MUNDOS VIRTUALES

En el contexto del aprendizaje colaborativo se puede decir que es un mundo que

es visto y considerado, por sus habitantes como algo autocontenido. Es más
una acepción como aquella que se implica al referirse al Mundo Romano o al
mundo de las altas finanzas. Es un lugar que es imaginario pero en el que toma
forma lo que es real. Un mundo virtual es donde lo imaginario se encuentra con
lo real.
Los mundos virtuales se crean mediante computadoras, aisladas o en red, las
cuales simulan un entorno, donde muchas de las entidades, aunque no todas
actúan bajo el control directo de personas individuales. Dado que varias de
estas personas afectan de forma simultanea el entorno, se dice que el mundo es
compartido o multiusuario. El entorno continúa existiendo y desarrollándose
internamente, al menos en cierto grado, aun cuando no haya personas
interactuando con él y por tanto se dice que es persistente.
Los mundos virtuales, como producto de la aplicación de las tecnologías de
diseño multimedia, ponen de relieve la importancia de la Tecnología Informática
en la actualidad ya que es impensable pasar un día sin tecnología moderna
dada la forma en que ella modela muchas actividades de la vida diaria. En
particular, es cada vez más notorio el papel que las computadoras y la virtualidad
a través de los web-services tienen en el aprendizaje en las escuelas y en el
hogar. Esto apunta al hecho que la realidad virtual, o la tecnología multimedia, si
se prefiere, ha permitido el desarrollo de los entornos de aprendizaje virtual,
entornos en los que se estructuran diferentes tipos de mundos virtuales.
Cuando se emplean los entornos o ambientes virtuales de aprendizaje se puede
palpar la complejidad de la tecnología, ya que no solo es una herramienta de
creación del soporte de realidad virtual sino también

Technology is a complex construction: “It includes activities as well as a body

of knowledge, structures as well as the act of structuring.” (Franklin, 1990,
14) Its complexity has been evident throughout the history of considering
the so-called real world. When we turn to a consideration of cyberspace, this
complexity is no less evident. Technology helps to create, and is also the site
for, virtual learning environments. It’s both part of the process and is also a
product.
It has become commonplace to describe the learning environments mediated
by computers and digital technologies as virtual learning environments
(VLEs) in order to separate them from the real world learning environments
that have been with us since individuals came together to form communities
and societies at the dawn of our various cultures. However, as Burbules
points out in the first chapter of this volume, virtual can be an illusory concept,
one with multiple meanings. A learning environment doesn’t necessarily have
to involve digital technologies in order for it to be considered a virtual learning
environment. People over the centuries, especially through the arts, have
developed learning settings where individuals need to use their imagination,
often including the realm of fantasy, thus creating VLE’s.
I believe the confusing element in the virtual equation is the view that
only computer technology is both the necessary and sufficient criterion for
a virtual learning environment. It is a misunderstanding of technology that
is clearly enunciated by Ursula Franklin in The Real World of Technology
(1990). She describes technology: as ‘a practice’ and her description of what
it is not is informative for this discussion. She writes: “Technology is not
the sum of the artifacts, of the wheels and gears, of the rails and electronic
transmitters. Technology is a system. . . . Technology involves organization,
procedures, symbols, new words, equations, and most of all, a mindset.”
(12) It is the idea of mindset that suggests that the virtual is a concept of the
2
imagination, the power of constructing possible models of human experience
(Fry, 1969).
There are a variety of media for imaginative learning environments including
oral speech, writing, print, movement, photographic, electronic as well
as digital. Educators of a variety of backgrounds from formal, informal and
non- formal groups, including parents, media specialists and artists have used
a variety of practices for stirring the imagination of learners. Who hasn’t
experienced, for example, literature, creative writing, music, role-playing as
settings for learning? This presumes a more historically focused long-term
perspective on technology, which includes such examples as the development
of the printing press, the use of pen and ink, photographic process, film, radio,
television and the like.
In order to indicate that there are many types of virtual experiences, I make
a distinction between virtual learning and learning virtually. Virtual learning
is reserved for digital/ computer-based learning environments. Learning virtually
is a much broader term signifying any context that allows for imaginative
possibilities. It includes environments utilizing a broad array of traditional
media and contexts for meaning making. For example, the use of settings
employing
literature (in its various forms) engenders a process of interpretation
by a learner, leading to the creation of virtual, different from actual, texts
(Bruner, 1986). The process of creating a virtual text can be seen as initiating
a learning journey that uses previous experiences and images as markers in,
and of, the creation. Bruner suggests that features of discourse enable readers
to create their own virtual worlds through making implicit interpretations,
depicting reality through a lens of the consciousness of characters, and often
filtering the world through multiple interpretive screens. He also presents
concrete comparisons between a reader’s created virtual, and the actual, text
(Bruner, 1986, 161–171). Learning virtually is possible with other settings
that enable learners to make imaginative interpretations. Interactions with
other objects (paintings, prints, photographs, musical and dramatic presentations)
and media (radio, movies, television, television) are but a few of the
possibilities for creating virtual texts.
Where the two terms merge is where digital representations of learning
environments use procedures that existed prior to the computer age. Examples
of VLE’s that are primarily complex transformations of activities that exist
in the real world without computers include writing an essay or sending a
message by e-mail, viewing a page of text or an image, perhaps reading an
e-book, or undertaking some teaching or training activity. Other VLEs are
more fully realized virtual experiences for which no analog exists outside of
the computer; the ability to create new worlds, new topologies, new people,
and experience them, embody them, transform them in collaboration with
individuals from around the globe is truly a virtual experience. However, from
an educational perspective, both types of learning environments are subject
to similar criteria for success in whatever is supposed to be learned. Some