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The "virtual school"

In a recent phone conversation with Tim Finin, he explained the MUDS
construct and suggested that a similar concept might be used in the aegean
project.  As we spoke the idea evolved a bit further.  When I linked to an
earlier short-hand reference to the "virtual classroom," I realized that if
I were a K-12 teacher, a familiar and user-friendly virtual environment
would resemble what I encountered daily: namely, the school in which I
taught.

How about this:  the aegean project "builds" a virtual school (or maybe
three schools -- elementary, middle and high) with classrooms, a teachers'
lounge/conference room/planning center, and a media center/library for
starters. This "building" could house teachers from all over DoDDS and
provide a "space" within which they could interact both with each other and
with "external" resource centers and tools (EAGILs, CAPERs and SNAIRs?).

For example, let us say a middle school teacher wished to put together (or
to update) a unit on vapor condensation.  He/she might want to know if
there was an animation of the condensation process that might be used as an
instructional aid, or a hands-on experiment that had proven to be both
practical and informative in actual use.  In the virtual school the teacher
could "go" to the "media specialist" in the media center/library and ask
for the specialist to look for, evaluate and suggest an approriate
animation for use in his/her eighth grade class.  Or the teacher might try
to consult with other teachers about the type of hands-on experiences that
they had found to be successful in their own classrooms.  (I could go on,
but you probably get the "picture" already.)

Tim suggested that the teacher might also be given the tools to "construct"
a new or separate space in or adjacent to his/her classroom for special
projects -- such as a condensation demonstration/simulation/experiment(?).
Indeed, the teacher could also furnish his/her classroom with what was
needed for a day's lesson, or a one- or two-week (or longer) special unit
or project.  Students in the real classroom could join the teacher in the
virtual classroom for a demonstration, or be directed to work independently
on a special project in the virtual classroom, or go to the media
center/library for materials to meet a project assignment, or meet in the
virtual classroom for testing/assessment, etc.

I suspect that all of you will have many more ideas about how to flesh out
and embellish the virtual school concept.  Tim, for example, added that we
might also wish to build a virtual teachers college for staff development
and in-service training.

I think the nice thing about this concept is that it provides an immediate
and user-friendly virtual environment for the teacher, and might even be
extended to include parents and administrators.  (How about an open school
night for parents to visit their child's virtual classroom?  Or, a
principal could visit his/her teachers' virtual classrooms for evaluation
purposes. And so forth...)

We might not be the first to have thought of this concept. The NSF program
solicitation for NIE grants mentions something about having already funded
a state-wide virtual school with network-linked collaborative classrooms as
a planning/start-up project. However, we may have a significant edge in
implementing this concept in DoDDS.  Also, Tim pointed out that MUDS
already works as a text-based system.  Thus, the infrastructure to create a
text-based virtual school is already in place and could be tried out very
early in the aegean project.

Enough for now. Let me know what you think of the idea.

Phil Sokolove
sokolove@umbc.edu
(voice mail: 410-455-2147)


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