Google Maps must surely be changing the way we use maps – especially now that it offers “Street View” for several countries. Street View allows you to see what the streets actually look like, thanks to a Google car driving around lots of cities and photographing almost every street at intervals of every few yards. It also offers language learning new immersive opportunities.
A Street View of Madrid is embedded below, so you can click on it and drag the image around to take a look.
In today’s lesson with a student from Madrid, he showed me around parts of the city using this Street View function. Ruben gave me directions to guide me and then described the locations.
At Avatar Languages we have started to encourage students to add to Wikipedia articles. We have chosen Simple English Wikipedia, which is a version of the online encyclopaedia that is written in a simplified style of English for non-native speakers. (more…)
Virtual worlds make excellent tools for simulations, such as policing international borders. This YouTube video shows training for the Canadian border control making use of Second Life.
The second article about teaching English in Second Life has been published in the November issue of English Teaching Professional. This article focuses more on SurReal Quests as a methodology that takes advantage of Second Life as a social and communicative environment.
Dennis Newson has recorded a very interesting podcast of himself and Gavin Dudeney (The Consultants-e) discussing the opportunities for using Second Life in language learning.
The Webheads meetings continued this last Monday, when we visited another real life location in Second Life – this time the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi. The Second Life model can be found on the San Francesco Assisi island and more information on its own website: SecundaVita.com. It is an amazing place that has extraordinary detail both inside and out.
Yesterday I attended the second Webheads tour of European cities that have a presence (3D model) in Second Life (unfortunately I missed the first one last week). The tour was led by Graham Stanley, who has also blogged about these tours. We visited Second Life Barcelona and Second Life Liverpool. We visited Second Life Barcelona and Second Life Liverpool. Barcelona’s Plaza Real (Plaça Reial in Catalan) and Las Ramblas have been recreated within Second Life, with some adaptations to try and recreate the social atmosphere that the Plaça Reial has in real life (such as a café and a dance floor). Second Life Liverpool has plenty of Beatles themed places, including the Cavern Club.
Second Moscow, the SL version of the Russian capital, will be celebrating its inauguration on 1 September. This is excellent news for SurReal Quests as there will be yet another destination for students to visit, socialize, research and podcast about.
I have been working on a way to take advantage of the unique benefits of Second Life as an educational environment while maintaining the best of what both real life education and education 2.0 have to offer. The resulting approach is a task-based “SurReal” quest that draws on Second Life, web 2.0 tools and conventional use of the internet.
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