Last week I had a meeting with my supervisor, and here are some of the things on my to-do list at the moment:

• Finish article on conversational management in oral interaction online
• Start working on follow-up article with material from student interactions
• Plan for follow-up multitasking article
• Literature review course: Affordances and multitasking (should hopefully generate some interesting blog posts, as blogging will be part of my grade here)
• Prepare for HUMlab seminar on November 21: “Conversational implications of multitasking”
• Prepare for HICSS presentation in January (Yes – I’m going to Hawaii!)
• Work with the distance course at the English Department
• HUMlab related work
• Etc. etc.

This meeting also reminded me that time is ticking, and now I’ve set up some quite demanding deadlines, which I think is important for me to get going. I also really need to focus more on my thesis, and not take on so many fun things on the side. Hmmm. But then again, working on my thesis is fun too! But first, a weekend in the newly fallen snow.

Over at Polyglot Conspiracy, Squires has commented on a recent article in Columbus Dispatch (link to article unfortunately appears to be broken) where it was argued that people communicating online don’t find this type of interaction less authentic than face-to-face interaction. As Squires points out, this comes as no surprise to some of us. The article also discussed how some feel much more at ease communicating via text than face-to-face, which is not very surprising either. My experience from working with voice-enabled 3D interaction is quite similar. Some of our students have reported on normally being shy, but have stepped up and taken on a very active role in the online discussions, where they have been able to hide behind the masks that the avatars provide.

Squires then raises a highly relevant question: does this ease of interaction online make it easier to communicate also offline? This is a tricky question, but at least when it comes to language learning, I think much is gained. By taking a more active part in the language learning situation, you get to practice speaking in the target language more than you would in a traditional classroom, and hopefully you should also feel more comfortable speaking it in other contexts as well.

Doctoral students working with multimodal interaction and embodiment will be interested to learn about the recently initiated Nordic network PlaceME (well, considering the long list of members, it appears as if a lot of people have learnt about it already…). On the website you will find facts about the network, but also reading tips and information about planned workshops where successful applicants receive grants covering travel expenses and full accomodation. I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops!

(Thanks to Elina and Leena in the MAILL project who informed me about the network at EUROCALL).

Today my colleague Maria Lindgren and I gave a didactics seminar at our department where we reported from the EUROCALL conference and initiated discussions concerning how we want to use technology in our classes – both on campus and online. We also took the opportunity to give a summary of the presentation we gave in Granada on overcoming the challenges of completely web-based language education.

(Oh there is more…)

For the fourth year in a row, I have today participated in Upptäcksfärden, a day during which Umeå University is invaded by school children of different ages. This year I did an updated version of the treasure hunt in “real” and “virtual” environments, and also had a chance to talk to the kids briefly about their experiences with online interaction. One boy strongly argued that it was easier to communicate online than in physical rooms, and whereas some said they thought it was possible to fall in love online, others thought it would be difficult. I really like these conversations, and each year I’m struck by how much these kids know about different online communities – it all seems very natural to them. Both kids and teachers were happy with the playful activities in the lab, and we, the instructors, very much enjoyed it too.

Jennie took some pictures during the day, which can be seen in the HUMlab blog.

For the seminar in HUMlab on virtuality that I gave last week, I did quite a bit of interesting reading. I wanted to find sources that question the virtual – real dichotomy, and there were two examples in the course literature of this. First, “‘This is not a game’: Immersive aesthetics and collective play” by Jane McGonigal deals with immersive gaming, in which the blurred line between virtuality and reality (or in this case maybe more game and reality) is discussed. Second, “The coming age of calm technology” by Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown focusing on how technologies are increasingly becoming part of our everyday lives. Here, the concept of “calm technology” is introduced, a concept which is relevant in relation to my work on multi-tasking. Other useful sources for the seminar were the Terra Nova blog, and the Virtual worlds review.

As for the concept “virtual”, I know some people think that we should abandon it completely, since it has the connotations of denoting something which is less real. Personally, I think that we need to acknowledge that interaction in virtual environments is different and influenced by the affordances of the environment in question, but that is not to say that it’s less real. I quite like the way that Bruce Damer puts this in his book Avatars (p.xvii), so let me end this post with a quote: 

“One of the reasons I and many other people refer to this new medium as virtual worlds and not virtual reality is that the worlds we visit are virtual (they exist nowhere else but in cyberspace and in our minds) but we go there to meet and interact with real people. There is nothing virtual about the reality of your interactions and relationships with other people in these spaces. You can feel just as thrilled, offended, titillated, intrigued, or bewildered by your remote conversations in an avatar community as you do on the telephone.”