Week 4 - Learning & Teaching a language in Second Life (Will be updated)
Week 4: Feb 1 - 7
Overview
An introduction to different methodology, tools and places where languages can be taught and learned in Second Life. If possible, class observation will be organised.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this week, you should:
- have participated in some of the tours (guided or self-access) of language teaching/learning spaces in Second Life
- have reflected on your visits in a blog post in our Ning group
- have a better idea of the range of different possibilities for teaching a language using Second Life
- be aware of how some people & organisations use Second Life for language teaching
- have attended a presentation/demo of favourite (language) teaching tools of the more experienced members.
- have started to understand some of the benefits and challenges of teaching in a virtual world
SL skills required
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advanced communication skills in chat and voice
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advanced locomotion skills: map navigation, flying, ...
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advanced view skills: mouselook, alt+mouse viewpoint control, zooming, hover tips, statistics view
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advanced environment setting
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Advance Menu (ctrl+alt+D) basics: snapshots, rendering types, rebake textures (ctrl+alt+R), limit select distance
Activities
- Visit Virtlantis, which is an island owned by Kip Boan, a language teacher, who provides space for other language teachers for free, provided they offer some free services or participate in the community building activities. Try to find and talk to some teachers and students while there and report back in the Ning forum for this week.
- Go on a boat tour on the EduNation island owned by Gavin Dudeney or take a guided tour with Carol Roux and explore the places that interest you most. Talk to some educators you meet there. How do you like the place? What can educators do there? Report back in the Ning forum.
- Visit Calisto's Interactive Spanish house. You can prepare for the visit by watching a short video about it here. Post your reflections in the Ning forum.
- Watch Nergiz' presentation about her English course in SL (~45min.) You need to sign up for Wiziq.com to be able to watch the presentation. If you don't have time, look at the slideshow. What seem to be the challenges, advantages and disadvantages of teaching and learning in SL? Post your reflections in the Ning forum.
- Attend one of the scheduled (language) teaching tool demo/presentation sessions in the sandbox. If you are an experienced SL user, select three of your most favourite (language) teaching tools, set them up in the sandbox and, if possible, demonstrate how they work and how you (would) use them in your lessons.
- If possible, attend the talk & tour at Monash University by Xilin Yifu, lecturer in Mandarin Chinese about teaching Chinese to students in Second Life.
Resources
List of landmarks at the Webheads in Action HQ in Second Life (click on the Week 4 Activities poster)
or here:
Virtlantis/SL English
EduNation
Calisto's Spanish house
Educational tools shop (Dudeney Ge's)
Educational Freebie Mall at Montclair University
Teacher Tool box ( in Virtlanis)
Language lesson planning for SL (including lesson plans, pictures and post-lesson evaluation)
Optional Readings/Viewings
Comments (2)
Nergiz Kern said
at 4:58 pm on Nov 23, 2009
@Wlodek, you added the list advanced skills under "SL Skills required". Do you think these will be necessary to carry out the activities in this week?
Or did you want to offer a session/workshop where you show how these work? I'm asking because the idea of listing "SL Skills required" was to let people, especially latecomers know what they have to be able to do in order to participate in this session.
I think the skills you listed are very useful for teachers. So, maybe we should at least provide links to tutorial videos where they can learn these. This could be in Optional Viewings. What do you think?
WĹ‚odzimierz Sobkowiak said
at 5:33 pm on Nov 23, 2009
Good point! Good question!
Let me put it like this: at this stage I was just browsing all of the 6 weeks and thinking (among others): is there some clear progression in skills required for each week? I'm not claiming that ALL of the skills I listed are really required *for carrying out the tasks of this week*. Rather, I thought: at this week/level these might be the skills the participants might like to have.
There's a bigger question here, too. Namely: are we responsible for actually *teaching* the skills we require/suggest, or do we leave it up to them to do? Do we care for the LT content only or all SL knowledge/skills somehow required or implicated? I'm not certain I have the answers to these questions at this time...
So maybe a general policy like: (i) first watch this tutorial video about this skill, (ii) then come to a practice meeting in-world, might do? Yes, I'm ready to cover some of the advanced SL interface skills with the participants...
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