Warning: Bit of a rant to follow 

I went into Day 2 with high hopes that we’d get into some new things or some real ‘plan’ of where we go from here. I left Day 2 feeling frustrated and a bit .. irritated, I guess.  Now, let me say right up front that I sure as heck don’t want to come across like I have all the answers, and I sure as heck don’t know even a smidge as much as some of the other people at this summit.  That being said, I think that sometimes (and not just at this summit, I’m talking in general here) people get so focused on their own objectives and what they think should happen that they don’t take a second to look at the big picture and really sort of think of *everything* instead of their one specific agenda.

We’re spending so much time talking about Immersive Education and the Education grid, and this whole Immersive Education initiative.. and I think that’s fantastic, I really do. I love anything that makes learning new, and exciting and gives students the opportunity to learn about THEMSELVES as well as whatever material is required.  The platforms being discussed: Second Life, Croquet, and Wonderland are all amazing tools and fantastic ways to engage learners and revitalize an educational system that’s lacking in so many ways.

We spent a lot of time today talking about what needs to happen and the barriers to those things. Lack of money, lack of time, lack of bandwidth, lack of teachers with the skillsets to make these things happen.  People keep talking about ‘games’ in the classroom, but I think that perhaps we should think of them as “Participatory Learning Experiences” instead of games.  I think taking a class into Second Life to explore pyramids isn’t really a game, but an experience.

A lot of the discussion focused on the K-12 students and the lack of support and all of those things I mentioned previously.  Virtual worlds take a lot of bandwidth and some fairly powerful computers that most K-12 classrooms don’t have. So we spend hours talking about how that makes things difficult and how we need to lobby our congressmen and women to provide these things, and how we need a ’sputnik’ revelation for education now to really ’shake things up’ and get the ball rolling. Now, the sorts of things they’re talking about doing here.. *might* succeed.. maybe.. for some students, some school districts.. some areas.. but for everyone? I’m highly doubting it, and even if some miracle occurred and it DID happen for every school in the country giving access to all of these students, how long do you think that might take? Yeah. A very long time.

So, if we’re talking about video games and how much students play them and how successful they are, then wouldn’t it maybe make sense to think about using *those* platforms to reach students.  To piggyback on my post from yesterday, what if.. instead of Second Life, Croquet, and Wonderland, we focused on Wii, XBox, and Playstation.  What if, instead of lobbying congress, changing laws, developing virtual world modules for education we just got together with some game makers and built these modules for use on the game consoles.  A classroom could certainly afford a Wii more easily than they could afford laptops for every student that would be capable of running Second Life.  Most game consoles also allow for 2-4 players at one time, so on top of everything else, we give students the opportunity to learn about teamwork, and cooperation and problem-solving in groups.  We’re not teaching material, we’re teaching learning skills.

Immersive education is not solely giving students access to virtual worlds and teaching them there.  Immersive education is showing students differences, giving them experiences, and opening their minds to different ways of thinking.  I hope we get there, as a country.. but I’m not convinced that there’s only one path to make that happen.

I’m in Boston for the Digital Media Summit this weekend and today was the first day of the summit.  I haven’t been to Boston in a very long time and when I was here before it was with my favorite aunt who lived near here and brought me into the city to see the aquarium and walk around a bit.. so it’s not like I’ve had experience navigating the city by myself before.

Yesterday when I arrived, I walked out of the train station knowing that my hotel was close.  From the map I had, it looked as though my hotel was straight across the street and a little to the left of the train station.. so in the rain with my bags, I headed that way.  No need for a cab, it was close enough to walk.  If you’re headed the right direction, that is.

So, after a few minutes of fumbling around and carrying bags and getting rained on, I hailed a cab and told him where I was going.  Thankfully he was a super sweet man and said “You could walk there!” I said “Yes, I KNOW I could.. if I knew where I was going!”  We chatted a bit as we sat through a few red lights while he navigated me back in the right direction and he mentioned his granddaughter attends Penn State.  Small world.

So, after I got to my hotel (staying at the Westin – VERY lovely spot, really enjoying it so far. KUDOS TO YOU WESTIN..) I dropped the bags and headed out for some exploration.  Went to the mall next door and picked up a few items and some food and came back here and settled in for the evening.

This morning I grabbed the T and headed to Boston College for the Summit.  The website I saw said that the “B” line would take you right there, but it took a long time. I had time to spare so I rode the B line and it was great because most of the time it wasn’t underground at all and I got to see a lot of the city out that direction. Loved it.  Hopped off the train and onto campus headed towards Higgins Hall.  There was a dude with a backpack in front of me walking VERY quickly.. I think he thought I was after him because he kept glancing back and then picking up more speed.. I’m not sure what he thought I was gonna do.

Turns out that when I got to Higgins Hall, he was also there.  There were a few people standing around and asked if we were there for the conference.  I smiled politely and said I was and they directed the newcomers to the refreshments. Lovely.

Then almost immediately everyone decided to head to another building with some demos going on so we tagged along with them.  Saw some demos of Crysis and BioShock and those were crazy cool. I’d love to see Second Life with that amount of detail and graphics.

Then back into Higgins Hall for the morning of discussion with Aaron Walsh who’s the director of the Grid Institute and Immersive Education Initiative and an afternoon of demonstrations/discussions about the different platforms (SL, Croquet, and Wonderland).

The agenda for this summit is really that they want to devise a way to incorporate immersive educational experiences as sort of ‘modules’ for teaching.  Not to build an entirely new world, but to create learning modules that are the same in all platforms and can be incorporated into the platforms with minimal effort and provide students with the same experiences.  So for instance (an example Aaron used) if we want to learn about Ancient Egypt, we build pyramids, or tombs for students to explore, and we take that same experience or that same module and use it in SL, or Croquet, or Wonderland or WoW or whatever comes along next. That’s the plan.  This summit is about how to make that happen.

Today’s sessions were really all about “Hey this is what we want to do and here’s why we should do it.. let’s make a plan” and I think that tomorrow is going to be about showing people the technologies a little more and giving them some experiences with them.

I have to day that today didn’t impress me. I saw a few cool things and that was fun, but I sort of think that for the most part everyone that was there today already *knows* that this needs to be done and that virtual worlds are really transforming who we are, and what we can do so I don’t feel like anyone needed to be ’sold’ on this idea.  I’m really hoping that tomorrow is interesting and gives us some things to think about.