Students Plan Virtual Rescue
Another example of real learning: students travel to the island to simulate a rescue plan for Montserrat volcano survivors. "As the students get comfortable in their roles, the one thing I notice is there is a lot more collaboration as they depend on themselves rather than the adults," she said. "They get into it so much that they are worried about these people and are happy when they find out how many people they evacuated safely." Josh Duke, Indianapolis Star, February 8, 2008. [Link] [Tags: Adult Learning] [Previous][Next]Comments
Re: Students Plan Virtual Rescue - Simulation?
In the late 60s there was a federally funded project run out of MIT by Jerome Bruner and others called, "Man, a Course of Study" (MACOS) where simulation played a central role. While a grad student at FSU and classroom teacher in a local school, I was privileged to participate in MACOS by field testing a "game" called "Seal Hunt" where we simulated the hunting of seals by small Eskimo groups and consequent development of societal conventions. This was a simple board game where students in small groups would take turns going out to hunt for seal by staking out a breathing hole. Initially, a lot of our little simulated societies died out. Fortunately, this was a simulation and we were easily resurrected with memories of past life intact. We rationalized this memory by saying that it was vicarious - we had heard about the group that perished and how they managed to do themselves in.
Now comes second life as a powerful simulation engine. My recollection of our board game simulations was that it was critical that we understand the essence and complexities of what we were trying to simulate and then find ways to structure the simulation to reflect those findings accurately and effectively and believably. I don't yet see much discussion of these matters in connection with Second Life. Perhaps that's because we're still in the "Gee Whiz" stage of getting acquainted with this powerful resource.
At some point, though, we need to start a more rigorous discussion of the theory and practice of simulation as enabled by Web 2.0 technologies such as Second Life.
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