The school library as a transformation room into an avatar for active learning

Abstract

Avatars are 3 dimensional animations that represent individual in the Virtual World. Engaging avatars for learning with the aid of Web and Library 2.0, makes learning in the library become more engaging, active, collaborative and captivating. The study hinged the use of avatars on the need by children and adolescents to overcome library anxiety and their quests for anonymity. With the aid of avatar-mediated library service which encourages higher level of anonymity, students are courageous and they can express themselves without any inhibition knowing that their privacy is protected and they have a sense of ‘intimacy’ with the avatar librarian depicted by 3D animations as their favorite cartoon and comic heroes or some inspiring concepts. It is recommended that librarians should upgrade their ICT skills and explore studies on Second Life, a popular social media platform that encourages the use of avatars for interraction and communication by its residents. Authors of this work have not been able to register on Second Life, though several attempts have been made. The reason is not yet known. This raises the need to study the procedures for becoming an avatar on Second Life. Likewise, the authors could not lay hands on any literature from Nigeria making reference to SL. It is estimated that 90 percent of UK higher education institutions have some kind of SL presence. The largest SL campus is that of the University of Texas, which committed to SL as a major learning environment in 2009 (Aujla, 2009). Since an informal approach could be adopted to communicate on SL platform, librarians should be willing to jettison the status quo and adopt names of children’s comic and cartoon heroes such as Ben Ten, City Hunter, Dora, Lion King Spiderman and many more as their own avatar name instead of the Librarian nomenclatures. This according to the paper has psychological effect on students that they are not chatting with the adults who may want to scrutinize their perceptions but their cartoon or comic heroes who has answers to all reference queries. This alleviates fear and encourages active learning.