Google Maps and Second Life: Virtual platforms meet information literacy
C&RL News, November 2008
Vol. 69, No. 10
by Troy Swanson
As the old saying goes “timing is everything,” and it was timing that brought together Second Life (SL), Google Maps, first-year writing students, and Malcolm X. Following a staff development workshop on the virtual world of SL, a partnership formed between a writing instructor and librarians. The Moraine Valley Library’s Google Maps and Second Life Project was an opportunity to engage students, and explore how student work could be incorporated across online platforms. The resulting product of this project highlights the advantages and disadvantages of these emerging technologies.
Project description
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was the college’s 2007-2008 One Book, One College selection, was used as a text for the writing course. This course was a first-year writing course that was part of the college’s Honors Program, which focuses on better-prepared students in the transfer side of the curriculum. The instructor assigned portions of the work to the students and asked them to write summaries of the work and conduct historical research about the time period during which their portion of the book took place. The librarians held information literacy sessions to support the research and encouraged students to find photographs or online video to add context to the summaries. The project’s goal was to build an online exhibit about the life of Malcolm X using the book as the exhibit’s basis. This exhibit would exist on two platforms.
First, it would be available as a Web site that used Google Maps. This site would place student summaries and research within a geographical context following Malcolm X’s life around the country and the world. The exhibit’s second form would be in the virtual world of SL, where the Google Maps and student work would be translated into a three-dimensional structure.
The finished product consists of similar content that is presented on these two platforms. The Google Maps side of the project makes up a portion of the One Book, One College Web site1 and consists of two-dimensional Web pages that uses the GMapEZ Java Script file. When viewed, these pages present maps of the United States with Google-style pushpins at key locations of the different sections of the book. When a visitor clicks on the pushpin, a student summary about that piece of the book appears in a popup window. The SL portion of the project consists of a three-dimensional structure that the visitor’s avatar can explore. This structure includes the same student summaries, but it also includes public domain images, music created by one especially talented student, and video footage of Malcolm X.
This project was intended to engage the students in several ways. In order to succinctly summarize the text, students would need an understanding of the text as a whole and of the time period. Since the exhibit was public, their work would need to be written at a level that could undergo public scrutiny. They also needed to consider how their writing would be displayed online. The project was not intended to teach Web design or SL scripting.
Implementation
The class met with the librarians four times over the semester. The first session was an introduction to the project. Only one of the students had ever heard of SL, but all were very interested in the virtual world. During this session, students were given pre-created avatars so that they could explore the world. Time was saved by giving students avatars in order to avoid the lengthy set-up process. Students immediately began altering the appearance of their avatars. Some made their avatars look like themselves, while others were more expressive. While this session was engaging and definitely useful, it had its chaotic moments.
The next two sessions were used to work with students on information literacy skills. The librarians presented Web sites that may have photographs or video, and also discussed searching on the open Web. The librarians also discussed intellectual property law and the need to identify public domain photos and video.
The final class session was more of an open work time where the students could finish writing if needed and enter SL to review the structure of the exhibit. During this session, several students did experiment with building SL objects. While students did not end up creating objects for use in the exhibit, it was clear that they found this interesting. The SL application was added to the library’s open computer areas so that students could access the exhibit without downloading and installing the application each time they wanted to access the exhibit.
The student summaries were submitted at the end of the fall semester. The exhibits were finalized in the spring semester and made available via the One Book, One College Web site as supporting materials for the ongoing program events. The Google Maps portion of the project Google Maps used the third-party application, GMapEZ,2 and is housed on the campus servers. The SL portion of the project is located on a piece of land owned by Monroe Community College, which was very generously donated rent-free for this project.
Obstacles
Intellectual property issues were the primary obstacle to this project. Students found many photos and some online video, but very little of what they found was in the public domain. Initially, the exhibit was to include images of the New York Times and Chicago Tribune front pages from the day that Malcolm X was assassinated, but these images were too costly to be included. It was difficult for both students and librarians to identify many images that were freely available for use, and the attractiveness of the exhibits suffered from this limitation.
While the construction of the Google Maps portion of this project was fairly straight forward, the SL construction proved to be more challenging. SL construction is more time intensive, and the addition of the third-spacial dimension presented a new level to online usability. The learning curve of moving from the 2-D Web world to the 3-D virtual world was steeper than anticipated. An understanding of scripting and the development of object manipulation skills was crucial to the SL portion of the project.
While students found SL to be an engaging environment, the challenge of keeping students on task while an open Web browser was in front of them is only amplified in the virtual world. Students quickly recognized SL as a “gaming” environment, and despite the fact that SL has no plot or game objectives, students quickly created their own objectives from playing tag to shooting each other with virtual paint balls. They did not consider SL to be a learning environment, nor did they recognize it as an information environment as they might recognize the Web. These perceptions changed over the life of the project, but this is something to recognize when initiating similar projects.
In the end, the conceptual considerations between platforms were all but ignored by students. This is not their fault, but a representation of the inexperience of the librarians and instructors who conceived of this project. The grading rubric and expectations did not emphasize differences between the Google Maps pages and the SL exhibit. Class time was not spent helping students adapt their research and summaries into different forms for the two versions of the exhibit. This is partly because the difference between the two platforms was not recognized by the instructors at the outset and because there was no additional class time to give, since the students had other written assignments to complete. When surveyed, students found this project to be highly interesting, but their work failed to fully recognize the potential that this project provided. The summaries remained highly text-based and relatively flat.
When opportunity knocks, open the door
This project was born out of interest and excitement around new technologies and the library’s One Book program. Even as the project was initiated, it was understood to be an experiment, the outcomes of which we would not know until it was completed. Now that the project is complete, we have a better understanding of the implications of some of these tools.
First and foremost, we have found value in enhancing library programs through Web-supported enhancements. In the past, the library has offered online support for instructors and research guides for students. The move toward additional content on the Web has received positive feedback from faculty and students. The Google Maps portion of the project is less flashy than the SL exhibit, but the Google Maps portion is more accessible for our population and presents a possible approach for enhancing a text that may be more engaging than more standard enhancements.
One thing that became increasingly clear is that engaging students in the creation of online content without expecting students to be programmers, architects, or graphic designers necessarily disconnects the student work from the online product. Despite our efforts to describe a vision for the completed exhibit and to take students into SL, student misunderstanding of our goals was evident. The additional images and supporting research contributed by students varied greatly from student to student. The students found entering the virtual world to be engaging, but we had difficulty fostering the in-depth conversations about content and organization of the exhibit that we had initially envisioned. The disconnect between content and form is a difficult chasm to bridge.
However, the larger lesson to be drawn from this difficulty is to recognize that the concepts of information literacy, media literacy, intellectual property, and information architecture have the potential to grow into new and highly valuable learning opportunities in a 3-D learning space. In order for this to happen, students must be required to create the exhibit’s design and, as a class, work out how form and function intersect. This may be a significant enough change that this project may not be appropriate for a first-year writing class, even in an honors program designed to encourage exploration and innovation. In this case, we were not prepared to devote the needed class time during this project, but we can recognize the potential for deeper learning in the future.
Like all new ventures, the development of learning space in SL must be weighed in the larger context of resource availability and time commitments. As was mentioned above, the time commitment required to build in SL was more substantial than originally anticipated. We were able to construct a two-story, attractive exhibit space, but when weighed against other needs within our library, it is unlikely that we would commit to something at this level in the near future. These technologies were hardly a blip in our radar five years ago, so in another five years there may be significant changes that make their use less time intensive.
The Moraine Valley Library’s Google Maps and Second Life Project was successful, even if we recognize significant changes that should be made if undertaken again. The students completed useful assignments and engaged the text in ways they might not have if we had moved forward with this project. Many times, and this time in particular, it is difficult to know how useful a technology may be without opening the door when opportunity knocks.
Notes
1. One Book, One College Web site, www.morainevalley.edu/malcolmx/maps/index.html.
2. GMapEZ can be found at n01se.net/gmapez/.
Troy Swanson is teaching and learning librarian at Moraine Valley Community College, e-mail: swanson@morainevalley.edu
© 2008 Troy Swanson