Add a Dimension to Your Teaching: an Introduction to Language Learning in Virtual Worlds

Virtual Round Table 2010

Add a dimension to your teaching: an introduction to language learning in virtual worlds

images / text / Time
Second Life location + avatars / Here we are relaxing on the beach before we face our first ever presentation using Adobe Connect! Feel free to join us there:
/ 1
us / Welcome to all.
Before we show our introduction - just a couple of ‘process’ comments!
(1) This presentation has interaction, slides and video involved .. we know from the outset that there is a chance that some elements may not work, but we have decided to ‘take the risk’ given our theme .. this is a great opportunity to use as many dimensions as we can using this wonderful technology .. so please bear with us!
(2) Concerning ‘ interaction ‘ .. we suggest that you write your questions and contact info in text chat .. we won’t necessarily interrupt our prepared ‘flow’ .. but we promise we will look at all the chat after the session and get back to you if it hasn’t been covered by the end of the talk ...
(3) All references will be available at the end in a single document - this talk will also be available with the hyperlinks.
We will upload it to and give a link from the home page. / 1
Intro slide / So to start with , here’s the title video, behind which you will see your two presenters in their 3D virtual world .. roll the film Anna!!!!
video with title / video / 1
slide with our key details (contact details) and the web address for reference / 1 KARELIA:
So, the title is:
Give an extra dimension to your own language learning/acquisition, then apply it to your teaching. An introduction to language learning in virtual worlds.
Well, as advertised, as two enthusiastic language teachers with avatars in Second Life, we’re going to
(1)describe our own personal and professional teaching and learning journeys through the magical, virtual 3D world of Second Life..
(2) At the end, we will be reflecting in particular on on how a third dimension enhances the experience and effectiveness of language learning (whether for your own or your students’ benefit) and
(2) we’ll be inviting you to join us in a supportive, collaborative and lively network of teachers from across the world.
ANNA: intro
Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Antonella Berriolo, in RL I teach Italian in the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Barcelona and at the Universitat internacional de Catalunya.
My avatar in SL is called Anna Begonia, she’s almost 4 years old now, and she likes to explore the possibilities for language teacher that this tool offers.
Helen Myers I am a teacher of French and a manager in a large UK secondary school, and Chair of the London branch of ALL (the Association of Language Learning) and its former president. My main electronic means of communication is via the Yahoo mflresources forum which I oversees

My avatar, Karelia Kondor, is nearly 3 years old, and has enjoyed being Anna’s guinea pig in ‘Italianiamo’ as well as meeting fascinating people from all over the world. She will (nearly) always have pink hair. She has copied Anna’s idea of a blog here:
We all met on Edunation, SL, and they continue to be active members of SLexperiments ( and Avalon ( / PPT 02
slide 2 / 2
2 ask people
have you used a 3D virtual world? (use x and tick) / WHITEBOARD / 1
slide title / 3D WEB - EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING / PPT 3
5. We are sure you already have many dimensions to your teaching using web tools. .
The title of this presentation is ‘adding another dimension to your teaching’
so what we propose to do now is to describe our journey through using a 3D virtual world.
Our experience has led us to conclude that our learning in 3D WORLD is more more experiential than a 2D world .. and hence. more effective. We’ll leave the theory bit until the end ... hoping that somehow, once you have ‘experienced’ our journey, the theory will mean more ....
6 To help you understand this world, we would like to talk about our personal experience
prepare slide / THE BASICS: ACQUIRING A 3D PRESENCE
E.G. SECONDLIFE / SLIDE 2 / 1
sl / 7. We registered ourselves on the secondlife site, deciding on our first name, choosing a second name, and choosing a starting ‘avatar’ image (which could later be changed) / SLIDE 3
prepare slide
Helen has screen shots of each step) / 8. We went through the basic tutorial on the welcome island (6 steps .. move, sit, chat, fly, etc .. / SLIDE 4
9. We made contact with people like us, starting with teachers ....
prepare slide / CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS / SLIDE 5
photos of conference and meeting we went, with the name of it and the topic. / 10 karelia usually, the first contact with other avatars is through conferences and meetings.
It is very easy to attend conferences and meetings: you just have to go there, sit down, and listen. But apart from participating in an event that interests us, conferences and meetings are also a wonderful opportunity for meeting people who share their interests with us.
Many organisations hold conferences in SL, and there are some extremely active groups of language teachers who meet regularly, ...we especially recommend you join Avalon and SLexperiments regular small meetings and this next week you would be most welcome to join us at the bigger ‘Slanguages Conference’ and experience what it’s like to be in a conference.. just let us know if you need any help! / slB2005
AVALON
SLEXPERIMENT
SLANGUAGES / 1
prepare slide / SHARING SKILLS AND RESOURCES / SLIDE 10
11 Anna: SL is a wonderful place where you can meet other teachers.. I can say that in my 3 years in SL I’ve shared with and learnt much more from my colleagues than in my whole 18 years of teaching in RL. May be because people in SL are curious, open to new things, prepared to take risks....and since it’s all very experimental, I mean, we are all learning together, we are all willing to share, compare experiences, collaborate, etc. ..and of course we make a lot of mistakes, and laugh together about them . / 1
photos of different classes going on. / For this same reason (the fact that we are all learning and experimenting) there are many free classes going on around SL, and becoming a learner again, attending classes given by more SL skilled teachers, is a good way to understand what’s happening in the learners’ minds, their reactions, their problems, and how to use this new tool. / create objects
sharing resources
collaborating / 1
prepare slide / LANGUAGE CLASSES / SLIDE 14
12 Karelia? So ..after managing the technical side of getting into this world, and after meeting people who were also teachers, we both experienced language classes for ourselves ... for the rest of the session we’re goiing to talk about how adult learners can use SL for language learning
CHANGE ORDER OF
SLIDES / anna: In this case I’m very lucky: being an Italian who speaks a very ‘personalised’ (idiosyncratic) English, I can attend many different English classes .. here are some examples ... / cypris
virtlantis / 2
Karelia:
I wanted to improve my school girl German an my basic, self-taught-from-a-BBC-course Italian ...
(1) For German, I have gone along to the Goethe Institut where you can join a one-hour chat with real German speakers called ‘‘Learn German now chat’
Mon, Tue, Thu 7am CET (6am UK time)
Weds Fri Sat 2000 CET (9pm UK time)

(2) and more recently I have joined in on Heike’s interesting expeirment in creating a ‘telenovela’ in the Berlin 20s sim ...

(3) But the most sustained experience I have had has been practising spoken Italian with Anna on a Tuesday evening ... I had learnt some Italian from a BBC course ‘Buongiorno Italia’, but, never having attended a ‘live ‘class’ I had never really had the chance to ‘practise’ Italian other than as a tourist. Anna organised lots of fun and engaging activities which forced me and others to speak Italian .. here’s a picture which represents what I thought was one of the most innovative and ultimately effective .. we co-wrote the script for a minifilm - then practised the lines again and again - then performed it in front of Anna as ‘camera-woman’. You can see the final product on a youTube near you ...!!
(and by the way, we had a fantastic premier and I treasure the Oscar I received .. even if everyone else got an Oscar too!!!)
Anna has helpfully written an account of all the ideas she used in her blog
We’ll talk you trough some of the types of activities you can do for language learning .. we’ve categorised them ... firstly .. games / goethe
ich bin ein berliner
italiano / 3
prepare slide / GAMES / slide 10
13 being a 3D environment, it’s perfect for games and other activities that make you move, interact with others, collaborate. / 3
anna This was a very simple game that I prepared for Italianiamo. Each step is a linguistic puzzle, students have to solve collaborating. / video 04
video 05
prepare slide / ROLE PLAY: LANGUAGE TEACHER LED / PPT 06
here I have to find videos and other things. / 14 KARELIA
Role Play is a very common and engaging activtiy for language learning - but sometimes it can seem a bit artificial in a classroom setting.
In a 3D virtual world, we can recreate a ‘physical’ environment (for example a cinema with plush red seats, or a market place with a changing room - or a hotel reception), and somehow the role play is much more involving and real. / languagelab
Avalon
Languagelab / 1
prepare slide / ROLE PLAY: AUTHENTIC/NATIVE SPEAKERS Rpg / slide 4
15. KARELIA:
In SL you can find communities of native speakers who engage in ‘role play’ ... a fantastic opportunity for the keen adult learner to practise language
I had an experience (admittedly short-lived) in ‘Dreadcity’ .. here I am after being taken to hospital in an ambulance suffering from injuries sustained while witnessing a fire. I can assure you that this French doctor took his job extremely seriously. It was not a joke! / hospital karelia
contact pionia / 16 ANNA and this kind of RPG can be used as well with a Class: Pionia Destiny ( Doris Molero) students will enter soon SL, wil create their character, thinking about his history, likes, dislikes etc, and then will join the game to interact with the “real” gamers.
What is wonderful in this kind of game is that you have to describe your actions, your facial expression, to try to convey your feeling in what you say. So you are obliged to use a kind of language that we do not use in class.
I’m rolepaying now, in this same place, and I can say that’s its really interesting and enlightening. / video 07 rpg / 4
prepare slide / ‘THE ‘REAL’ VIRTUAL WORLD! / PPT 08
different pictures of
interesting places
take out the roman bath
(art gallery) / 18 karelia [Language teacher directed] but you do not need to set up settings or organise complex games: SL itself offers a wide range of places that can be used as a stimulus for conversation.
It is not an image, a photo. You can move into the environment with other people, and what you are doing there, in that moment, what you see, discover, the decision you have to take, are themselves opportunities to use the language.
These slides give some examples ...
Second Life art galleries offer a superb stimulus for trying to express (in any language that you know) what you think things represent and your opinions / gallery / 1
ImperiuM video / 19 Authentic ‘organised’ communities - there is the chance to participate in authentic ‘games’ / activities which require the use of language for explanation / interaction .. here’s an example ..
ImperiuM .. a clan where you can train to use a sword, and , along the way, of-course, you need language ..
(1) you need it for instructions (imperatives .. (instruction)
(2) you need it for troubleshooting with IT!
(3) you need it to engage in the social consequences of being part of a group (natural, authentic casual conversation)
(BTW, Anna has a good professional reason fro belonigng to this clan .. I’m still looking for a respectable reason ..) / 09 video imperium / 2
picture of meetings for real?
do it / 20 Spontaneous interactions Going around, there is the chance of meeting native speakers. You meet new people very frequently in SL, and this is a real ‘plus’ which you can rarely experience with other web tools (or, for that matter in real life .. I mean, what is the likelihood of you striking up proper, full conversations with many native speakers while on holiday? ... they ar eoften brief, transactional, and you never meet them again ...
my experience is that I talk more with native speakers in SL than when on holiday in RL ....and in particular I ‘SUSTAIN that contact. e.g. I spent half an hour chatting in French to a lovely chap in a queue in a car park near Arcachon in the summer .. and that was it. In SL, I can meet people, chat with them, ‘make friends’ and find them later. (If I want to!!!)
and I have been delighted that SL friendship has turned into real world friendship, as shown by this slide .. all the people here are people I met ‘virtually’ beforeI met them ‘physically’ ... / PPT 10
assisi
RL people / 3
21 to finish, we would like to summarise our own experience as language learners....
22 anna: I studied English at the university, but it was long time ago, and we had very few opportunities to practise the language. Then I did not use it for almost 18 years. When I entered SL, I did not even remember how to write bye bye. Gradually the language, without taking up a book or making any boring exercise, started coming back.
One year afterwards, I was collaborating with an English company. All my interactions where in English. Two years afterwards, I started blogging in English.
Now my English is far from being perfect, but i can use it to communicate, collaborate, do things with others. I speak or write in English almost every day.
I wonder what my level would have been if I had had this tool when I was a student. / 1
23 Karelia: I’m proud of my own ‘personalised / idiosyncratic Italian! (even if some criticise my lack of grammatical accuracy!!!) ... and I’m even prouder because all of the Italian I have learnt has been through informal learning prompted by my SL experience ... grazie Anna Begonia! (AB blushes deeply! Tough!) / 1
expand this
THEORY DISTILLED FROM EXPERIENCE/PRACTICE:
EXPERIENTIAL 3D LEARNING / slide 3
24KARELIA To end with .. let’s distil some sort of ‘theory’ from our practice and experience ...
This slide summarises then how we feel a 3D environment can be exploited for learning ..
In a 3D virtual environment you can for example ..
●represent a concept, see them from different points of view and interact with them. [I’m still not sure about this ...]
●Interact with people from all over the world both in written text (chat) or orally (voice)
●collaborate in the creation of learning objects with others.
●share with other what we create and what we know
●create a 3d learning environment in which learners can move
●do all the above for free or with a small investment. / slide 4 / 2
slideshow representing the idea you are explaining
2-8 / 25 Karelia The slides we’re going to show illustrate the pros of 3D ... how learning can take place through
SOCIAL INTERACTION IN A MORE ‘AUTHENTIC’ CONTEXT / BACKGROUND ... there’s
Immersion, involvement, co-presence, a deeper relation with people, the possibility to do things together. etc
“instead of seeing a video of the people you interact with (via Skype for example), you see their 3D avatar – a character which, through your control, can do all the things you can do in the physical world: listen, speak, read, write, move and interact with other avatars and objects. Effectively you are bringing yourselves together as if you were physically in the same location, doing conventional things like walking around a town, sitting and talking around a table, often prompted by the stimulus of interactive objects and people surrounding you.“
In summary, you are closer to a ‘physical’ experience, andthere are plenty of studies which prove that experiential learning is the most effective practice .. (I’ll reword this ..)
Let’s look at a few examples of we experienced ... (show slides) / talk friends
read
piano
walk town
sit table
fly / 3
THANKS AND FINAL COMMENTS! / slide 11
26 KARELIA - As a learner, Thanks to Anna for providing the initial background and stimulus needed for me to improve my Italian, leading me to be able to operate now more ‘independently’ of formal teaching .. and as a teacher thanks for the inspiration which has led me to become a teacher in Skoolaborate where I am hoping to enahnce my own students’ experience of language learning .. / 1
27 ANNA: I would like too to thank you, karelia, and all the learners who participated to my activities. Without you all, I would not have been able to try out things and to learn.
You see, as we said before, each one in SL participates in someone else learning. .. a truly collaborative adventure! / 1
28 Karelia : Thanks to everyone for listening and contributing .. and we would LOVE to welcome you into our additional dimension! / 1
screenshot and link to / 29 If you’d like to get started now, this is what you have to do ...
Go to the site
Register and create you character (warning: your name is for life!!!)
Download the software for free
Go into the world and learn the basics / slide 12 sl portal / 1
make slide
RL/SL names/email
link (the one used at the start?) / 30 Make friends with us!!!
For all references given in this talk go to: / slide 13 mails and data / 1