Journal For Virtual Worlds Research (Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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Canadian Border Simulation at Loyalist College
No full textThe aim of this paper is to describe the process and results of a Canadian border simulation run in Second Life for students at Loyalist College. Recent security restrictions at the Canadian border limit access for college students to serve their placement at the actual border, thus eliminating the possibility of first hand experience. Additionally, in class role-plays designed to practice border interview skills were not adequate to instill the interview process. Using Second Life to simulate the border environment and procedures allows students access to a simulated real life environment, and provides them with the sufficient real world practice they require to grasp and retain essential interview skills. The results of this learning experience translated into greater levels of confidence and significantly improved grades
Culture and Practice: What We Do, Not Just Where We Are
No full textArguing that culture is shaped by location and practice, this essay advocates the study of common practices across virtual worlds to better understand how shared practices constitute cultures spanning multiple worlds. Connections among worlds are growing, as world designers borrow from similar influences and player bases gain experience with multiple worlds, leading to cultures potentially defined by the practices they share, rather than the worlds they inhabit
Virtual Worlds as Educational Experience: Living and Learning in Interesting Times
No full textEditor
Immersive 3D environments and Multilinguality: A Non-Intrusive and Dynamic e-learning-Oriented Scenario based on Textual Information
No full textVirtual Worlds may become primary tools (with video and text secondary) for learning many aspects of history, for acquiring new skills, for job assessment, and for many of our most cost-effective and productive forms of collaboration (Metaverse Roadmap Repport, 2007).
We propose a non-intrusive and dynamic e-learning-oriented scenario based on textual information. This scenario exemplifies how a standardized framework for textual multilingual support associated to an immersive 3D environment, may considerably change the way people usually deal with multilingual information and with language learning on the Internet
On the Dark Side: Gothic Play and Performance in a Virtual World
No full textThis article investigates gothic play and performance in Habbo, a virtual world for preteen children and teenagers. In addition to analyzing the aesthetics of the environment and its player characters, the authors seek to ask how gothic players figure in its appropriation and redevelopment. Countercultural player activities, such as playing goth in Habbo, are often treated as disruption, but here it will be argued that gothic players are in fact rather resourceful and productive members of the community. Observations of player-generated content, events, rituals, appearance and group discussions indicate that goth is more than a styl
Visualizing Atomic Orbitals Using Second Life
No full textWe demonstrate the usefulness of Second LifeTM as a platform for enlivening major concepts in chemistry education. These concepts include absorption spectra, selection rules, quantum numbers, and atomic orbital shapes. We have built several exhibits in Second Life which provide 3-dimensional interactivity for each of those areas: an interactive experiment showing the absorption spectrum of hydrogen, an interactive model of selection rules showing allowed and forbidden transitions for each state, a 3-dimensional grid of orbitals showing the constraints on the values of quantum numbers, and a large-scale interactive orbital display allowing the user to choose and rotate to-scale atomic orbitals based on quantum numbers
Method and the Virtual: Anecdote, Analogy, Culture
No full textThe question of what counts as culture in the spaces of virtual worlds has emerged as a compelling topic for research, and will likely remain so into the foreseeable future. This is a question not just of theory, but of method. In this formative period for an emerging research community on culture in virtual worlds, it is thus crucial to foster a wide range of approaches, and to challenge forms of methodological partisanship that assert the superiority of any one approach
Culture and virtual worlds: The not-quite-new experiences we study
No full textAs a reader of this issue of JVWR, you should have an interest in virtual worlds as well as some experience with a few, even if an exact definition of what constitutes a virtual world or how to differentiate various types of virtual worlds still proves elusive to you. Popular media outlets as well as academics from multiple disciplinary homes have been rumbling about thetopic for some time now, but virtual world spaces that contain millions of people globally are just now becoming a sustained subject of the studious eye of academic research
Virtual Worlds Round Table
No full textBy being an online journal, the JVWR allows for the inclusion of some pieces that might not otherwise fit a standard journal. This was the thought behind bringing together a group of virtual world scholars to discuss a series of questions and share their thoughts. Meeting in Second Life, Nick Yee (PARC), Liz Losh (UC Irvine), and Sarah Robbins-Bell (Ball State University) were gracious enough to share their thoughts on the study of virtual worlds culture
Can We Move Beyond Visual Metaphors? Virtual World Provocations and Second Life
No full textIs it possible for the human beings, who are the driving forces behind virtual worlds and the avatars that inhabit them, to move beyond Real Life metaphors? What does this sort of questioning mean for teaching and learning in virtual worlds