Avatar Languages Blog

The PR / Communications firm DRAFTFCB has put together a short movie called “Second Life in Real Life”. Not only is it amusing for those of us who have spent some time in Second Life, but I think it also raises some interesting issues for SL (language) educators.

Essentially, what is the advantage of using Second Life, and where are we repeating in Second Life what we can already do in real life? I see the major advantages Second Life offers over real life as being…

• the ability to construct what we want in a comparatively quick and cheap way – building a cinema or a lunar landscape for a class would be almost unthinkable in real life.
• anyone can construct objects and likewise interact with these objects. So students can make and do things.
• there are opportunities to meet others from around the world (either casually or planned) and to do so much more easily than is possible in real life. These meetings can also be based around themes and interests according to the location.
• Second Life is often a fun place to be (although it can also be serious) – there are few places in real life where you can dance in the street, although apparently Linz, Austria was one of them when the Ars Electronica art festival converted a street into a Second Life scene (see picture below).

• there are opportunities for very imaginative and outlandish environments. I read in a blog recently (unfortunately I can no longer find it) that medical teaching could take place actually within a Second Life body. Likewise chemistry classes could involve walking around and within a molecule.
• the ability to fly is an incredible skill – one we have often dreamed of having. And now we do. It allows us to really get a perspective on objects from a distance and different angles. And of course teleporting allows us to quickly change location.

However, Second Life also presents us with some challenges for language teaching – such as…

• text – there are limitations on how we can use text within Second Life. In fact even video and audio files are more abundant and more easily accessed outside of the virtual world.
• deftness – as the DRAFTFCB film reminds us, most avatars are less than graceful when moving. Architectural design is different in Second Life – doors need to be larger and interiors have to be more spacious.

All this leads me to think that the focus on Second Life language education should be in areas such as the…

• social aspect of Second Life, which allows for a more communicative (especially verbal) approach
• ability to construct and interact with the environment – essentially that students can really do things and make things
• scope for imaginative, even bizarre contexts – such as being inside real life objects such as bodies or even totally fictitious situations

SurReal Quests (see previous blog entries) certainly take advantage of the social aspect and could easily involve imaginative contexts by choosing less earthly topics. Perhaps it is the question of how to have students interacting with the environment that needs further exploration. This would make a good subject for the in-world Webheads meetings (that previously have explored Second Life European cities).

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 12:09 am and is filed under Second Life, SurReal Language Quests, SurReal Quests, Teaching Methods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.