eRappu -blogi

eRappu is an active member network in the international eJump project. The main focus of the eJump is on the assessment of elearning, but some other intereresting discussions are also on the eJump agenda.

One such additional eJump issue is the mobile learning. Here you can, for example, click to one discussant blog of the issue:

http://htk.tlu.ee/ejump/pg/blog/imatasic/read/2531/mobile-learning

eRappu network has hired an estate from the island of edufinland in the Second Life. After some weeks of practising and processing the activities in this new information environment or virtual world, several questions have arisen such as:

• How realistic a virtual world and learning environment should be?
• What kind of process of activities should a SL-based course include?
• Could this be an effective substitute for the net meetings?
• Is this too entertaining or boring?

The preliminary sketch of process could be:

1. Activities and behaviour in the Second Life
2. Documentation of activities & reflection
3. References to the literature and/or other explicated material

or perhaps the SECI process of Nonaka, Konno and Takeuchi could help us to zoom in SL?

According to several writers, there seems to be a lot of potential for education and training to occur in this kind of multi-user virtual environments (Berge 2008). From the strategic point of view of the educational organisations, basically the net of any kind can be seen as a web of conversations (Allee 2000) adding value to the complex production processes of education and new knowledge. The use of the Second Life can support these networking processes and this way help education institutions to dovelope their value networks by offering new kind of conversations and interactions. But so far everything is quite unclear and more practise and experience are obviously needed to clarify these unclear and preliminary thoughts of the use of the Second Life.

We are also trying to find and share the experiences of other projects like for example the KAMIMO project, see http://kamimo-islands.blogspot.com/

References:

Allee, V. 2000. Reconfiguring the value network. Journal of Business Strategy, Vol 21, N 4, July- August 2000.

Berge, Z. 2008. Multi-User Virtual Environments for Education and Training? A critical Review of Second Life. Educational Technology/ May-June 2008 (p. 27-31)