Introduction - An assignment for MEd

The perception of presence has a powerful sway over our subjective sense of self. Who I am is powerfully linked to the sense I have of an immediate and physical presence – a body here in this place and space where at the present time I am writing. Much of our cultural and legal traditions are predicated on subjectivities that are concrete and immutable: if “I” steal your sheep or fail to pay my bills, “I” can be held to account in our court system, for example. My name, my birth-certificate, my family and my history are all elements of my subjectivity that I wear as a kind of armour to protect me from the uncertainties of an existentially ambiguous world.

In a playful world many of these certainties are brought into question. Further, in a playful, virtual world, the concrete certainties of traditional notions of subjectivity seem almost to be systematically undermined. In this blog I plan to explore some of the ways playful and virtual learning environments might be understood to be impacting on our personal and collective identities. There has been much discussion in the media about the way virtual worlds such as “Second Life” may be threatening our “first” life world through the ephemeral nature of the identities that are created. Writers such as Castel and Jenson comment that there is a substantial literature discussing a perceived deficit in the moral fiber of gaming worlds (Castell & Jenson, 2003). I’m particularly interested in the attraction virtual environments have for adolescents, who I will argue are very focused on exploring and developing their identities. As a teacher of “Middle Years” English, I see a core component of my job to be fostering in students the confidence and capacity to actively contribute to the process of “making” their identities. Instead of leaving them to be shaped passively by the world around them, I believe I have a responsibility in my teaching to help students take an active role in deciding who they want to be. In this context “literacy” is about empowerment; the opportunity to rehearse and explore identities through writing (about) reality is a core component of teaching and learning. “Writing”, in the context of this discussion, is a very broad term; I use this term much as it is used in semiotics to encompass all forms of creative symbolic construction. If I write a play I create a character in language; in a broad sense, when I construct an avatar in a virtual world, I am also writing a character within the language of semiotics.

Central to the concerns of this blog will be an exploration of the idea that there is very little, in fact, that is new in the idea of playful and virtual realities and that now, as in the past, playful and virtual environments form a cultural space for individuals to test and build identities that are creative, meaningful, productive and healthy. Placed in a cultural tradition of playfulness and creativity, the modern world of computer gaming and virtual interaction can be seen as simply the most recent in an evolving (or revolving?) tradition of imaginative play. Whilst computers and the Internet offer some fascinating new possibilities, I will argue that they also share much with past creative and playful traditions and there is much to be gained from attempting to understand this continuity with the past.