TEACHING LANGUAGES in a VIRTUAL WORLD (TLVW10)
TESOL Electronic Village Online 2010
What is TESOL EVO?
The TESOL Electronic Village Online offers a series of free online workshops for teachers.
Find out more here: http://evosessions.pbwiki.com/
What was TLVW10?
A hands-on collaborative teacher development workshop to explore the relationship between virtual worlds and language learning. This is an archive of the session outline and week-by-week proceedings. It does not contain forum discussion threads or blog posts, uploaded snapshots (see here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/tlvw10/) or video clips. The contents of this wiki have been transferred here from the original session's Ning site (http://tlinvw.ning.com) due to Ning discontinuing free service as of August 2010. Where possible, external links have been updated, but most of the content has been left unretouched. This means, for example, that temporal reference was left as-is (e.g. "will be" was not changed to "was"). This archive has been preserved in the service of past and future EVO participants, as well as anyone interested in using virtual worlds for foreign language education.
You can find a snapshot of the Ning community front page here.
When was the workshop?
Jan 11 - Feb 21, 2010
TITLE of SESSION
Teaching Languages in a Virtual World
ABSTRACT
In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the use of virtual worlds for language teaching and for education in general. This session will take a broad look at the current situation by investigating how organisations and individuals have leveraged this platform for language teaching and learning. Participants are invited to learn more by becoming involved in field trips, talks and discussions. We will also be looking at a selection of different educational tools that can be used to help the teacher and learners. You will be encouraged to try your hand at teaching language in one of these environments.
TARGET AUDIENCE & SPONSOR
Audience: The session is aimed at both beginners to virtual worlds and those with experience. Participants should have some experience of ICT in education and have access to a computer that is capable of running Second Life (you can check here : http://secondlife.com/support/sysreqs.php). No experience of virtual worlds is required or expected. There will be ample help and practice offered on the skills necessary to participate in the SL activities of the course. The session will also be of interest to those with experience of Second Life and virtual worlds through encouraging meetings and discussion of a large number of people actively involved in language teaching and learning using virtual worlds.
Sponsor: CALL-IS
WEEK-BY-WEEK OUTLINE
Week 1 - Introductions
This week, we will be meeting each other and introducing ourselves. You are also encouraged to sign up for the accounts for the online tools we will be using in the course: our community site (http://tlinvw.ning.com) and Second Life. If you have had no experience of Second Life, you should complete the orientation this week. Once you have provided us with your Second Life name when signing up for Ning, one of the moderators will send you an invitation to our Second Life group (the group name is 'TLVW10') .
Week 2 - Exploring Education and Virtual Worlds
This week there will be field trips to different educational spaces in Second Life and discussions. The choice of these spaces will be guided by the overall character of this course, as well as participants needs. As the core theme here is teaching languages, we will visit arts & humanities oriented places in Second Life, rather than those relating to sciences. In each case there will be ample time for discussion and feedback, as well as participants' own reflections on the places visited. Participants will be encouraged to visit some places individually, and then provide feedback to the group by blogging about their experiences on the tlvw10 community portal on Ning.
Week 3 - Second Life and Languages
This week will be spent visiting areas in Second Life where different languages are spoken. This will include Real Life places that are represented in Second Life as well as places where languages are taught. The overall aim is for everyone to have an initial idea of how Second Life can be used / is being used for language learning, teaching and practice both informally and formally.
There will be guided tours of some Real Life places in Second Life where we will try some language activities. Then, you will be given a list of landmarks to more such places, which you can explore in your own time. We will visit the British Council Isle and find out about their work in Second Life. There will also be a tour of an interactive Mexican town, which is a nice example of how learners can interact with scripted objects. All of these places can be used in a synchronous formal session with a teacher but also informally by students, who can practise their language skills and learn vocabulary on their own.
Week 4 - Teaching a language in Second Life
An introduction to different methodology, tools and places where languages can be taught and learned in Second Life.This week the specific focus will be on organisations and individuals who are teaching languages in Second Life. There will be opportunities to observe some language classes and discover the challenges involved in teaching in a virtual world . Among other places, there will be an arranged tour of Ciudad Bonita, a Spanish town run by Language Lab, one of the companies most active in Second Life language teaching. There will also be an opportunity to find out more about the work of AVALON, a European Union funded project examining best practice for language teaching and learning in virtual worlds.
Week 5 - Do It Yourself! Workshops
Teaching Participation/Practice - participants will be encouraged to put their knowledge into practice and arrange to teach each other in 15 minute slots. Guest speaker. Participants will also have taken part in a synchronous meeting, participated in a Business English lesson in AVALON and another in the Spanish village in LanguageLab, have posted snapshots of their particpation on flickr, have written a blog entry and participated in two discussions on virtual worlds, other methods of E-learning and Real Life v. Second Life language learning and teaching.
Week 6 - Evaluation & wrap-up
Participants will be asked to reflect on what they have experienced during the course and to share their ideas with everyone about good practice. People will also be encouraged to continue learning and sharing through the SLExperiments, Osnagroup and other group meetings.
COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA
Ning community: Teaching Languages in a Virtual World, http://tlinvw.ning.com/
We will be using this site for the course outline and weekly activities, participant discussions and content sharing.
http://www.secondlife.com
Second Life will be the virtual world used during the session. We may visit others if interest and time allow.
MODERATORS
Nergiz Kern is a DELTA-qualified EFL teacher and has taught general, business and technical English in Germany, Brazil and the UK. Now, she lives in Turkey and teaches online and in Second Life. Her key interests include learner motivation, encouraging learner autonomy, ICT and the use of Web 2.0 tools and virtual worlds in teaching and learning languages. At the moment she is enrolled in a one-year postgraduate certificate course ‘Teaching and learning with MUVEs’ (Massively Multi-User Virtual Environments) funded by the EU. Her next goal is an MA in Educational Technology and TESOL. Nergiz blogs about her "Teaching in Second Life" experience here: http://slexperiments.edublogs.org Second Life: Daffodil Fargis
Dennis Newson stopped teaching full-time in 2000, but that has given him more chance to become enthusiastic about the potential use of SL in TEFL. If you are seriously interested in his curriculumUpload files vitae, just go to: http://www.dennisnewson.de Second Life: Osnacantab Nesterov
Graham Stanley (http://www.grahamstanley.info/) is a teacher of English specialising in ICT at the British Council Young Learner Centre in Barcelona, Spain. He has an M.Ed. in ELT & Educational Technology (University of Manchester, UK). He has been working in the virtual world of Second Life since April 2006, and is project manager of the British Council's 'Learn English Second Life' project (http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-second-life-for-teens.htm), with islands in both the Teen Grid and Main Grid. He is involved in course development and teaching in Second Life as part of the European-Union funded AVALON project (http://www.avalonlearning.eu). He has also taught a course on 'Virtual Tourism' (http://www.virtualtourism.info) using Second Life, for the University of Ramon Llull in Barcelona. In the Main Grid of Second Life he usually goes under the name of Baldric Commons.
Włodzimierz Sobkowiak (http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/~swlodek/) is professor at School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. He teaches and does research in EFL phonetics, lexicography and ICT. In Second Life he has been running "Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa" consultation sessions for EFL learners.
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Maria Pinto is a Bachelor in Education (Major in English) and an Educational Technology Specialist. She is also a specialist in Usability and a web-based material designer. She worked as EFL/ESL professor in the area of ICT in the English language teaching (ELT) at the University of Carabobo. She also volunteered to work as a regular contributor in tutoting undergraduate students in projects related to ICT in ELT. She is currently working as an eLearning facilitator and consultant in her hometown, Venezuela. Second Life: Mary Roussel
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Nahir Aparicio M. holds a BA in Education with a Major in TESOL and a MA in TEFL. She worked as a professor at http://www.upel.edu.ve/ delivering English language teaching Applied Linguistics related courses. Her main interests are interculturality and ICT use in language teaching. Second Life: NVaniva
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Comments (2)
Mercedes Viola said
at 2:30 pm on Jul 25, 2010
Congratutaliions for your work on transfering everything!!
antonella.berriolo@... said
at 4:00 pm on Jul 25, 2010
Thanks you all for this wonderful work :o) and for saving all this useful material from oblivion.
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