SL: Learning a little more about learning
My tour of Second Life yesterday was humbling. I lost my very generous tour guide. I lost the tour. I had trouble teleporting. And perhaps, the most frustrating part–I found some cool outfits, but I couldn’t figure out how to try them on!
After bumping around for far more hours than I am willing to admit, last night I lay in bed reflecting on what this all means.
I hit the wall–quite literally. I can only remember hitting that wall three times before in my learning life–in college calculus, in statistics, and in Python programming. You see, learning has always come easy to me, technology has always come easy to me, and damn it, shopping has always come easy to me.
This experience leads me to empathize with the frustrations some of my learners, and my colleagues, experience in worlds where they are strange–the world of careful documentation, for instance.
I truly feel like an immigrant in SL–I must learn the vocabulary, the culture, the currency, how to behave, how to dress, even how to walk. I sense I will now have more patience with others who are lost in worlds they consider foreign.
I know I need an alternate learning strategy for this world, for this learning task. I need differentiated instruction. Sitting at the kitchen table alone messing around for hours just isn’t working for me. Members of the SL library community have sent out emails of instructions and each has been helpful in unlocking a little of the puzzle. But the girl who prides herself on never reading manuals, on learning by messing around, wishes there were a physical Dummies book, not just one on a virtual shelf. I wish I could learn this particular new stuff face-to-face, watching how someone else walks and shops and changes.
Why don’t I give up? Why don’t I just abandon my boring-looking avatar never to return? This has something to do with learning too. I see purpose. I see the potential for this space as a landscape for learning and teaching and extending library services. Knowing this motivates me and prevents me from bagging it.
I will try to find SL librarians at either ALISE or ALA next week and ask to watch them play and work.
(Me beginning my tour)
