By Jean Locicero Shankle aka SnowdropMHSUS
Skoolaborate has been the scene for an innovative style of high school orientation for an in-coming Milford High School student this summer. Styled as “Mission Possible” and “Behavior is Communication” the sessions have been designed to help a student work through the kinds of social situations that he may confront in high school.
For this particular student, those kinds of situations present particularly puzzling problems. However, as he tackles the challenges on the notecard of the day, a teacher and a fellow student are able to present situations that he works through with his avatar. While the long lasting results are yet to be seen, the process has been great fun, for the student, the teacher and the student-intern behind the
scenes who has been helping to simulate the high school social situations.
“Lionheart,” our helpful upper classman, uses a computer in a different room from the student we are working with, and has not met his young friend, even at this writing. This has helped the young student, whose privacy I will protect by calling him “Freshman”, invest in what we have termed a game. Each day, Freshman logs in, is introduced to a new SL skill for fun and then receives his mission on a notecard from "Vecchia", the name we have knicknamed the teacher’s avatar (Vecchia is the Italian word for old lady!). Each task has a catchy Italian word and is worth a number of points, for which the student receives a physical receipt daily after he has successfully completed the tasks. The catchy name, the points, and the gift certificate redeemable for books, are to add to the recreational feel of the activities. Freshman has been motivated and is fully participating throughout the game. Lionheart has been coached to respond in general terms, but keeps his responses real so the experience is as authentic as possible.
Freshman’s first goal of the donated gift certificate to Toadstool, our local bookstore, required 20 points accummulated from each task worth a point or two; therefore, the course of the game has been several weeks. His tasks and assessments| have included acting out the preferred social habits, making and returning note cards, as well as creating comics of the scenes from snapshots taken in Second Life.
Sample activity: Objective –Learn to select age-appropriate topics of conversation
4. Taking Care of Nonna (Grandma)
Yesterday, traveler "Student Avatar Name" (SAN) met an old lady in Skoolaborate. She is stranded in this universe of young people because she lost her ticket home. While she waits for a new one to come in the mail, she looks for interesting places to go and for an interesting conversation. When she meets [Student Avatar Name], [Student Avatar Name] asks her two questions.
Step 1
[Each * one star]
What are the questions [SAN] asked the old lady?
What answers did the old lady give?
Step 2
[Earn **two stars]
From your land marks, choose a place to teleport the old lady and to show her around.
Chat with her for 5 lines about topics an old lady might like to talk about. Save your chat for
tomorrow’s mission.
The comics reflect the principles of successful high school communication we have practiced in Skoolaborate and will serve as keepsakes for Freshman. He caught onto Comic Life quickly and really likes making them. I can’t take credit though for the comic connection. Someone (Thank you, whoever had the idea!) posted a challenge to make a comic with Comic Life and submit it in Skoolaborate. I looked for the software and was thrilled at how perfectly it fits our work and the research suggestions. So far, Freshman has not been convinced to submit a comic in Skoolaborate, perhaps because they have
been created around our theme, but I hope Freshman considers that suggestion again as we wrap up the summer’s work. Ultimately, we hope that when school starts in the fall, the principles of communication we have discussed will be useful in the sometimes hectic world of an American public high school.
The reason we feel the project has pedagogical merit is that a second teacher, Linda, has been feeding research to Vecchia (me) about how to design the missions. Linda’s reading and notes provide the foundation for the underlying design of this personalized program, as she is debriefed by me of each days results she continues to research so that the plan is fresh and flexible. She and I share a Google doc with a journal of her notes, of my questions, and results from the day into which she puts the new research. I incorporate her feedback for the next activity.
One of the features and disappointments of our participation, fortunately and unfortunately, has been our little ramshackle town hall and gazebo in Skoolaborate. It was built by one of our seniors last year, who tried to make it an anatomically perfect match for our real town hall and treasured gazebo on the Milford Oval. He was a pre-engineering student and was in no rush and was infinitely patient with detail –which drove me a bit mad.
However, Freshman, and other students from a special reading class that we took into Skoolaborate in the spring, delight in this recognizable piece of our town. It is a familiar connection for them that welcomes them in and makes them feel at home and gives them a place to return to that feels safe. Currently, parts of it seem to have disappeared, so it needs some renovation, but it tells me something about what makes virtual worlds work – when they feel welcoming, they are more fun.
A word about our spring time group: in the spring of 2009 a reading class was working on a preset type of reading practice program. The program was helpful, but practice is not always fun. So we used time in Skoolaborate as a reward; it proved itself a motivator and great fun. What was interesting to me was the painstaking choices the students made with their avatars. Some of them created an idealized self, while others worked very hard to match their physical characteristics to their avatars, physical characteristics that others often see as flaws. The jobs they did designing their avatars were sufficiently detailed that passersby immediately recognized the work the students had done as images of themselves. That brings up the body image project.
Without any suggestion from me, one of the young women in my honors English class, also last spring, chose female body image and its impact on young women and their potential as the subject of her junior year research project. I mentioned the body image class in Skoolaborate. While she didn’t particpate herself, she followed up by email. The Skoolaborate instructor was kind enough to engage in an email exchange and interview with Liz, who was very excited and encouraged to have an educator doing what she felt she wanted to recommend after all her reading. Liz subsequently wrote a great paper and speech in which mention of Skoolaborate and its class were prominent features. The speech earned her second place in a hotly contested, 100-year old speech contest held each spring. A teacher who heard it asked Liz to give the speech in a number of her health classes, because Liz’s recommendation of education of young girls on body image was powerfully made – from Skoolaborate and other corroborating sources. The result of that was that well over 250 people heard Liz’s message, also another positive reach of Skoolaborate.
High school orientation, a playground for future engineers, student research resource, reading motivator and making lists is a great little task for morale. A few months ago, I felt as if I hadn’t accomplished much for my students or for Skoolaborate. I still want to see the discussion group we envisioned on our town common – a New England tradition and our first idea. I hope to get our students participating more in the Dilemmas group. I want to tap into all of the great activities on Australia in Skoolaborate (some of which we used with Freshman). I know my list of things to do is longer than the things we have done, but the list of things done convinces me that the things to do list is worth the effort. Milford High’s original group of Skoolaborators didn’t really get off the ground because of IT objections, computers unsuited, no empty place for the group to meet, time zone mix ups, and other hurdles, but even a piece of that was redeemed this summer. Lionheart, my student-intern/helper was part of the original group who got discouraged and fell away.
However, when we ran into him while we were setting up the high school orientation program for Freshman, he was still enthusiastic and willing to return. So to those who had the vision for what Skoolaborate could be long before I came on board, a hearty nod of thanks. To those, like us, still dealing with the hurdles, I recommend that you get going before things are perfect. Looking back sometime, you might see that you accomplished
quite a bit.
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