear the music coming from the stereo and might need to talk loud to talk over it. If you walk away from someone your voice is fainter to them, so you might walk up to someone to converse with them. You can text chat too, of course.

Now, obviously, you can't let teens run around the unregulated environment of Second Life. In fact Linden Lab will not allow teens into Second Life.

However, the company Linden Lab also offers 'Teen Second Life' for teens aged 13 to 17 (very strictly).

Still not good enough for structured, systematic use by a school. But wait! Educators can purchase a "Private Estate" - a piece of virtual land over which they have complete control. Bingo! A locked-down piece of virtual land!

I first heard Peggy Sheehy talk at a conference held in the adult Second Life environment. Second Life is great for conferences! No registration costs, no travel expenses, no organising for cover for your classes. Just log in and get the wisdom of colleagues, and offer your own wisdom.

As Peggy started speaking I quickly warmed to her and she won my confidence. SO MANY TIMES I have felt like gnawing my own elbow off in a conference presentation. But I immediately had the impression with Peggy that...
- she had common sense and a strong grip on reality / real life practice
- er, frankly, she was smart
- she could tell the difference between the important bits, and the irrelevant bits.
- she was relaxed and could roll with punches (you have to hear her anecdote about the time a pigeon flew into her classroom). This certainly proved true during my visit, when I arrived an hour late (thanks to the bloody New York taxi system - anyone with a car can be a taxi, is what I observed in NY). Peggy offered to be my taxi back and was entirely relaxed about juggling her schedule for this!

Peggy started planning to use SL in 2005 and launched in 2006.

It was such a delight to meet her. She is relaxed, but manic. Her manner with the students, as you'll see is assertive, but relational, with lots of space for the students' initiative (she gets through the 'official bits' as quick as possible!).

If there is one thing that has stood out to me from her observations on the educational value of a 3D virtual world, it's the notion of a "Psychosocial Moratorium" - a term coined by Erik Erikson. The idea is that the social space of a 3D virtual online world is particularly 'safe', and therefore particularly beneficial for nurturing the confidence of adolescents trying to figure out who they are, what they are good at, what they stand for and what they are are known for. As someone who has spent countless hours in the safety of online environments, I know exactly what she means. As of November 2008 I am seeking to set up Teen Second Life for my school, and can't wait to see how the students respond. Peggy has many anecdotes of students who have 'found themselves' through what is essentially a scaffold to constructing social identity (my wording there).

Now, when I visited Suffern, I had my little Dell netbook and webcam, and 'taped' some conversation with Peggy. I also recorded a conversation with some students, and a short, intense, and fascinating first session where a class experienced TSL for the first time!

The following footage is not brilliant quality, and is lengthy, but I found 'being there' very rewarding and have cut out very little from what I recorded. My intended audience is educators keen to explore the real life detail of a case study in the use of Second Life for students.

Let me start with the students and we can go from there to my interview with Peggy. Here are some random students who came into the library and whom I quizzed:

Here is Part 1 of the session introducing a new class to SL. The moment when the students realise you can fly in Second Life is priceless. They've been grabbed, hook, line and sinker. This moment is so significant. It is the moment where a simulated environment becomes interesting and of value to young people who are, themselves, at their age, at an age where their key challenge is to begin to define the parameters of who they are as independent beings in a complex reality. Again I think - Second Life appears to have the potential to be a scaffold.

Here is Part 2 of the session introducing a new class to SL. Some intriguing moments for those who have the time to watch it all. The noise level slowly lessens. The students are at times confounded, at times confident, at all times utterly engaged.

Now let's take a step back from practice and hear from Peggy. My big question is "What's the point?" She announced 3 thoughts and gets distracted after #2.

But we do come back to #3!

Now, if the Second Life environment is built by users, who builds the locked down private estate 3D world used by any particular school?

The answer appears to be:
- the students, students, students (such a good sign!)
- third party developers (Peggy highly recommends a gifted developer - Eloise Pasteur who is efficient and practical with her quotes. There is a funny moment in the recording where I don't understand the surname!)
- third party companies, e.g. NASA and many others, more than willing to make available their 3D Stuff (e.g. a simulated rocket ship) available for installation in a school's virtual space.
- noticeably absent - the classroom teacher. i.e. you do not need expertise!

And finally, some more casual chatting, and Peggy shows me the security system they set up to prevent students from using SL when there was no teacher present in the world. (The teacher can flick a switch in the virtual world that glues anyone who logs in, to the one spot so they can't move.)

My thanks to Peggy Sheehy for being such a wonderful, flexible, energetic host, and so willing to share, so able to remain relaxed while cramming in an extraordinary amount into what was basically less than 3 hours, AND I had 3 cups of coffee! Peggy's twitter ID is www.twitter.com/maggiemarat. Her blog is http://metaversedltd.com/ . She also administrates a school blog at http://rampoislands.blogspot.com/ which says it has been relocated to http://ramapoislands.edublogs.com , although this website seems not to exist. (Peggy - you are sure to read this, where is the new website?)

All this the day after US election day. I was at Times Square that evening... but that is another blog post.

To follow my school's adventures of using Second Life, subscribe using the box on the right hand side. I am committed to posting material I believe will be useful to classroom teachers myself interested in the potential of technology to empower students and thereby transform education. On twitter I am www.twitter.com/steve_collis and on YouTube I am www.youtube.com/lestep. You can see my non-professional blog at http://stevecollis.blogspot.com . I have so much more to post about what I saw in American schools! Fingers crossed I find the time to publish!

My American Twitter Diary

Twitter is text messaging service where you can subscribe to other's text messages, and they can subscribe to yours. I go to twitter.com and send a message and 217 people will receive that message. Similarly I receive 269 people's text messages. Twitter turns everyone into a sort of text radio transmitter, sending out text waves. Reading Twitter messages is like standing in crowded room. You pay attention to certain conversations or broadcasts, and participate it ones you choose.

I highly recommend it to people who can find the time to use it. You meet amazing people on Twitter. The text messages must be 140 characters or less so everyone has to be ultra concise. I follow a lot of educators who post messages with great ideas and technologies they have come across. I also get into great conversations, since you can direct messages at particular people by starting your message with "@" and their name. You can see all my messages at http://twitter.com/steve_collis

Recently I went to America to see a range of schools there. I thought it would be interesting to review all the Twitter text messages I sent while on the trip! Here they are. It is like a micro-diary of my trip.

About a 100 messages over 14 days... I put the ones which tell you what I am actually doing in bold:

	Fri Oct 24 03:21:38		NewProfessionalBlog: On the maiden flight of the Airbus A380 http://tinyurl.com/6zaons
	Sat Oct 25 05:17:03		Safe in Atlanta. 1.15am here but I am wide awake! Ron Clarke conference tomorrow. 1st impressions of US: lovely people & large serving sizes
	Sat Oct 25 21:47:24		just bought a tacky top for 'prom night' tonight. Proper Internet not quite up and running yet... almost. Ron Clark Academy jaw dropping.
	Sat Oct 25 23:39:28		stuck in Atlantan traffic! What fun!
	Sun Oct 26 04:11:57		Finally I have my wireless internet running. The silly thing needs software to install - software you have to download from the internet!
	Sun Oct 26 04:13:41		Oh the humanity. So I had to try to freeload a connection - wondered the streets of Atlanta until I finally eked out the 12 mb download!
	Sun Oct 26 13:10:02		Listening to Kim Bearden, cofounder of the Ron Clark Academy. She is telling her story. Riveting stuff.
	Sun Oct 26 19:22:30		NewProfessionalBlog: The Ron Clark Academy - PART 1 http://tinyurl.com/5vypmp
	Mon Oct 27 03:13:16		Posted observations of an astonishing school in the US: http://tinyurl.com/5vypmp
	Mon Oct 27 17:46:36		@maggiemarat Are you going to the T&L conference, perchance? We are about to board a plane to Seattle ourselves!
	Mon Oct 27 17:49:32		Now that I'm connected and am in America, it's time I extended my US network on Twitter. Can you DM suggestions for US educators 2 follow?
	Mon Oct 27 18:00:58		@loonyhiker hi Carol from the Atlanta airport. I've been in the US for 2 days now. Experiencing minor culture shock but it's a lovely place!
	Tue Oct 28 00:54:07		at baggage claim in Seattle! intending on claiming my baggage! See if I don't!
	Tue Oct 28 01:16:50		gorgeous sunset in Seattle with autumn trees dense along the highway
	Tue Oct 28 04:46:29		using Twitter seach to figure out who else is at t&l conference in Seattle and make twitter friends with them!
	Tue Oct 28 04:47:23		@markomni lovely place just downstairs from the Pan Pacific,...
	Tue Oct 28 04:54:41		@roswellsgirl late reply now but I've seen some pretty interesting uses of moodle. Keen to chat at t&l. Listen for my Australian accent!
	Tue Oct 28 05:09:20		@dmcordell I am in the US and will be at t&l - would be delighted to chat.
	Tue Oct 28 05:14:02		Found delightful place to eat tonight. No sugar no batter, no fat, no deep frying, no cream on the side, no massive refillable softdrink.
	Tue Oct 28 05:24:47		@cwoldhuis no time for a photo, I was too busy capturing it in a text message in 140 chars or less. Gilbert was disgusted at me typing away!
	Tue Oct 28 05:51:57		@ldumicich I KNOW! It's insane isn't it! Last night I had sashimi. I tells ya, it wasn't sashimi once they had battered and fried it!
	Tue Oct 28 17:25:15		Coffee in the US is beautiful! Tastes like coffee in France. Much better than Australian coffee and I don't know why.
	Tue Oct 28 21:12:03		heh heh Gary Stager's presentation about to begin - drawn into debate with him about Ron Clark's methods.
	Wed Oct 29 23:45:52		I feel like head butting something.
	Thu Oct 30 01:43:56		on top of the Needle in Seattle. Nice view!  Next catch Monorail and find some grub. Then to airport for overnight flight to Chicago.
	Thu Oct 30 11:10:26		Arrived in Chicago. Now rental car on wrong side of road to the Illanois Maths and Science Academy.
	Thu Oct 30 11:11:30		thanks @ausbetina and @ackygirl for the OzTweets!
	Thu Oct 30 12:53:55		Broadcasting my breakfast in Chicago http://tinyurl.com/6689ts
	Thu Oct 30 12:59:07		Watch me and my colleagues have brekky at the International House of Pancakes in the US of A http://tinyurl.com/6689ts  LIVE NOW :-)
	Fri Oct 31 01:56:20		Now in Philadelphia. Two school visits tomorrow - Science Leadership Academy and Delaware County Christian School.
	Fri Oct 31 12:09:09		> 1 million expected in Philadelphia, just down from our hotel. Why? A baseball victory I hear. Exciting, but transport to SLA hard.
	Fri Oct 31 12:10:51		@chrislehmann looking forward to visiting your school this morning!
	Fri Oct 31 15:29:43		The Science Leadership Academy was fascinating. Will blog on it asap (gotta post part 2 of Ron Clark first)
	Fri Oct 31 15:31:25		Next, Delaware County Christian School, and navigating the big parade in Philadelphia - it's going mental due to a huge baseball final win.
	Fri Oct 31 15:35:47		Bizarre mix of Halloween and baseball parade in Philadelphia. They should move election day to today too and make it a trifecta.
	Fri Oct 31 22:17:10		Very long queues just to get onto platforms at Suburban Station in Phili. Luckily we were coming out, not in.
	Sat Nov 01 15:07:06		Now en route to New York on a train. Quiet weekend and then IS 339, Beacon School, School of the Future, and Suffern High School, then home!
	Sun Nov 02 04:07:53		Spent today walking around New York. It's HUGE and full of tourists like us, even more than I remember in Paris. Saw stand up comedy 2nite.
	Sun Nov 02 16:32:14		@TCFR moi aussi je viens d'arriver a NY. Je visite des ecoles ou ils font des choses extraordinaire (pas forcement avec l'informatique)
	Sun Nov 02 20:02:49		@Mrs_Banjer good morning! Quite cold in NY - it is 4pm here. Enjoy your Monday!
	Sun Nov 02 21:28:27		Slammed against a wall with a new blog post. I'm publishing anyway. It is very rough! Twitter will announce it shortly automatically.
	Sun Nov 02 21:52:19		NewProfessionalBlog: Very 1st Draft Summary of Some Ed Discourses... http://tinyurl.com/5vpqgm
	Mon Nov 03 22:03:32		Obama's granny died. Lots of b
	Mon Nov 03 22:03:55		lots of buzz in NY about the election.
	Mon Nov 03 22:08:01		The end of what feels like a very long day. Visited IS 339 in the Bronx this morning and the Beacon School this arvo. Ah so much to blooooog
	Mon Nov 03 23:12:52		@ldumicich Have you ever looked a potato in the eye?
	Mon Nov 03 23:27:49		@nstone I am reading Robert Ludlum at the moment. Bears no resemblance to reality I am sure.
	Tue Nov 04 14:36:41		Sitting in professional development sessions in School of the Future in NY http://tinyurl.com/6jpew3(New_York_City)
	Wed Nov 05 04:18:53		Absolutely delighted to be in New York for such a significant day in the history of America! It's quite moving!
	Wed Nov 05 04:32:25		I am very impressed with McCain's speech. It was sensitive, gracious, sincere. Well done America. Not a moment too soon! (if 4 yrs late)
	Wed Nov 05 04:37:30		The crowds in Times Square and at The Rockefeller were very international, Americans almost a minority. I was there until an hour ago.
	Wed Nov 05 04:38:39		It was funny - the TV people were trying to get everyone to chant, which we all did, but I could hear Dutch, French, and New Zealandish!
	Wed Nov 05 11:29:34		This will be my last tweet for many, many hours. Off to Suffern High in NY to see @maggiemarat this morning - then v. long trip back to OZ!
	Wed Nov 05 22:21:36		free 15 minute wireless internet cards being handed out in JFK airport. sigh... I kept walking past in various disguises to get xtra ones.
	Fri Nov 07 04:19:41		Back in Sydney, jet lagged, & feeling rather disoriented after a very intense couple of weeks. Have purchased and installed "Far Cry 2".
	Sat Nov 08 07:02:30		In a foul mood cause my body thinks it's 2am. Listen, body, it's 6pm, mkay? SMACK! SMACK!
	Mon Nov 10 10:15:50		Dear Twitter, sorry for ignoring you. I admit to taking you for granted - the friend that is there according to my agenda, my time. Oh well!

Very 1st Draft Summary of Some Ed Discourses...

Some Components I’ve Noticed In Educational Discourses

Here is my first, very rough draft (dated 2^nd November 2008) of what are the wider themes of educational discourse that I have encountered in conversations, online and face to face, at my school and at conferences and other schools, that are on my mind.

By discourse I mean the sorts of things that are said and are likely to be repeated

I invite comments, particularly to suggest better ways of phrasing the arguments below, and the terminology.

I simply HAD to get these ideas down from my head into text. I’ll polish them and comment on them later.

Please note I am not yet commenting on WHAT I THINK. I am simply parroting in my own way the sorts of things are being said. I am preparing to make some comments especially in relation to my recent experience of schools in the US. But not yet!

Also, what comes below is not exhaustive, just what seems urgent to me for me to make up my mind about

WHAT IS BEING SAID ABOUT...

1.     Old School

2.     Technology in Education

3.     Creativity

4.     Constructivism

5.     Direct Instruction

 

1.     Old School

 

There is an image I have in my head, that exists all too often in real classrooms, of the well-meaning teacher who over-regulates the classroom both in terms of behaviour management (very strict) and content (focus on the concrete).

 

The teacher is prescriptive, the classroom safe, predictable, and boring. Student behaviour tends to be more difficult because those students who do not prize conformity and teacher-approval are liable to do anything, anything, to make life more interesting.

 

Of particular note is that the student agenda does not match the teacher agenda. The teacher’s agenda is:

-       To cover teaching content by having students complete activities.

-       To maintain control of the students.

The student’s agenda is:

-       Possibly to be compliant. This may be for teacher approval, but also due to a general notion that success in school equals success in life, which is a message students get from every direction, although it is false. Compliance may also be to avoid punishment.

-       Social Rewards. Who will they sit near? Who will they talk to and work with? What will they be known and valued for?

-       Avoid boredom. Or put up with it.

 

The clash of agendas makes the teacher exert greater and greater psychological force and threats of sanctions in order to win compliance. Their sense of ‘face’ becomes tied to winning compliance. Once a teacher goes down this path, the dynamic often intensifies and habit sets in. The clash of agendas comes to be the definitive dynamic of the class. The teacher gets better and better at championing their agenda.

 

The class looks orderly, under control, and successful, but is still fundamentally defined by an underlying conflict that the teacher just happens to have won.

 

The teacher has spent years learning how to achieve this and is very reluctant to change. Blood, sweat and tears have gone into their techniques, and awful memories of past failures and humiliations, (where the students ganged up and won the conflict) linger in the teacher’s mind.

 

In the Old School classroom, the dominance of the teacher’s agenda is the single defining characteristic of the lesson, well over and above learning and student growth.

 

2.     Technology in Education

 

There is a strong teacher movement to use technology in education.The possibilities are incredible.

 

Technology in education is best thought of as a new “space”.

 

The students move in this space anyway, outside of school. In fact the technological space has become a fundamental component of their world.

 

Furthermore the technological “space” shrinks and transcends the physical world, allowing meaningful global communities spanning countries and cultures, and transcending the limitations of time, since the connections are always on.’

 

When technology is conspicuously absent from the learning space this sends a powerful, if invisible, message to the students about the relevance of school to “real life”.

 

However, using technology does not cure a teacher of the Old School dynamic I defined above. The new technology “space” can be used very conservatively. Instead of writing, students type or record their voices. Instead of using the Encyclopedia Brittanica, they look at Wikipedia. Instead of watching a video, they watch YouTube. None of this is revolutionary.

 

But technology will tend to “rock the boat” of the old school approach. The teacher who uses a wiki learns very quickly that they do not have a final say or veto over it. When students publish work online the teacher is no longer the definitive audience.

 

Technology ought to be used in all schools and made fully available to all students, but it does not necessarily transform classroom practice.

 

3.     Creativity in Education

 

What do we actually want our students to have?

 

At conferences and in the online discourse by teachers, creativity is the new black. Throw out Old School, because Old School focuses on skills and a willingness to conform and comply. These characteristics, so the argument goes, are great for an industrial economy, but not for an information economy, where ideas and information in general, and new ideas in particular, are the new commodity.

 

4.     Constructivism / Inquiry-Based Learning / Project-Based Learning

Constructivism is quite Socratic. Instead of starting with the teacher, you start with the student. The student learns about the world through their own initiative, experiments and decisions. The path they take is dictated not by the teacher but by their own curiosity and their own strategic decisions.

 

They end up learning similar content to Old School, and much more besides, but the content is learnt as it becomes useful to achieve a higher aim – to write a book, construct a mechanical vehicle, design a bridge, persuade a politician, or whatever other real life aim they have.

 

The teacher plays the role of coach, guiding the student, providing information and technique where appropriate.

 

Constructivism presupposes a general match in student and teacher agendas. The student comes with natural curiosity. The teacher wants to encourage that curiosity but not dictate its path.

 

Students tend to learn much more efficiently than with Old School, because their agenda is to learn.

 

This also requires more effort on the students’ part because they are mentally engaged and making their own decisions.

 

5.     Direct Instruction

 

Coming soon.

The Ron Clark Academy - Part 2

This post was published to HappySteve at 10:21:35 AM 30/10/2008

The Ron Clark Academy – Part 2

In Part 1 I described a lesson I observed at the Ron Clark Academy. It was a site to behold!

In this post I will describe the school in more detail.

Location

The school is deliberately located on the rough side of town, in a building that was formerly a rope factory. I believe there was also a brothel on site. They’ve purchased other nearby buildings with the intention of using them in the future.

Physical Appearance

On the front gate is huge metal lettering spelling out 7 key words, each from a different continent. I can’t remember what the words are. One was “reveur” – French for dreamer. Students visit a continent each year.

The foyer is an open space with stairs up to the second floor and a big blue slide that curls its way down. The big blue slide stands out enormously and really is the signature of the building. Students and teachers use the slide as they wish.

 

All the walls are covered by amazing graffiti paintings by the world famous graffiti artist “Totem” (http://www.mr-totem.com/totem2.html). They found out that Totem lived nearby and he agreed enthusiastically to do the art. Every room has rich murals by him. The entire school is like an art gallery!

Along with the big slide, the artwork establishes an immediate creative atmosphere in the school. None of the oppressive plain walls with square paintings that many schools have, which communicate the importance of order and conformity.

Bathrooms:

The bathrooms also have the beautiful graffiti, and much more besides – decorated mirrors, a dinosaur stuck on the wall.

Here are some photos:

 

The boys' toilet with a dinosaur.

 

 

The girls' toilet.

I remember hearing that when students at most schools are surveyed about what they would like to improve at their school, they very often put “clean bathrooms” at #1. What a powerful message students receive about themselves when the toilets are sparse, plain and dirty! Dirty because some students make them dirty, but then that feeds back onto itself. Dirty toilets will get dirtier, and it is demeaning for students, utterly undermining messages teachers are trying to send about conducting themselves with dignity.

If a school’s toilets are really nice and looked after, the students will look after them too, and their sense of dignity and worth will be powerfully established.

Themed Rooms:

Each room is themed and generally reflects what topics are being studied. Here are some examples:

The Gauntlet:

This room has a maze of tiny rooms separated by locked doors, around a central room blocked off with one way glass. They put problems in each room. When the student has solved the problem a key is dropped into the room so they can go to the next one.

Other Displays:

Student work is posted around the place. One noticeable example is a set of newspapers written by the students and featuring the students’ photos on them.

House System

There is a huge spinning wheel in the front foyer split into quarters representing the four   houses. Each is a named with a word from a foreign language – one of the words on the front gate of the school. Students are assigned a house by spinning the wheel when they join the school, in a ritual similar to the choosing hat in Harry Potter.

Teachers

The teachers all have a brilliant track record and many of them have a string of awards behind them. Their appointment to the RCA was via a video submission and comprehensive interviews etc.

The staff work very long hours, and are wholeheartedly committed. They get involved with the students’ personal lives, visiting the students’ homes, regularly taking the student out to places, for example to the theatre or hosting them in groups at their own homes for dinner.

The founder Ron Clark and cofounder Kim Bearden both teach full time, all day, as well as running the school. They work very very long days.

 

After School Program

Students have a choice of a very wide variety of afternoon activities after school run by the teachers and by local parents and volunteers. These change from term to term and cover every topic imaginable, and are often practical in nature.

Trips

Students visit 6 of the 7 continents by the end of their 3 years at RCA. This is funded by sponsorships and is integrated with intense study in preparation for the trip.

Homework

Student have homework each night which they must complete.

Parents are required to support them as a prerequisite to enrolment. They have regular lessons for parents, for instance teaching them Mathematical techniques and rules, so that parents can help their child at home. These are very well attended (jam packed!).

 

Parents     

Parents commit themselves to being actively involved in the school and supporting learning at home.

 

I shall conclude with my thoughts on what I saw in part 3.