Real World Skills in Online Environments

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Many librarians are probably familiar with designing programs that build developmental assets. We help build youth assets like leadership, helping others, and succeeding in school so that there is less of a chance that teens will make destructive choices such as vandalism and drugs.

You may even have heard of asset building in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMORPGs) and Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) such as World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, Teen Second Life and more. This article in the May Harvard Business Review, Leadership’s Online Labs, talks about how real world transference can occur as a result of game play – from being leaders in online games to being leaders in the work world. Read More →

Get Your MUVE On

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My friend pointed out to me this month’s cover article in ISTE’s, Learning and Learning With Technology May 2007 issue, Real-Life Migrants on the MUVE: Stories of Virtual Transitions by Ross A. Perkins, and Cathy Arreguin. The article does an excellent job of breaking down Second Life into activities that teachers can work with their students through such as creating a time-line of WWII, and why it’s more than a reciting of facts exercise in this virtual environment. Other MUVEs are compared as well such as There, River City, or Active Worlds. Kathy Schrock created a database here for SL Guide to Educators. Creating scenes from movies, books, video games, having collections and displays, celebrating your local library resources are only a few of the unlimited possibilities libraries and teens could do with second life.

Posted by Kelly Czarnecki