Noreen's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

“I suggest virtual worlds might become a site for the exploration of pedagogies concerned with the ontological (study of the nature of being, existence or reality… “ (Bayne 2010)

So, who is Simone, my Second Life avatar – does she ‘exist’? Is she ‘me’? Last year when we took part in tutorials in Second Life, I said in my blog,

“I am looking forward to trying out a virtual self, an avatar in these circumstances, where identity is a little more prescribed and bounded by the narrative and the other ‘characters’. Here, it would probably be actions which define you, because appearance might be more archetypal? Maybe that’s why men write most of the games such as Dungeons and Dragons or Warcraft? Or is that a bit stereotypical of me?”

Whose actions were they? The appearance of the avatar was certainly an invention and changed many times during the ‘life’ of interactions on the IDEL module. The ‘actions’ Simone took included text chat, moving in the virtual environment, building and exploring. Edwards (2010) says “Knowing is not separate from doing” What does Simone ‘know’ after or during these actions? Is that the same as me knowing? Are ‘we’ learning?

Edwards (2010) goes on to say,

“Experimentation and gathering rely on an entangling of the human subject with the object world raising questions about the notions of learning/knowing by subjects as a way of framing such practice……..However, to learn, humans have to gather and experiment. Learning emerges from the entanglement with the non-human.” (Edwards, 2010)

Is the co-existence or co-presence of myself and Simone in Second Life, an “entanglement with the non-human”? Simone (or is it me?) has an inventory – is that a form of ‘gathering’ or knowledge? We (my avatar and I!) have ‘friends’ and a collection of notecards with random bits of information. Simone does ‘exist’ independently in Second Life and in pictures on my blog and in the minds of my colleagues.

“For in working online as teachers and learners, we are working in ‘destabilized’ classrooms, engaging in spaces and practices which are disquieting, disorienting, strange, anxiety-inducing, uncanny.” (Bayne 2010)

Was our classroom ‘destablised’ in terms of power relationships? Or how individuals within that class see themselves in relation to learning?

Certainly when I was first ‘present’ in Second Life, through Simone, and before taking part in the MSc course I had no guides, nothing to ‘learn from’ except my own experiences, gained through interacting with environment and other ‘beings’ or avatars. Was this “learning about objects by subjects” (Edwards, 2010)? I was certainly accumulating knowledge but still as a subject, surely? In contrast a ‘class’ in SL was much more familiar and seemed to resort to familiar structures to a large extent – did it not? The relationships between people, as embodied in their avatars, was a little different – hierarchies were largely absent with teachers being treated on the same level as colleagues, people appeared and disappeared in class at will etc. Was this ‘anxiety-inducing, uncanny’? For some people, more than others I suspect.