Fractured Spaces: Draft 1

With twists and turns of the camera, Nintendo highlights in its most recent commercial an “escape to reality”, an escape to the world where lines and spaces have blurred.

It is this notion of blurring spaces that continues to intrigue me and serve as the foundation of many of my explorations: physical and digital spaces, social and working spaces, formal and informal spaces, and so forth. While most are still working to understand what this all means, community and relationships are being shaped by socialization in all spaces regardless of proximity.

Just review the Registered Virtual User Data from Kezero highlights to see just how strongly this is occurring in the world of youths. The data is intriguing on many levels but what immediately caught my eyes were the names of many of the virtual worlds: Hot Wheels, Barbie Girls, Beanie Babies, Webkinz, BuildaBear(ville), Hello Kitty, and UpperDeckU.

These companies have their roots in the physical offering toys for children to create, build, and play. At the same time, these companies recognize the social trend that places relevance in virtual worlds where community, connections, collaboration, and distributed knowledge are norms. The key, it seems, is not the displacement of the physical and all it values, but a blurring of it with the virtual.

Thus, the creation of a powerful experience that blends together the value of both into one seamless world held in the hands and at their fingertips. How much fun must it be to still hold the baseball card in your hand, build an album, and trade with your fellow neighborhood kids yet also manipulate your avatar in greater communities and global neighborhoods where teams are built, challenges ensue, and more trading and interacting take place. This is exactly the world kids have at their fingertips with trading cards and the Internet at places like UpperDeckU:

Yet, many in education still seem only concerned so much as to discuss the digital and the physical as separate entities.

In Henry Jenkins‘ Convergence Culture (2008), he references James Paul Gee‘s  idea of affinity spaces and his fears that classrooms are hindering the skills students are developing:

Learning becomes a personal and unique trajectory through a complex space of opportunities (i.e., a person’s own unique movement through various affinity spaces over time)and a social journey as one share aspects of that trajectory with others for a shorter or longer time before moving on (who may be very different from oneself and inhabit otherwise quite different spaces). What these young people see in school may pale by comparison. It may seem to lack the imagination that infuses the non-school aspects of their lives. At the very least, they many demand an argument for “why school?”

Instead of trying to understand Gee’s notion of affinity spaces and exploring the social phenomenon that is the Internet, too many educational leaders and organizations continue to focus on their feelings of discomfort with a world they fail to understand. We discuss the loss of connections. We discuss the idea of being out of touch with nature. We discuss the loss of meaningful relationships. We speak of the dumbest generation. We discuss unhealthy ties to “fake” worlds.

All the while, the social phenomenon associated with emerging technologies, social networks, and mobile computing continues to fracture the very notion of learning spaces.

Thus , it seems more important to remove our bias and work to understand this social phenomenon so we can extract from it salient points that can help transform education to exciting, engaging, and inspirational hubs of learning instead of  continued arguments against the digital worlds and the actions of overly connected youths

End Note:
This concept of a multi-dimensional learning space, affinity spaces, and the blurring and fracturing of spaces are ideas I continue to seeker knowledge on both in terms of depth and breadth. Thus, this is but a first draft that needs much fine tuning and insights from theory, current research, and practitioner narratives including the voices of students. If this is of interest and you have insights, please share including criticisms!

References

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. London: NYU Press, 2008.

Lions, W. Flickr Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/3138256476/sizes/o/

Related posts:

1. Beyond the Web 2.0 Hype Opening
2. Developing Digital Learning Spaces: From Vision to Reality
3. Neat New Ning
4. Oh, The Struggles: SL Research Paper
5. Next Step in My Virtual Hunt

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