Avatar Languages Blog

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.

The purpose behind the tour was to consider whether these places attract native speakers from these countries (eg Spanish speakers in Second Life Barcelona) and people interested in learning the language associated with the cities (eg hispanophiles frequenting Second Life Barcelona) and what can be learned about the local culture from visiting these places.

Obviously I was keen to attend and I was especially pleased that at the end of the tour we had a very productive discussion on how to utilize these places. In this discussion I briefly described the way that Avatar Languages has been combining visits to Second Life replicas of real life places with student created podcasting. One of the interesting issues for me is how to make use of these Second Life / real life places in a quest approach for language learners of lower levels – that is, how the SurReal Quest model (see earlier blog posts) can be adapted for students with a more limited vocabulary and language skills.

Ideas for Using Second Life / Real Life Locations in Language Teaching

Some very interesting ideas came up, which I will summarize here. I think (and hope) that the entire transcript for the conversations will appear on Graham’s blog.

It was felt that in general a lot of communication games could be adapted to Second Life, such as alibi or jigsaw dictations. A game to practice vocabulary could involve students working in pairs – 5 minutes to note down as many items as possible and then asking the partner student to find them.

Lower level students could also be using Second Life for following directions around a real life location, with the directions given as an audio file. This would be similar to the museum audio-tours that guide visitors from exhibit to exhibit. Students would carry out tasks along the way, perhaps saying what they found. This could take on an interesting twist if the student were in fact using a student-produced podcast as the audio tour. In this way, students are using each other’s material for language learning.

Video was also discussed – essentially machinima projects for students. Students could write short scripts (screenplay) based on the location and then create an acted film in Second Life. A mini film festival could be held to show the films. Other possible activities are filming visits with a commentary or doing a travel vodcast (video-podcast) along the lines of a SurReal Quest.

A Few Reflections

There were some excellent suggestions at the meeting and I look forward to more discussions like this in the future. I have been pondering a little over yesterday’s ideas…

The directions issue is an interesting one. Perhaps other tools (outside of Second Life) such as Google Maps or Google Earth could also be used to do something similar. Google Maps has a nice function that allows custom maps to be created, including markers for journey pauses (eg planning a visit to a place and spending some time there). Google has some suggestions for using Google Maps in education on their website. Google Earth as a teaching aid is discussed on the Google’s own website and on the Google Earth Lessons site.

What really attract me to Second Life, however, are the opportunities for social interaction; Second Life allows students to actually talk with others – even if only for basic directions. So the activities relating to an audio tour or student-created podcast should involve encouraging students to verbally communicate (not just texting) with other residents. This is also a way to introduce students to the idea of using Second Life as a conversation practice forum and to increase their confidence in socializing within Second Life.

Another meeting has been planned for next week, which will focus more on the methodologies. I’m looking forward to it…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 11:41 pm 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.