Sunday, March 1, 2009

Week Five: Avatars

The clip below, from The Office, is a matter-of-fact but amusing commentary on online avatar programs like "Second Life." Dwight claims he joined "Second Life" because his life was so great he "literally wanted a second one." For Jim and Dwight, designing an avatar is an opportunity for identity exploration and perspective taking in big and small ways (for Dwight, everything is the same except he can fly; for Jim, he imagines himself as a sportswriter in Philadelphia).


As teachers, and especially as language arts teachers, we look for ways to help our adolescent students make sense of themselves and the world. Identity exploration and perspective taking are important parts of development, and skills that interaction with literature and writing help to build. The primary questions I asked myself this week was "Can the use of avatars or agents in the classroom help students build these type of skills? Can they aid in other types of learning? Do they have affordances that no other teaching tool offers?" and most importantly "Would I actually use them in my classroom?"

The articles assigned for this week discuss using online avatars as teaching tools. Rather than looking at a list of FAQs on a topic, an online avatar could speak and interact with our students. If pressed, I could think of a few reasons why this would be helpful. Students who are visual or auditory learners might prefer to experience a lesson with a "human" face on it, rather than reading a text to get the information. It also opens up possibilities for differentiation, because students working on a computer with "teacher agent" could be able to work with different parts of the lesson at the same time, have information repeated, etc.


However, the Science Direct article was a reminder that there are possibilities for abuse when using robots as teachers. Students are much more likely to view an avatar as a toy than as a legitimate, human teacher, and as such are likely to spend more time "messing with the robot" than learning from it. As much as I support finding ways to incorporate play into the classroom, it concerns me that it's so much more fun to see what the avatar will say when I call the robot a whore than any classwork could ever be. I believe it is not true play when the affordances of fun a technology offers does not contribute to learning. For example, in a science lab that explores the concept of waves by playing with a Slinky, the play does contribute to learning about the concept of waves. Technology like Gizmoz.com and "Second Life" is too much like a toy, and not a toy that supports learning.


Also, I can't discuss the idea of online avatars without mentioning the concept of the Uncanny Valley. This became an issue for me as I was exploring the Gizmoz.com site (see my finished product in the post below). The Uncanny Valley is a theory in the field of robotics which posits that "when robots and other facscimiles of humans look an act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers" (from Wikipedia). The truth is, the avatar I created through the Gizmoz site, as well as those I've seen my classmates make, are creepy and frankly I would be too distracted by their creepiness to let them teach me anything. There simply has to be something to be said for genuine human interaction in the world of teaching and learning.


Ultimately, I decided I would be willing to use avatar programs like Gizmoz.com not as a teaching agent, but as a possible tool for developing identity exploration and perspective taking skills. The assignment I imagined was for students to design an avatar that represents a character in literature. It requires a student to synthesize information from the text to represent the character visually. In addition, the assignment could ask students to do any number of things with the spoken text their avatar could say. For example, a student might make an online avatar of Lady Macbeth, exploring what she would look like in a traditional or modernized interpretation of Hamlet, and the student could record a soliloquiy to go along with the visual image. The assignment could also be to record an interview with the avatar, or any number of other permutations.


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1 comment:

Rebecca Oberg said...

Hey Emily,

First of all, I LOVED your avatar--you are like a creepy omnipotent Greek god, a giant floating head in the sky looking down on us. With that said, your blog post was equally excellent (particularly considering the shoutout to The Office, aka the Best. Show. Ever.) In any case, your post was really insightful and thoughtful, and I appreciated that you focused on practical classroom application. I had some similar hesitations about the use of avatars in the classroom, and I also wondered what affordances they offered that would really enhance learning beyond just being "cool." Your comments about the Uncanny Valley and the fact that these avatars, to a point, are just flat-out creepy, was really thought-provoking. Are they just lifelike enough to be distracting for students? I'm not sure, but I certainly agree with you that it makes sense that students are more interested in seeing what happens if they mess with the avatar rather than doing the assignment. As teachers, we will need to be realistic about the behavior of students in relation to these avatars, and take that into consideration when we decide whether to use them in the first place. Great blog, though. It is a pleasure to read--very witty, and your voice definitely comes through.

Kudos,
Rebecca Oberg

March 4, 2009 at 2:24 PM

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