Abstract
Virtual environments provide collaborative learning opportunities beyond physical walls and without time constraints. Learners connect across the planet in real time. The virtual representation of self requires understanding of personal responsibility for digital citizenship and information literacy. Both presentation of self and evaluation of content in all formats are new challenges for learners of all ages, including the youngest students born into an age of networked sharing and connecting. Virtual learning environments may transform education and certainly provide both advantages and disadvantages for educators and learners. Understanding personal responsibility for digital citizenship is imperative to best practices of education in virtual spaces. This chapter focuses on digital citizenship and information literacy in virtual worlds, virtual reality, and immersive learning environments.
TopBackground Of Virtual Environments In Participatory Culture
Participatory culture can be defined as a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers. “The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media” (Wikipedia, 2019). Learners in today’s classroom live in global digital participatory culture and are digital citizens as well as citizens of a physical community and they participate as prosumers (a term first used by Alvin Toffler)- both consumers and producers of media (Toffler, 1980). Toffler, a futurist, predicted the movement toward producing media decades ago.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Personal Learning Networks: A group of individuals collaboratively sharing learning experiences for common purposes particularly in networked culture.
Information Literacy: The ability to locate, evaluate, and use information in all formats as a digital citizen in participatory culture.
Digital Citizenship: Demonstrating an understanding of appropriate ethical behavior in digital formats through consumption and production of media.
Social media: Websites and applications that allow users to communicate and share content in digital networked culture.
Participatory Culture: The culture which encourages networked community sharing of information and artistic expression on a global scale.
Minecraft: A 3D computer video game in which users, alone or together, can build their own world using basic blocks “mined on their land.”
Avatars: Computer-generated simulations of individuals in a virtual space.
Virtual Reality: A 3D computer simulated environment situating the user in an altered reality usually with a head mounted display or other haptics, such as gloves to enhance the experience.
Virtual Worlds: A persistent computer simulated environment inhabited by avatars with a sense of presence and shared understanding of experience through interaction.
Immersive Learning Environments: A simulated space where participants feel a sense of presence through interacting with objects or others.