Semantic Networks and Shared Exploratory Learning Environments
The best learning environments include people discovering a world individually and together. How can we combine massively online gaming, virtual worlds, semantic networks, mystery, and unfolding narrative to create a new kind of learning and collaboration environment: an environment which encourages thinking within, between, through and beyond conventional structures of knowledge? And can we create a sense of scale, richness and awe of knowledge spaces designing from the principles of Infinite Games, learning spaces, community?
[Spoiler alert! What follows exposes some (but not all!) of the secrets of the Big Sky Mountains Mystery.]
Exploring and Navigating The Mysteries of Myst
Several years ago, I spent some time watching people play puzzle adventure games like Myst and Riven (Myst Series: 1993-2010). In this game genre players travel through a virtual world by exploring an interconnected network of little huts or buildings spread out over a mysterious island. At each location they solve one or more puzzles to unlock the secrets of each building and eventually reveal and unlock bridges or paths to yet other locations to continue their exploration.
I hate puzzles, so I never played. But I watched others play hour after hour. The idea of a virtual world of explorable huts with cool devices woven together as portals into yet unknown but explorable landscapes fired my imagination. I thought of the private and shared worlds of knowledge, and their landscapes of learning and wonder, and the network of connections that can lead us from one point to next in a vast and evolving tapestry. Knowledge, memory, and learning are infinitely rich and vast. I began to see that these puzzle adventure worlds offered a metaphor that linked the potential of virtual worlds, social platforms, gaming, and semantic networks into a landscape that could host group and individual knowledge authoring, discovery, and exploration. To fit the metaphor, I reimagined the puzzle huts Exploration Outposts (EOs) and the paths and bridges between them as relations and sematic connections.
Let me paint the vision in general terms: help me by imagining yourself as a visitor.
Suppose we created an online universe where any interesting point of knowledge or learning could be turned into an Exploration Outpost and linked into a vast network that was being woven together by a growing number of paths and bridges. The Exploration Outposts would represent locations where learning, insight and exploration might occur; locations where a scenic perspective or vantage point was discovered, showing aspects of knowledge not easily seen from other points of view. You can visit anytime, as often as you like and spend as much time as you like. Simple revisit a starting point that you have traversed in the past or be dropped at random at any place in the network.
The bridges and paths are flexible, and from visit to visit, the EOs may move in relation to each other. In fact, movement may immediately change paths depending on what a you choose to do, contribute, and write while visiting. Each EO would have a different set of bridges and paths and a unique configuration of places to move on toward. In this way Exploration outposts are locations in a dancing landscape: nodes in a dynamic complex system which is growing and changing with the addition of each new network or connection.
Your travels through the landscape, the paths you take, the perspectives and the resources and outposts you have created for yourself and others provide a travel journal through an intellectual landscape. You can retrace your steps, revisit, go back and add more or build new bridges and connections.
Everyone becomes an explorer: Thinking creatively for yourself provides access to interactions with others.
While Riven was navigated by puzzles the Exploration Outposts would be accessed, explored, unlocked, and navigated by knowledge and insight interactions. Each one accessible through one or more exploratory questions or suggestive statements. Each one is sign over a door. An EO can have any number of doors. To enter one door of the EO you must take a few minutes to create a personal key: to think about what you might find there, explore you own memory, knowledge, and learning. This allows you to create a personal key that will unlock you entrance to the EO. When you enter using you personal key, you find that what is inside changes and shifts slightly based on your entry thoughts. There is a visualization which shows the connection between what you have said, and the content laid out by the creator of the EO and those who have visited before you. If you are luck you might hear some voices in another room: these are the sounds of people currently discussing the content of the EO.
Authoring: Building the World.
How can you create an Exploration Outpost? All you need to do is create something that is interesting to visit, put some doors on it, some help in creating entrance keys (though questions, combinations of concepts, a quote or evocative statement). Then you drop them into the universe. What you put in the EO can be used to automatically create paths or bridges to other EOs. You can also create them yourself.
EO’s have one or more creator: people who have seen something, have discovered a cool view or vantage point: a scenic spot where parts of the knowledge landscape are visible in some new way, some new perspective.
Can we create a “world” that allows us to explore, learn, sketch the landscape, build for others, express what we see, in an evolving universe of interconnected ideas? Can we turn learning, study, notetaking, thinking, brainstorming, discussion into fun actions that build the shared “knowledge world?” Can we create a richly connected sematic network of knowledge, which you can visit outpost by outpost. They are discoverable, explorable, buildable.
When visiting an EO you might find that someone has laid out some information, resources, or ideas for you.
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Infinite Collaboration: This is you and me - thinking within, between, through and beyond the universe of structures of internal and external structures of knowledge. We have space and time.
· Scenarios
o A person logs on and immediately sees a cool idea, quote or something motivating.
o They then see 2-3 active thought questions such as “Can AI help people humanize knowledge?” “Does learning always have to be pressured? Can you make some of your learning feel like you have all the time and space in the world for your mind to roam, refresh and explore.” “How is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle a metaphor for working for human memory” “What is a surface area?”***
o One of them looks interesting and they click through. When they do they are asked for their own quick answer.
o Each one is a portal through which you can either make short visit or launch into an exploration of the virtual world. “I just realized something – let me take you where I am right now”. Create an idea interface.
o Once entering any EO you can begin to explore the network of Exploration Outposts, each one accessible through on or more exploratory questions or suggestive statements.
o Each one is sign over a door. An EO can have any number of doors. To enter one door of the EO you must take a few minutes to create a personal key: to think about what you might find there, explore you own memory, knowledge and learning. This allows you to create a personal key that will unlock you entrance to the EO. When you enter using you personal key, you find that what is inside changes and shifts slightly based on your entry thoughts. There is a visualization which shows the connection between what you have said and the content laid out by the creator of the EO and those who have visited before you. If you are luck you might hear some voices in another room: these are people who are currently discussing the content of the EO. EO’s have one or more creator: people who have seen something, have discovered a cool view or vantage point: a scenic spot where parts of the knowledge landscape are visible in some new way, some new perspective.
· *** These can take many forms
o They can be the beginning of series of thought questions
o They persist after the discussion is “over.” They are left for others to explore, experience, expand on and weave together. In other words new people can visit them and get the value. Over time we lay out a vast and growing network of Exploration Outposts which
o
· Gamification
o How many outposts have you visited?
o How many bridges and outposts have your created?
o How many outposts have you embellished by leaving new information, insights or hints in group working spaces?