How will simulated online environments impact professional development delivery for administrators and teachers?
Foster (2007) points out how Second Life has taken college campuses by storm. Since its development in 2003, professors and college students have flocked to the virtual world of Second Life. Second Life is used to hold distance-education classes, and professors state that communication among students becomes livelier when they assume digital personalities. In Second Life, students can create digital personalities known as avatars to reflect their own personalities and interests. More than 150 colleges in the United States and 13 other countries currently have a presence in Second Life. Although some faculty and staff members are skeptical of the digital world's value, the number of virtual campuses keeps growing. The question for school districts is whether staff development provided in this manner will show promise in use for on-going staff development for teachers.
The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), in 2007 , recommended the development of virtual environment charter schools because of the chance to both motivate students and provide access to the best teachers for students. MUVEs, according to SREB, offer great promise in credit recovery and dropout prevention.
Perhaps the reason we should use this new technology for teachers’ staff development is to more closely align the world of teachers to the way our students communicate with each other and the way they multi-task and learn. This technology has the potential to move how we teach more quickly toward how this generation of students learns best.
References
Foster, A. L. (2007). Professor avatar: In the digital universe of second life, classroom instruction also takes on a new personality. Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(4), p24.
Southern Regional Education Board, Atlanta, GA. (2007). Five academic reasons why state
virtual schools are important to your state. Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)
4 pp.
