accelerometer: Welcome to accelerometer

Welcome to accelerometer - a new blog about the learning journeys of people using Second Life. I will be talking regularly with Second Life residents about their formal and informal learning journeys in-world.

So why accelerometer? Well the Wikipedia definition is:

"... a device for measuring acceleration and gravity induced reaction forces. Single and multi-axis models are available to detect magnitude and direction of the acceleration as a vector quantity. Accelerometers can be used to sense inclination, vibration, and shock."

They are increasingly being used in mobile phone technology and I think it an excellent metaphor for cultural change. There has been a certain amount of moral panic around Second Life in the past and I want to tell the other side of the story.

I hope to build up a picture, over time, of how people use the Second Life platform and the learning process in there. I believe that there is a new Digital Culture of learning evolving extremely fast and that Virtual Worlds of whatever flavour will be the next stage in that process. They will augment real life learning but not replace it. This is happening outside of the traditional learning sphere and education will have to play catchup pretty rapidly. Hence accelerometer...

I am convinced this is the next stage in education so I are going out to find concrete exemplars of what's happening at the present time. It's not meant to be an academic exercise in ethnography - it's simply a series of conversations around education in Virtual Learning to help people understand what kind of change is taking place now in these spaces.

So each week I will bring you an interview with someone in-world - sometimes they may be educationalists and at other times, just residents who have stumbled in here and found that they are immersed and involved in a whole new Digital Virtual Culture. We aim to reflect that culture just as an accelerometer measures and can give feedback data about movement.

Axi Kurmin

So let's start with Axi Kurmin - a friend of mine in the real world as well. Musician, architect and now DJ in SL. Listen to how she discusses the way she came in-world, her formal and formal learning journey and a new role she adopted when in there.

Click To Play

During the interview, the book I couldn't remember that Howard Rheingold spoke about on Seesmic is called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman. I also talked to Axi briefly about her Second Life identity and it's interesting to look at this in the context of that book. I find the whole thing fascinating - so this is a series of conversations documenting how people present themselves as well. Questions of identity, self, self-esteem and social interaction in virtual space are what interest me - I hope you enjoy this series of talks.