Dr Susana Lorenzo-Zamorano Dr Zeynep Onat-Stelma

Susana.lorenzo@manchester.ac.uk zeynep.onatstelma@manchester.ac.uk

AVALON Language Teacher Training Course in Second

Life: Different Sides of a 3-D World

The Course• 6 weeks, 50 hours: 2 days a

week (2 hour sessions) in SL, 26 hours in Moodle

• Two groups of 10 teachers, two tutors for each group

• Final presentation by teachers: creating and presenting a lesson plan and carrying out one activity from the lesson plan

Aims of the course:

• to introduce basic features of Second Life

• to introduce and practise building and scripting skills

• to introduce ways of creating and using presentations in SL

• to introduce teachers to Avalon Island and other islands in SL

• to consider the nature of SL ‘communities‘

• to explore the themes of 'identity, modality, spatiality and creativity’ and language teaching in Second Life

• to explore the way SL interfaces with the rest of the Web

• to begin to think about ways of promoting participation among learners in SL

Moodle• http://lms.workademy.net/course/category.php?id=3

• Course syllabus

• Profiles of all teachers and teacher trainers

• Discussion forum (topic by topic)

• Links to resources/websites

• Video clips for technical support

• Theoretical conceptualisation

relating to

interconnected

interconnectedness

1) IdentityKey words: avatar; appearance; gestures; imagined identity; role playing

5) CreativityKey words: building; objects;

rezzing; prims

4) ModalityKey words: Visual/ text/aural channels;

learning styles

2) CommunityKey words: community building; communities of

practice; socialising; making friends; support;

confidence

3) SpatialityKey words: 3D space;

simulated space; navigation; movement;

teleporting; islands; maps

Five focal areas in

Second Life

Conceptualisation developed by Susan Brown, University of Manchester

Theoretical conceptualisation

Main challenges of the course (student’s perspective)1) Trying to find a ‘new’ identity

“I had a bit of a shock when I realised my body was extremely manly. I felt even worse when I started meeting everyone and I had a frame of comparison when it came to clothing and body shapes especially. However, I see my avatar as an extension of myself (psychologically it is indeed) so IDENTITY construction is not an issue for me and now that I have changed my body shape a bit (with slight improvements to certain parts) I am not that worried about my clothes. However, when I get the hang of it I will probably start changing them but this will be more for fun”.

This is me: Susana Dragovar

in SL

Main challenges of the course (student’s perspective)

4) Modality: practising a number of skills at once (multitasking)5) Creativity: planning of the final project using presentational tools and

incorporating the theory and practice learned during the course plus our own pedagogical approaches.

Other challenges:6) Familiarizing myself with new specialized terminology (rezzing

objects, scripting, sim, prim, teleport, slurl, holodeck…)7) Time constraints

2) Community: making friends

“I think it is important to complement SL with other tools in

order to help create a stronger sense of community just like we

are doing through Moodle. Giving students a particular role within the community could help and a mentoring scheme could actually work well towards this sense of

community”.

3) Spatiality: learning how to move and navigate and getting distracted easily

“I have noticed I get closer to other avatars now, which tells me proxemics are very

much like in the real world where we distinguish between social and personal space depending on cultural and personal factors. I find that pair work and warm-up activities certainly have an

effect on our non-verbal language. However, the 'cognitive overload' that I am experiencing in the

first stages of my SL is preventing me from noticing a lot of these issues. On a similar note, I do not feel at ease with the unintentional non-verbal language that certain situations involve

although I find some poses funny”.

The The FinlanchesterFinlanchester Project Project

• Devised in conjunction with Tiina Hirard (Turku University of Applied Sciences)

• Students: Low intermediate learners of Spanish in the English and Finnish university system (B1-B2).

• Final task: Students (10) will be paired up (Finnish/English) and required to present a tourist destination or a travel account (SL) and create a written TRAVEL GUIDE (RL) made up of all the student pair’s contributions.

The The FinlanchesterFinlanchester Project Project

Approach: task-orientated and blended (alternating face-to-face classes and SL sessions)

Aims and objectives:– motivate students to write;– create a community;– foster intercultural skills by helping identify and

(hopefully) overcome stereotypes;– practise a variety of SL skills;– linguistic (1st set of lessons): define objects and

express hypothesis and supposition; passive/impersonal structure

The The FinlanchesterFinlanchester Project: Visiting Project: Visiting Finland -example of taskFinland -example of task

1. Each pair of students will visit a different location in Finland SL using teleporting. Finnish students will explain the English about what they see (places they visit, nature around them, etc.)

2. Pairs to pick all the objects and notecards they find and then teleport themselves to the sandbox.

3. Linguistic brainstorming on useful structures and vocabulary for the next exercise (to be done by the tutor-facilitator on a chalk note board).

4. Students to wear an object they have found and share the notecards they have collected. Students then exchange information on what the objects are called, what they are used for and where.

5. Final discussion: students teleport themselves to the location Tuulentupa back in Finland SL where the following questions will be dealt with:

– Did the places you visited today correspond to reality, why or why not?;– What would you add to the sim representing your country in SL?

Final conclusion• The course itself went beyond

my expectations as it opened up a complete new world to explore from an educational point of view

• Transferring our first life pedagogical approaches to second life teaching is a complex process that requires careful consideration and time

• There is a need of introductory courses like this and of a continuation to them.

• There is also a need of a repository of materials in languages other than English

Thanks for listening and keep in touch by visiting our AVALON Ning:

http://avalon-project.ning.com/