Whyville

Today, I want to introduce another virtual world --- Whyville.

How many players do you think that Whyville has?

Over 1.2 million, players age are from 8 to 16, the average is 12.3 years old, and 68% players are girls. Each day, about 14,000 players log in Whyville and spent from 5 minutes to more than 5 hours within it. In Whyville, players can design their own faces, chat with other players, and play different type of science games. In fact, over 10,000 sciences activities will happen in a regular day.

Above is the map of Whyville, "citizens" there can visit any place they want by clicking the icon. Let me take Spin Lab for example.

The girl on the left corner is my avatar. :)  

This is what the lab inside looks like. When I click the nose icon, the reminder comes out, suggest players reading the lab manual first.

The manual has listed all the activity users can play in Spin Lab. For each activity, it provides a brief description, including the question (How does a skater get spinning so fast?) and the background information.

Here is the screenshot of the game Skater Simulation.

Player can place the skater's arm and leg by clicking the color dots on her joint and dragging her limps to a new position. But if player moves her to a unstable position, the skater would fall down. The skater's speeding change can be observed through the simulation on the right. 

Single-player games like this is only a part of the Whyville, but it is an important part, by which I mean, players build their own salary most by playing these games. As you may have noticed, my avatar has not had a nose! If I want a fancy nose, I need to buy them in Face factory. So, I think now you might have the idea about what drives players to play science games!   

Why does virtual world make a difference?

I hope last blog has given you a general idea about what Quest Atlantis is. Today, I want to go deeper behind the surface of Quest Atlantis, to dig out the fundamental rationale of the fancy virtual world.

The whole Quest Atlantis virtual world is intended to engage children in a form of transformational play. What is "transformational play"? 

"Transformational play is a pedagogical tool, it beyonds perceptual immersion and does not require physical immersion, but instead is tied to situational or projective immersion or what others have referred to as presence. (Debe, 2009; Sheridan 1999)"[1]

From the sentence I quoted above, it can be found that just playing games doesn't means it is the transformational play. There should be situation or project gamers (students) immersed in.

"Playing transformationally involves (a) taking on the role of a protagonist (b) who must employ conceptual understandings (c) to make choices (d) that have the potential to transform (e) a problem-based fictional context and ultimately (f ) the player’s understanding of the content as well as of (g) herself as someone who has used academic content to address a socially significant problem. "[2] 

Now, we would get the idea why virtual world is a good way to fulfill transformational play. First, students should be capable to do something to solve a socially significant problem. Second, students should know what will happen after his/her decision, by which it means students will get the feedback quickly. Third, students should use academic content to solve the problem as a scientist, journalist or other profession.

It is a quite different experience from school learning, students have less chance to change the world they live by using the knowledge they learn in class. Students have to solve many problems in school every day, but all these problems will not affect the world, what they will affect is the student's grade. Certainly, a student will be happy when he/she has a high grade. But how could they connect what they learn to their future, to the bigger world out of school, if the problem offers in class is "Amy has 4 apples, in the morning she eats one, how many apples are left"? 

Virtual world is such a good option for school education, students could take any risk as they like and teachers will not need to worry about whether it would hurt the students themselves or cause some damage to the real world. And working like an adult is what all I want to do when I was a child. I always play teacher-student game with my cousin, imaging I am a real teacher! But I don't know whether she is happy to act as a student when she is at home!

[1]Barab, S. A., Scott, B., Siyahhan, S., Goldstone, R., Ingram-Goble, A., Zuiker, S. J., & Warren, S. (2009). Transformational Play as a Curricular Scaffold: Using Videogames to Support Science Education. Journal Of Science Education And Technology, 18(4), 305-320.

[2] Barab, S. A., Gresalfi, M., & Ingram-Goble, A. (2010). Transformational Play Using Games to Position Person, Content, and Context. Educational Researcher, 39(7), 525-536.

Quest Atlantis

Would you believe the game in the video above could be used in schooling education?

This is the virtual world I want to introduce in this blog --- Quest Atlantis.

What is Quest Atlantis? Quest Atlantis is the former version of Atlantis Remixed. It " is an international learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environments to immerse children, ages 9-16, in educational tasks".[1]

The most famous unit in Quest Atlantis is Taiga, students work together to figure out a serious ecological problem which has resulted in many fish dying. Students can move through the park (Taiga National Park)and talk with people(NPCs and other students), by which, they can collect clues, then conclude the reason of this problem, make a recommandation about suggestions to improve the environment. Does this sounds like a real life task which are always done by scientists? It is cool, right?

As a educational virtual world designed for schooling education, it provides "an immersive context with over 60,000 players worldwide".[2] These children have submitted over 50,000 Quests and completing 100,000 Missions, some of which are assigned by their teachers, others are done by children's own choice in their free time. Researches through analyzing these learners data have prove learning gains in science, language arts and social study. More importantly, it offers a totally different learning approach in classroom. The inquiry-based tasks requires students to act and think like professionals, to make a difference. During this process, not only academic knowledge student developed but also communication skills.

It is not easy to get students accessing this kind of opportunities in real life, because they are tiny people, they make mistakes, you will never want put hundreds of fish's life into teenagers' hands. ;) But you can do it in a virtual world, which could let students learn from their mistakes, it will not hurt anyone(any fish)!

Next week, I want to continue talk about Quest Atlantis and the rational under it.   

Oh! I almost forget the most important thing --- the designer!! Quest Atlantis Project is developed by Dr Sasha Barab's team. Now Dr Barab is a Professor in the Teachers College at Arizona State University. Before that he worked in Indiana University, that is why you will meet some invalid weblink pointing to IU when you scan Quest Atlantis website. Don't worry, you can google the title or key words, and find other equivalent resources.   


[1][2]: quote from http://atlantisremixed.org

It is free of charge to download Quest Atlantis from their website for everyone. It has both PC and Mac version.

Hello, World!

If you had used VC, you would know where the subtitle came from. :-)

But today, I want to introduce a world which doesn't exist --- virtual world --- literally. Virtual world certainly exists, or how could I finish my IDE 611 assignment 2!

What is a virtual world? I want to begin with what is not a virtual world, this idea was borrowed from a book[1] about designing virtual world. I think for such a board concept, it is a easy way to clarify its boundary.

Is the game Cut the Rope a virtual world?

No, I don't think so. Why? One day you received a box, you open it and find there is a cute frog waiting for you to feed it candy. It seems like you are in a first-person perspective virtual world. But can you explore this "world", if it were a world. You could only move forward through a fixed order level by level. And believe me, in Cut the Rope, there is nothing worthy to explore. It is certainly a good game, I mean, but just different kinds of boxes.(^_-)

First, as a player, you can explore the virtual world through yourself (first-person perspective) or moving an avatar which is a computer-based character representing you (third-person perspective). So, if you design a virtual world, you should think about how the atmosphere and territory looks like, also objects in the world.

Also, in Cut the Rope, you are lonely, by which I mean, there is no network of people within the game. In a virtual world, as a player, you have the ability to interact with other players in real time. Thinks about World of Warcraft, it is such a famous Massively multiplayer online role-playing game within strong social interaction between players. As regard of community, you must think of another virtual world --- Second life. It is a typical online real-life game, has been massively discussed in educational related field, such as language instruction. Oh, finally I refer the word "EDUCATION"!!!

In the next few weeks I will want to introduce several famous educational virtual world and also want to discussion the use of virtual wold in K-12 school education.

Hope this blog give you a initial impression about virtual world and believe me, this blog it not an advertisement of Cut the Rope!!!!They do not pay me a penny!!   

[1]The book is Design for learning in Virtual World .