I am happy to say that my SLexperiments blog has been nominated for the Edublog Awards 2008 in the category of “Best new blog“.

Many say and I do agree that as teachers we cannot ignore technology when teaching. Not only can it enhance learning but is also a real life skill that our students and course participants need to learn. Most importantly, technology can be a great motivator, especially but not exclusive for young learners.

As I said before, I can identify with all the roles suggested for a teacher and I have always liked technology but I am not a trained technician or IT specialist. That is why sometimes I do wish I had a specialist at hand who could maintain my website for example so that I could invest more time in improving my teaching and coming up with new motivating, fun and effective learning and teaching ideas. After all, we’ve always been told that technology makes life easier and saves us time, right?

The reason why  I felt like writing this post is that I spent most of yesterday with website maintenance upgrading the LMS (Learning Management System) Moodle and installing Sloodle (a Second Life mash-up module for Moodle) and learning more skills in Second Life® that are deemed essential for educators. If you are interested in more details, I posted about this in my Second Life experiments blog.

Having said this, I still like technology and integrating it into my lessons The video in my next post states pretty much where I stand in that regard.

My first Second Life English course has finished, certificates handed out, the SLexperiments Wiki and group has been constantly growing since we started it and I have been exploring Second Life’s potential for language teaching for a while now. Throughout this journey and as a member of the Webheads (an online community of practise), I have learned and experienced that sharing what one knows is a very powerful way of learning more.

This and the fact that reflecting on one’s learning and teaching helps one to become a better teacher and learner were the reasons why I had decided to blog about my Second Life English course and publishing my lesson plans. I do hope there will be more feedback and comments on the lessons and my reflections so I and other teachers can benefit even more and improve our teaching.

The logical next step is to give a public online presentation about this fascinating journey, my explorations and teaching experience. The presentation is mainly directed towards teachers but some of my students will (hopefully) also be present and learners wanting learn about new ways of improving their language skills or companies looking for effective and motivating language courses are most welcome to attend.

The presentation will be on the WiziQ virtual classroom platform and is scheduled for Thursday, 28 August 2008 at 3pm GMT. Here is the link where you can sign up for the session.

I am looking forward to seeing you there.

Update:

If you missed the live presentation, you can watch the recording using the same link as above (for signing up). Above, you can see the slides of the presentation.

Here is a link to all my Second Life postson this blog.

Potential of Second Life

Now, that I know more about Second Life, I see its potential for language education. It is …

• Immersive: 
  • Opportunities to speak to native speakers or non-native speakers in real situations
  • Role-plays can take place in the actual setting: If they are learning shopping language, they can actually go shopping, practise ordering food in a restaurant, go on field trips to places where the target language is spoken.
• Collaborative: Work with others to complete tasks (e.g. project work)
• Provides a safe environment to try out the language
• Caters to the needs of different learner types (visual, kinaesthetic, auditory) and intelligences (Gardner’s MI theory).
• Helps shy students to overcome their shyness step-by step by first using text chat and then voice. It makes it easier to speak as it is their avatar and not themselves doing this. Nobody sees them blush.
• For those who can only attend distance learning classes, SL gives participants a feeling of really being present and experience a “real” class atmosphere.

Formal versus informal learning

The question is: “Should learning in SL be formal or informal?” Some say it is, after all, a game and teachers should not mess with it. Learning should be entirely informal (e.g. practising speaking with native speakers).

As in Real Life and as I know from my own experience of learning foreign languages, I think the combination of formal and informal learning works best for optimal results (e.g. attending classes in a language school in the morning and immersing oneself into the language outside class by going shopping, meeting people, going to the cinema) In Second Life, we give students the safe environment and provide them with language input and controlled practice to make sure they have the language and use it correctly. This  gives them the courage to go out into the open SL world and seek opportunities to practise it. Lessons should include field trips to places where it is easy to contact and speak with other residents to give students an idea where to go in their own time. Teachers could also visit events together with their students after preparing them to participate in discussions. This should give students enough self-confidence to go out by themselves and practise their language skills further without needing a safety net and any formal instructions any longer.

Limitations and strengths

SL has limitations when teaching (e.g. limited gestures, facial expressions which result in more teacher talk- though there are first steps like lyp synching), no whiteboard to write or draw on quickly. On the other hand, there are possibilities that you do not have in RL (e.g. going on field trips, teleporting to places, making and copying objects indefinitely to name a few). So, I think when planning and conducting a lesson, it is crucial to keep these in mind. What happens often is that we try to replicate Real Life. I wonder why? Are we so used to thinking in boxes? Is it too much freedom? I’m sure with time we will see much more innovative SL-ways of teaching and maybe these will even influence our Real Life teaching in a positive way.

Reservations?

Yes. It won’t suit everybody. Some will feel uncomfortable due to the double challenge of getting to grips with the language and the technology. When students pay for the course they will be unhappy when things don’t function properly or things take long due to lag, etc. I also sometimes feel responsible for students that I bring into Second Life. What if they get addicted, visit inappropriate mature locations or fall prey to residents whose intentions are not good? This is why I prefer to teach those who are already in SL and even if I bring students there from outside, they are adults and responsible for themselves. 

Conclusion

Despite the challenges of teaching in Second Life and the technical issues like instability and lag, I see the potential of SL for teaching languages and prefer to be part of finding out how best to teach in SL instead of waiting for researh results. 

Finally, Second Life is fascinating but it is, after all, only a tool. And tools are only then helpful in reaching your goals when you choose them appropriately taking students needs and wants into consideration and not deciding based on your personal love affair with a tool.

“What would be the components of a training course for teachers who want to use SL in and for their teaching?”.

He added some ideas to start the discussion:

1. Build up a list of pedagogically useful tools.
2. Build up a list of pedagogically useful sites in SL.
3. Study possible pedagogical uses of notecards, IMs, etc.
4. List basic movements the teacher must be proficient at (walking, moving, flying, teleporting, etc.).

There are some other Second Life skills that teachers should know (e.g. writing and sending notecards, group chat, etc.). While these are all important technical skills teachers should know and would make up one component of the course, this alone will, of course, not be sufficient to make teachers good educators in Second Life.  

The second component would be to look at the pedagogical side of teaching in SL. I would have teachers share their believes about teaching and learning in general and what they think teaching in SL would be like. Why they want to teach in SL in the first place? 

If possible, I would have them observe some SL lessons (maybe good and bad examples) and ask them for feedback.

Have them think about “How much about what they know about teaching in RL can be transferred to SL? 

Have them think about what makes SL unique. What are the strengths of SL compared to RL classes? When does it make sense to teach in SL and when in RL? Is there a special SL pedagogy? Many teachers and schools simply try to replicate Real Life in Second Life building traditional looking classrooms.I have visited different schools, talked to directors and observed lessons, and what I have seen was sometimes appalling. 

Finally, you can only really learn how to teach by actually teaching. This is also true for teaching in Second Life. Therefore, the last component of the course would be teaching either peers or, even better, real students and receiving peer and tutor feedback and reflecting on their teaching.

At the end of such a course, teachers will also be able to decide whether they really like teaching in SL or not. 

Besides the content of the course, a trainer would also have to decide on how to deliver the course — entirely in Second Life or only partly. If in Second Life, the trainer would naturally lead by example and conduct the session using SL pedagogy

This is not a complete list and I’d love to know what others think. So: 

If you were a teacher interested in teaching in Second Life, what would you like to see covered in the course?

And if you are already a teacher or teacher trainer in Second Life, what would you add to the list?

The free 6-week general English course is intended for pre-intermediate level students and will take place twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays, 11.30 am – 1.00 pm SLT/PDT (6.30 pm GMT) for 90 minutes each. Start is on 9 July 2008. We will use voice during the lessons and the course will be complemented by a Moodle component for review and further practice and discussion.

The target audience for this course is mainly people who are already familiar with the Second Life environment and have basic SL skills (e.g. moving their avatar, camera control, teleporting, offering friendship, writing and sending notecards). However, if there is demand, we will also provide one SL skills session before the course.

The places are limited and as they are being announced in-world and on Islamonline.net’s Arabic website, they might fill up quickly. So, if you know somebody who might be interested, tell them to send me an e-mail message as soon as possible or IM me (Daffodil Fargis) in Second Life. If you can read this post and understand it, the course will be too easy for you

Deutsch:

Wir bieten einen kostenlosen sechs-wöchigen Englischkurs für die Stufe Pre-intermediate in Second Life an. Der Kurs fängt am 9. July 2008 an und findet jeden Mittwoch und Samstag um 11.30 SL Zeit (20.30 MET) statt und dauert jeweils 90 Minuten. Die Plätze sind begrenzt. Wer interesse kann mich über die Kontaktseite erreichen oder mir eine Nachricht in SL schicken (Daffodil Fargis).

Türkçe:

Second Life sanal dünyasinda alti haftalik ücretsiz ingilizce kursu baslatiyoruz. Seviye pre-intermediate olacak. Kurs Temmuz‘un 9′unda baslayacak ve her çarsamba ver cumartesi olacak. Ders saati: 11.30 – 1.00 SL zamani (21.30 Türkiye saati ile). Kurs çabuk dolabilir, o nedenle, katilmak isteyenler biren evvel basvursunlar (ya contact sayfasinan bana mesaj gönderin veva Second Life’dan IM gönderin (Daffodil Fargis).

I have to say, I was rather disappointed because of the poor graphics, the empty places and the steep learning curve. I had also no idea how to find those educational places. Most places I managed to find were deserted. The first conversations I had with “residents” were also not very promising. 

It took a couple of months for me to give it another try. I learned how to move around watching some Second Life tutorials. And after attending a life guided demonstration during a six-week EVO BAW08 course, I finally started to understand its significance for education. I was intrigued by the possibilities it offered for distance and language learning.

I started to collect teaching tools and to learn more basic SL skills. An online teacher friend from Mexico, Maru suggested to meet once a week to learn and share our experiences. This was a great motivator for me. Shortly afterwards, we were joined by Alicia, a teacher friend from Uruguay. 

Then, in May 2008, I created the Wiki as a logical consequence to have a repository for all the ideas, news, links and tools that we talked about in the meetings. The core of the Wiki, however, is the “lesson plans and ideas” section. During the SLanguages 2008 conference, many SL teachers pointed out that lesson planning for SL takes much more time than in Real Life and participants were also asking whether there was a platform to share these. So, we decided to open the Wiki to more educators.

Since then, it has generated a lot of interest among SL newbies as well as experienced SL educators, also from researcher at some universities who are interest in SL’s role in education.

The life in-world meetings take place every week at SLT/PDT 11 am (GMT 6 pm). If you are a language teacher interested in Second Life and would like to join, contract me.

Here is a slideshow which Maru created with the text I had written to demonstrate one of the educational tools in SL, the SpeakEasy HUD:

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vBusiness Expo is a four-day event about using virtual worlds for business and education. Today was the first day. There will be presentations, talks and panel discussions. After the serious part, there will also be informal social events like business fashion shows, music, etc. Good for meeting and talking to new contacts and networking.

This is the first vBusiness Expo happening in SL. Clever Zebra, the organiser, is planning two Expos in a year from now on, one in spring and one in autumn.