Research Proposal - Virtual Communities

Last week on "The Fifth Estate", they played a documentary on virtual communities, such as Second Life, where people were creating avatars, and becoming their ideal self. Many of them became so obsessed with their avatars they would spend 12-15 hours a day living a virtual life. The implications were that many people were not acting ethically on Second Life, but they believed it was ok because "it's not really them". One mother neglected her family, including her husband and two children because she became more interested in her Second Life than her real life. In addition, one man left his wife for a woman he met on Second Life because their avatars fell in love. But "it's not really them", right? I always think it's funny how we worry about our students and our children using the Internet improperly or making bad choices - that adults and parents know better. Furthermore, for my research paper, I would like to write about students and interactions in virtual communities. I know that these sort of virtual communities are being used in the classroom. During my Student Teaching, Harvard had chosen the Grade 6 class I was teaching for a study where students had to create their own avatars and learn in a virtual community for Science class. They had to create experiments, interact and collaborate with other students (in their classroom and around the world), and propose a hypothesis as to why they believed the people in the virtual community were getting sick. As a teacher, it was both interesting and boring. I got to watch students learn on the Internet, but I found that all I was doing was watching - after the third class I was so bored because the students didn't really need me. Consequently, the subject of virtual communities poses many questions, not only for our students but for everyone using them.