If The Walls Could Talk
于Identity, Learning and Support in Virtual EnvironmentsSearch for other papers by Alfred Weiss in
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This paper explores the educational potential of using space as dialogic medium in a multi-user virtual environment by examining a teacher education class conducted entirely in the commercial online application Second Life. Neither physical nor virtual learning spaces are pedagogically neutral. This paper not only highlights how space has been used to manifest particular pedagogic agendas, but also how students and learners have often been marginalized in the creation and construction of formal learning environments. However, this paper argues that the malleability of virtual spaces affords learners the opportunity to share in the design and production of learning spaces in online worlds. This paper contends that when students participate in the shaping and reshaping of their learning environment, space becomes part of the pedagogical dialogue of the class. Through this spatial dialogue, all members of a learning community can negotiate the virtual environments’ relationships to space, time, and society.