owclaw’s blog

The Reality of Virtual LearningPresented to the Defense Learning Academy, Cornwall, Ontario, January 30, 2008. The slides and audio of this presentation are available here.There’s always a danger when you come in and you do a talk like this: the idea that you’re presenting something, it’s the facts, the truth this is the way it is, I’m going to lay it out on the line, I’m the expert, the guru, you’re the mob, etc.That’s not how I view this material at all. So I want to preface this. I’m looking at a particular slice of Michael Jackson buy mp3 online learning, not the whole field of online learning, obviously.There are many things, including a wonderful helicopter simulation in Gagetown that I got to fly once and crashed very quickly Voice: seven seconds.Is it still a record?Voice: yes. [Laughter] All the way across to the Second Life stuff that you saw, to the Company Command software that you heard about yesterday, from Nate Allen, and the rest.This is just one small part of it and it’s one person’s perspective on it. It’s not all a seamless whole. It’s not a beautiful step-by-step narrative that wraps up nicely and neatly in a bow like a Sherlock Holmes movie or short story.It’s something that’s a little bit loose and scrambly and something that you should take, look at critically, analyze it in your own perspectives, take what you need and discard the rest and take it from there.So I want to begin this talk by talking about reality. I know that seems like an odd sort of place to begin a talk. But perhaps it’s appropriate because finish a demonstration of Second Life.A lot of the times we would be here among our own discipline, our own domain being talked about as a virtual reality. But my background is in philosophy and as a philosopher I’ve learned over time to look at reality in different perspectives and in different lights.We often hear the phrase the reality is’ as a rhetorical device and I’m sure you’ve all heard it, right? You have to have this great idea, “I think we should do such and such and so on,” but someone comes along and says, “Yeah, but the reality is…” Sounds familiar?The reality is’ is the enemy of innovation.When we look at reality, when we analyze what reality is, almost everything that we think is real (properly-so-called) is construction. It’s an artifact. It’s something that we’ve created. It’s a way that we understand the world. It’s a device that we use in order to understand the world.Kant talked about space’ and time’ as the necessary prior conditions of perceptions. The idea here is that we don’t know space and time exists absolutely certainly for all time, but as perceiving, thinking humans the only way for us to make sense of our perceptions whatsoever is to come up with the concept of space’, come up with the concept of time’, to create a framework in order to place our many different perceptions and come up with some understanding of them, an explanation of them, a way of dealing with them. Hume called them useful fictions’.There are many ways of looking at real’ in today’s world.We think of real’ on one hand, we contrast it with the artificial’. So the real, it’s like the natural, the artificial is like the fake.Now we can think of real’ as genuine’, as the actual thing or real as the fake thing that is not the original. It’s just a pale imitation. We have “it’s the real thing,” and by implication, Pepsi is the fake thing.(Pepsi should have done that. They should have come out with the advertising. I bet you it would have worked. Pepsi: fake Coke. [Laughter] That would have worked I tell you.)These days of course we also have the contrast between the real’ and the virtual’. Analyze that with what we mean. Because the virtual’ is every bit as real as the real’ except that it’s not physical. But I mean it’s not like the things that are going on in Second Life are artificial or fake. Well, now, maybe they are.How about real’ versus illusory’? We have the idea of real, something that exists. A mirage is not real. Not because we don’t perceive it. We do perceive it, but it’s not real because it does not in fact exist.Now does this sense of real apply to something like Second Life? When we look at Second Life would you say, “Hm, that doesn’t exist?” Not really. That’s not the sort of thought that goes through our mind, is it?We have real’ versus delusion’. The idea here is that having a grasp of reality is having a grasp of sanity, being able to make sense of your perceptions without all the static or interruptions that somebody who is deluded might think. Is there a great conspiracy? Do we need to wear tin foil hats? Well that’s not reality, is it? And hence we have the admonition to people, “Get real,” as “Become sane again.”Now there are many ways to find realit …Usefull links: Leadville, Jeff novitzky, February 18, Kate voegele no good, Obama madison