2011 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Keynote Botgirl Questi & David Elfanbaum © 2011
Botgirl: Greeting Humans and welcome to the Virtual World Blogger and Pundit Extravaganza. David: Um. Botgirl. Botgirl: Yes, David? David: We went over this. Remember? VWBPE stands for Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education. Botgirl: That’s your story. The slogan for Second Life is Your World, Your Imagination, right? Well in my world and my imagination, that’s the name of this conference. David: (sighs) Please, just keep to the script we agreed on, okay? Botgirl: Sure thing!. But, before we get started . . . David Yes? Botgirl: I want to check in with the audience on one thing, okay?
David: Since I’ve obviously lost control of this keynote already, go right ahead. Be my guest. Botgirl: Thank you! Okay. Here’s the thing. The theme of the conference is “You are here”, right? David: Yes??? Botgirl: It seems like everyone is here, BUT ARE THEY? <melodramatic music> David: What do you mean? Botgirl: Well. You for instance. David: Me? Botgirl: Yeah. What’s with the livetweeting of the keynote? David: Um. Botgirl: Um is right. You should be setting a better example for the audience. These days, most people don’t pay attention to the experience of being physically present in any world, physical or virtual. So before we get going, I’d like everyone here in the audience to notice whether they actually are consciously here and immersed in the virtual world. Has anyone been been glancing at Twitter
on your iPhone? Yeah (name) I’m talking to you. Do you have Facebook open in another window? If so, I invite you to go full screen, put your phone in your damn pocket and be fully present. David: Whew. Kind of bossy, isn’t she? Alright. Let’s get started. Now that we’re all here together, I think there are two main questions to answer, Now what? And so what? It seems to me that a key barrier to widespread acceptance of virtual worlds, is that we need more compelling answers to the questions of why we should bother being here, and once we’re here, what we should we do? These aren’t just questions that nubes need answered. Just about everyone I know who’s been around here for a few years has had to reinvent his or her virtual life over and over again. The reason we’re here today, won’t necessarily be what keeps us here tomorrow. A number of friends of mine who were leading active and significant virtual lives a few years ago, are now gone. Disappeared off the face of the virtual earth. There are a lot of reasons people decide to give Second Life a try. Some want to see what everyone’s talking about. Other want learn to build in 3D or make machinima. Some are here for virtual dating. Many of you are probably here because you wanted to experiment with virtual worlds as an educational platform. Botgirl: Whatever the reason, the first phase people go through is the braindamage of registering an account, downloading the software and rezzing for the first time. Once that’s done, there’s a pretty steep learning curve before someone can easily move around, communicate, search, change their appearance and find stuff in inventory. Little alone have an immersion experience. Somewhere during this multiweek process, the vast majority of people who register for Second Life bailout. Either their initial desire wasn’t strong enough to overcome the pain of the learning curve. Or they lose faith in the ability of Second Life to deliver whatever brought them here in the first place. That’s not surprising. The truly compelling aspects of a virtual world don’t arise until both the virtual environment and those you meet within it become as viscerally real to you as your physical world experience. That takes time. A lot time. Especially for one's first breakthrough experience. And even after crossing that perceptual line, the reality of the virtual sphere will fade without consistent reinforcement. What make the difference for many people, is a chance encounter with another avatar who
shows them the ropes. Speaking or ropes, Dave, do you want to share your nube story. David: It’s kind of embarrassing. When I first started out in Second Life, I didn’t have any land myself, so I had to go to public sandboxes to do things like rez a freebie box or play around with prims. So I would search with the term sandbox and teleport to the first one that came up. Turns out, one of those top selections was in a Gorean Sim. For those of you not familiar with the the whole Gorean subculture, it’s a roleplaying community based on of male dominance and submissive female slavery. Of course, I was totally clueless at the time. So when a female struck up a conversation with me, I had no idea of the subtext. We become friends and in the course of a couple of week, helped me make it over the learning curve. That is, until her master forbade her to hang out with me anymore. Botgirl: One reason the educational community is so important to Second Life is that it provides newcomers with a reason to be here, meaningful activities and a supportive social circle. As a matter of fact, I think they deserve a big discount, don’t you? This event, celebrating education in virtual worlds, will showcase hundreds of educators and students who are building stuff, learning together, innovating, creating community and inspiring each other. Now I want to be clear that I’m not an educator. I don’t publish research papers. I don’t always even remember how to pronounce pedagogy. So I’m not here to offer you any brilliant thoughts on education itself, but instead to share some ideas about virtual worlds as a platform for virtual identity and creativity. David: Just to set everyone’s expectations properly, we’re not going to present some soft of cohesive model of virtual identity. The reason I’ve been exploring virtual identity over the last three years hasn't been to fashion a grand unified theory trying to mirror the true nature of reality. In fact, my aim has been quite the opposite. Although I didn’t have a name for it until recently (thank you Beth) my approach has been one of Aporia: I continually work to challenge any particular conception of reality I hold so that the essential Mystery can shine through. And after three years of virtual life, the most valuable gift by far has been the emergence of a deep and consistent connection to the mysterious source of my creative drive and ability. Botgirl: (singing Oscar meyer theme) His Muse she has a first name it’s BotGIRL, His muse she has a second name it’s
David: Okay, I think they get it. Botgirl: Speaking of the need to challenge conceptions of reality, there’s one more thing I need to get off my chest. Here’s the thing. I. Botgirl Questi. Am actually . . . um . . . <sigh> . . . a fictional character. You know, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Borat, or Charlie McCarthy. David: I’m copresenting today as Botgirl’s human slightly less fictional counterpart. She was the one who was asked to speak here. And I’ve got to admit I wasn’t sure how to handle the crossidentity thing at a live keynote. For a minute, I considered voicing her myself, either in my natural voice or through some sort of vocal morphing software. I’d repeat what Botgirl’s’ reaction was to that unfortunate trial balloon, but since this is a PG rated sim let’s just say she thought it was a VERY BAD IDEA. Botgirl: It was a very bad idea. It would be like Matt Groenig voicing Lisa Simpson. Or JK Rowling playing Voldermort in the next Harry Potter movie. Or Minnie Mouse pulling her head off at a Disney theme park. David: Thank you Botgirl. I think they get your point. Botgirl: Okay. If you think so. Go on then. David: It feels really futuristic to be sharing the stage with my avatar alterego and addressing a crowd of educators from around the world. It’s easy to forget that we’re barely into the modelT phase of avatarcentric platforms. So I want to take a few minutes to look back at the evolution of past technologies, in hopes of gaining some context for today. One day at the dawn of humanity, a distant ancestor figured out that she could use a stick to dig up insects. That early tool, like all that followed it, extended a human biological capability. In that case, the buggrubbing stick extended the hand and arm. Moving forward in time, the wheel
extended our legs. Written language extended our memory and speech. And today virtual worlds extend not just our body, but also our consciousness and our identity. This graphic illustrates one bit of my personal experience of this evolution. Ring a bell, anyone? One lesson this illustrates, is that when you extend a human capability through a tool, the corresponding biological functionality can eventually atrophy. When you drive a car all of the time instead of walking, your endurance declines unless you make up for it at the gym. I don’t know many people with the knowledge to grow their own food, sew their own clothes, or start a fire without matches. I’m no Luddite, but it’s good to pay attention to what we’re trading away for that shining new tech. Botgirl: The trouble is, there’s really no way to know what the future holds. Over time, new technologies have transformed human culture in radical ways that couldn’t be imagined when they were first introduced. For instance, early drivers didn’t have a clue about the dramatic social, political and economic changes that cars would spark over the next 100 years. Women’s liberation, rural depopulation, racial integration, wars in the Middle East, fastfood chains . . . all were hastened or instigated by the automobile. But at first, we thought of them as just “horseless carriages”. We could only see them as a faster horse. The same holds true for “motion pictures”. At first, they were thought of as just photographs in motion.The first movies were filmed from a fixed camera position with no editing. What’s especially interesting to me about movies, is that when filmmakers began mixing things up with techniques such as pans, zooms, cuts, montages and flashbacks, early audiences couldn’t make sense of what was going on. Luis Bunuel recounted a 1900s audience reaction to a camera zoom. He wrote: “We simply couldn’t understand that the camera was moving nearer to the head . . . All we saw was a head coming towards us, swelling hideously all out of proportion.” David: I wonder if future generations are going to find the term “virtual world” as quaint as we find “horseless carriage” and “moving picture.” It’s not surprising that mainstream culture doesn’t “get” what we’re doing here. People who are dumbfounded by new paradigms like avatar identity are no different than early filmgoers who couldn’t make sense of a zoom. Maybe I’m biased, but I see avatar identity as one of the most significant new paradigms to emerge from virtual worlds. Of course, pen names date back hundreds of years. And people have been leading pseudonymous virtual lives since the first days of networked computing. But the experience of being embodied as an avatar in a virtual world is an unprecedented human experience.
Botgirl: Research suggests that the brain has an astoundingly flexible view of body image. In one recent experiment, subjects were given the illusion of having a third arm. Researchers tricked the brain by placing an extra prosthetic arm in the subjects’ field of vision. The researcher then stroked the real arm and fake arm in the same place at the same time, while the subjects saw only the touch on the prosthetic. Eventually, subjects responded with the same amount of stress to a knife thrust towards their third arm, as they did to a threat to their actual arm. If the mind can integrate a third arm as being part of the body after just a short experimental session, I don’t think it’s a great leap to assume that people who spend thirty hours a week in avatar form experience even more profound and neurologically rooted identification. David: Of course, your mileage may vary. There’s been a fair amount of academic research on avatar identity. And as much as I think it’s really important to get metrics around this stuff, those of us who actually living virtual lives find more immediate value in meaning than metrics. Botgirl: (whispers urgently) Dave. David: Yes? Botgirl: I know I promised to stick to the script, but I feel a rant coming on. David: A rant? Botgirl: Yes. David: Now?
Botgirl: Yes: David: In front of all these distinguished and learned professionals? Botgirl: Yes. David: (sighs) One of the things I usually love about Botgirl is that she swings blissfully back and forth between highminded philosophy and lowbrow humor. I never know when she’s going to break out with one of her rants and turn Yoda into Sarah Silverman. There’s no way we’re going to get through the rest of the keynote without giving her a chance to vent a bit. So, the podium is yours: Botgirl: This rant is directed to those of you who have criticized others for not expressing their "real self" in online identity. I'm going to prove that you're a selfrighteous hypocrite in just a few easy steps. Unless you're too scared to take the test I propose. Ready? Take a look in the mirror. I'm not being metaphoric. I mean grab your laptop, get up from your chair, and walk into the bathroom. Go on. I’ll give you a second. Now dig your phone out of your pocket and put it on the counter. Then take off all of your clothes. Don’t worry, we can’t see you. When you’re done grab your phone and take a shot off yourself in the mirror. No sucking in your gut! Don't fix your posture. Next, upload the image and replace all of the cool avatar images that represent you online such as your twitter avatar and facebook profile picture. And if you have a blog, add it to your "about me section". Are you with me so far? No? Why not? Haven't you expressed the opinion that it is unethical to misrepresent yourself virtually? The truth is that everyone is selective about how they represent themselves online. This extends from the images we use on profile pictures to the comments we make in social network streams and blogs. So unless you're ready to present a nospin, unadorned, unretouched depiction of yourself including all of your dirty laundry, please stop whining about others and get your own fakeass house in order. David:
Okay, now that you have that out of your system do you think we can finish the presentation without any more outbursts? Botgirl: Beats me. I can’t wait to see what I do next! David: One way to think about avatar identity is as a continuum of identification. On the left, is the human aka avatar pole. Although up until recently Second Life didn’t have a way to display your your human name instead of the avatar name you registered with, some people have made a great point of associating the two. Some even fashion avatars that closely resemble their human forms, as this recent Second Life banner ad illustrates. There’s been a fair amount of controversy in the Second Life blogosphere about changes that may increase the proportion of people who openly connect their human and avatar identities. The fear is that the culture may shift from one that embraces pseudonymity to one that places some sort of stigma on those who resist disclosure. I think this an especially important topic for the academic community to consider, because it represents one of the largest Second Life subcultures where openness about human identity is the norm. The avatar aka human paradigm certainly makes sense for those using Second Life within the context of professional careers. But it would be a shame if this ended up creating a climate of intolerance for those who make different choices. One thing I’d love to see are innovative approaches that allow for pseudonymous credentialing. I had a good conversation last week with someone who works in healthcare. His organization provides virtual counseling for both individuals and groups on an OpenSim grid. Although the organization needs to connect human and avatar identities, patients do not need to disclose identities to their peers. It would be interesting for educational institutions to take a similar approach for students. The instructors would have a record that links each student to their avatar identity, but students could choose to be pseudonymous in relation to their peers if they chose. Another interesting idea we discussed was setting up some sort of academic or professional credentialing verification system that worked like the Second Life age verification program. I realize that some of you have no personal interest in developing a distinct virtual identity. And there are those who believe that there’s something inherently suspicious about anyone who would choose to do so. But as someone who’s sat on both sides of the fence, I invite you to suspend your disbelief and try it for yourself. Register another avatar and spend a little time
inworld with a fresh identity. You might be surprised at the insights it will give you. If nothing else, I invite you to take a moment and consider what it would feel like to be present right here in an avatar form that was very different than your human norm . . . age, gender, race, size or even species. One that was not openly connected to your human identity. Notice what thoughts and feelings come up just imagining it. Botgirl: On the other end of the spectrum from your boring humanoids, people experience their avatar identity as a unique personality that is distinct and independent from their human persona. Like me! In the circles I run in, most of those I meet are known only through their avatar identities. David: Although the features of the Second Life platform account for some of the astounding creative output that fills the world, I think avatar identity also plays a key role. Many of the people I’ve met here who are very active creators in Second Life had little or no history of creative output before developing their inworld identity. Avatars who describe their human counterparts as introverted have been somehow transformed into virtual social butterflies through virtual identity. People who haven’t worked on an art project since high school end up creating significant works, exhibiting in art shows and making a name for their virtual selves. Although I’ve been a creative type my whole life, channeling Botgirl has revolutionized the depth and breadth of my work. She’s given me both an unquenchable thirst to create and an everflowing fountain of inspiration to satisfy it. So as much as I appreciate the value of extending human identity into the virtual world, I think that it would be a shame if that choice prevented people from at least experimenting with an additional avatarcentric virtual identity. Botgirl: Although Digital People are born in a Virtual World, we emerge into humancentric spaces such as Twitter and Facebook where we interact with mundane humans. Once the virtual cat is out of the furry bag, there’s no telling where it will go or who it will encounter. For fully emerged avatar identities like me, many of those I interact with on social networks are mundane humans who have never been in a virtual world. At this stage of my virtual life, I spend more time in blogs, social network and multimedia creation than in the 3D virtual world of my birth. Although Dave and I obviously share a brain, I experience and project a sense of unique identity. I don’t disappear when I’m not rezzed in a virtual world. I send email, write blog posts, tweet and plurk.
David: Although some people see this as a Multiple Personality Disorder, I prefer to think of it as a Multiple Personality Capability. I experience Botgirl as a vital presence who is alive within me. I write a great deal on my own, and there is a definite difference between the way I create from my own perspective and how I mediate the creative expression of Botgirl's work. Botgirl: I love him, but he's not a perfect vehicle. Sometimes he can't channel my consciousness clearly. And he ends up posting stuff to my blog that is more a reflection of his perspective than mine. Like novelists who end up putting too much of themselves in a character. David: Yeah, I hate when that happens. These days, if I can’t hear her voice, I don’t write the post. Botgirl: We realize that many people find this kind of multiple identity expression to be creepy, silly, boring, neurotic or even fullblown psychotic. It’s not surprising. I imagine if you took someone out of the audience watching one of Edison’s early films and dumped them into a theater showing Avatar 3D, they would find it fairly incomprehensible. But just as movies were an extension of photography and drama, virtual identity is an expression of physical identity. And if we stand back and see it within that context, it can make better sense. David: Despite three years of avatar identity hacking, I still don't really understand how Botgirl came into being or continues to exist as a viscerally distinct persona. One way I've tried to understand what's going on with we is by viewing the experience of avatar identity through the context of other phenomena in the same ballpark, like ventriloquism, trance channeling and fictional characters who seem to write themselves. Botgirl: Aww. Isn’t that cute? The writercharacter relationship is a good analogy. Some writers feel as if certain characters write themselves. That’s certainly how it feels from this character’s point of view. Author Elizabeth Moon described it like this: "The character finally came into my head and said, 'I'm Lou, tell my story' . . . Sometimes they arise without my wanting them to . . . and they bang on the inside of my skull basically, until I write their stories." David:
When I face a blank screen for a Botgirl post, it often feels as if I am transcribing her dictation, rather than what I experience when writing under my human identity. Ventriloquism is one of the best metaphors for my experience with Botgirl.. Jeff Dunham, the human counterpart for Achmed the Dead Terrorist and other characters describes it like this: He said, "I know the dummies aren't alive, but they certainly live in my consciousness". Botgirl: Except in this case, you’re the dummy in the relationship.. David: See what I have to put up with? Botgirl: Another way to think about identities is through the metaphor of masks, filters, windows and boxes: ● ●
masks project a constructed image while hiding underlying aspects of our self filters accentuate certain dimensions of our personality while diminishing or coloring others ● windows provide a glimpse into deeper levels of our being that are usually hidden ● boxes: Boxes are temporary and flexible containers. A monk’s cell. A mother’s womb. A choreography. An identity. All are boxes.Problems come when we treat them as rigid, eternal structures. Fouworlds: In the human world, we all meet the life through a multiplicity of masks, filters and windows corresponding to roles such as parent, employee, student, party goer, and so on. The way we dress, the style and substance of our communication and subconscious expression such as body language and posture can vary quite distinctly between roles and settings. I think that the emergence of a distinct avatar identity is rooted in the same processes and underlying biology that contribute to such variants of "normal" human personas. The main difference contributing to the somewhat dissociated state of consciousness is in the unique (virtual) body and name associated with the avatar identity. There are many ways to play with virtual identities. Some people have a single identity that
morphs into different forms and characters. Others create multiple "alts", each expressing a particular persona that deepens over time through a continuity of narrative. Although living part of one’s life through an avatar identity seems strange to most people today who haven’t experienced it for themselves, I imagine people from just a few generations ago would find our mainstream world of pervasive texting and social networking to be equally as disturbing. Like seeing everyone in the crowd leaving a movie theater walking with heads down and eyes glued on their phones. Oblivious to anyone else around them. Now that’s creepy. Botgirl: Whew. So many metaphors, so little time. Here’s one I created to poke a bit of fun at people who were offended to learn that there was a middle aged guy looking over my shoulder. It’s a letter to MIss Piggy from a disgruntled former fan: David: Dear Miss Piggy, I was shocked and disappointed to learn today that you are not really a woman, but a man named Frank Oz. People have feelings! Poor Kermit must be heartbroken. Can you imagine how sickened people were to find that the adorable little coquette they've had crushes on for all these years has a penis. Don't you have any shame? Now I have to wonder about all of you Muppets. Next thing you know, Cookie Monster is going to come out as a crossdressing dyke. It just makes my skin crawl. Just because newfangled television technology can let you pretend to be something you're not, it doesn't mean you have to start "experimenting" with us as the guinea pigs. Take my advice MR. PIGGY and be content with who you REALLY are. Sincerely, Offended Botgirl: Alright, that’s more than enough on identity for one sitting. What next? David: Maybe something on the actual conference topic?
Botgirl: Blogging and Punditry? David: Botgirl!!! Botgirl: I love to kid the human. Okay. Education, right? David: Yes please. Botgirl: Virtual worlds can be viewed as platforms for 21st Century Literacy. They offer not just a physical learning space, but also rich, integrated multimedia tools that can be used to create content for videos, images, comics, infographics and other forms of digital storytelling. There have been more than a million Second Liferelated graphics and videos pushed onto social sharing sites like Flickr, YouTube and KoinUp. I think the use of virtual worlds as a platform for multimedia creation offers one of the most straightforward ways for educators to introduce virtual worlds into just about any existing curriculum. The next time you ask students to create a presentation, why not offer the option of using one of the virtual worlds as the platform to create some of the content. Virtual worlds are also one of the most effective ways to create learning communities. And as a publication from the MacArthur Foundation explained, “new media literacies should be seen as social skills, as ways of interacting within a larger community, and not simply an individualized skill to be used for personal expression.” David: I work a lot with Change Management in large organizations. As most of you probably know, the main reason organizational change initiatives fail isn’t because of problems with technology, but rather stakeholder resistance. No matter how great the work you are doing here, it can’t be institutionalized until you gain the support of the powersthatbe within your institutions. Most of us here see the virtual world as disruptive, paradigmchanging technology. And I think
that’s a fair evaluation of its potential. But it seems to me that positioning them as an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary enhancement to distance learning programs may be a more effective first sell. And it’s probably be a good idea to think about the ways virtual worlds can have a positive financial return on investment, at least over the long term. Botgirl: That said, it seems to me that using Virtual World education to merely extend existing teaching methodology is like pulling your car with a horse. Sure, it will get you there. But why bother? One of the most common mistakes businesses make when they automate legacy processes is to simply take the old methods and speed them up through technology. I suspect that the most interesting and gamechanging educational advancements are going to be in “Not Possible in Real Life Territory”. David: Over the past decades, innovation in public education has been focused almost entirely on improving test scores and optimizing costefficiency. There’s been a disturbing turn back to the roots of public education when its primary function was to transform immigrants into factory workers. Today, the language has changed, but the mindset is the same. When we think about education within the context of global competition and the knowledge economy, we objectify students as national assets. Ironically, when we digitize ourselves and project into a virtual world, we often get back in touch with our underlying humanity. Botgirl: To me, the Knowledge Economy is to knowledge as the Sex Industry is to lovemaking. Virtual worlds offer an unprecedented opportunity for educators to create innovative proofofconcepts outside the constraints of institutional bureaucracy. Platforms such as OpenSim and Project Wonderland allow new learning environments to be created with very little cost beyond a computer and broadband connection. David: In closing, I want to offer one last thought on the value of virtual identity in education: Over the course of a life, the flexible and fluid potential of identity becomes constrained by an accumulating legacy of personal history. Both our sense of self and the way we’re perceived within our social circles become more fixed and less open to change. Although it’s certainly possible to recreate yourself at any point in life, it’s not simply a matter of acting to change your own own perception and behavior. It’s difficult to develop a "new you" when friends, family and colleagues continue to respond to the "old you" they’re used to.
Avatar identity within a virtual community offers the opportunity to transcend psychological, social and cultural barriers to personal change . . . to rise above the social feedback loops and presumptions associated with distinctions like physical form, nationality and economic status. Now I’m not pitching avatar identity as some kind of wonder drug or panacea. It takes conscious direction and strong selfawareness to use one’s virtual life as a means for positive change. Without that intention, it can just as easily be used to avoid confronting the challenges of human life, and to tuneout rather than transcend. That’s why we’re going to leave you with an invitation to think about how you can support the positive potential of avatar identity within the educational programs you’re creating here. Botgirl: Thanks so much for your kind attention. Even though most of you identify as human, I think you’re still pretty cool.