What is Social Virtual World

The study of self-concept is essential in the fields of psychology, education, and for society in general, whilst self-concept is widely valued as a desirable educational goal. With the advent of social networking on the Internet, the great impacts of social interaction have rapidly migrated into the online world in order to enable people to share opinions, insights, expertise, experience, and interests with each other for collaboration, discovery, and even construction of self within an evolving technological society. The emerging technologies have expanded a new dimension of self – ‘technoself’ - driven by socio-technical innovations and challenged ideas of the next generation of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). This chapter is to bring attention to technoself enhanced social learning in education. By investigating the convergence of social media technologies for technoself enhancement, it examines the way in which Social Virtual Worlds (SVWs) are transforming the nature of learning as a social practice and discusses the role of technoself in social learning. The author has traced the new trend in TEL and recommends a novel pedagogical and sociological model of learning – an augmented learning approach which couples the technoself enhanced social learning with formal learning in education.